May

12

Printing Theme

Filed Under Themes 

Long time – no Theme. I did publish a tutorial about theme creation, but it might be scary for many people. I also haven’t heard any success stories, so when I finally got a request for a Theme, I happily obliged. And here it is for all users to enjoy.

It’s actually a themePack file with two variations of the same idea: both are for printing purposes – your Forms will look like regular text documents. The fonts of the “Printing” Theme are true black with no transparency and in five popular sizes (Times: 12-14-18-24-36). I also matched the 12 pt. size for the medium size of the field label font (Arial). Additionally, I removed the Media field border. An empty Media field still shows a border, but once it has content, the border disappears. The borders for the text (number) fields you can turn off yourself – from the View menu.

When you get to the Print dialog, still check the box “don’t print background,” because the background isn’t true white.

And here comes the clue: the second Theme variation (I call it “Invisible”) sets the Field Label font color to true white, which makes your field labels disappear and invisible on the print-out! This feature had been requested before, and I would like to give full credit to my friend Barb for the idea.

Screenshot (Printing Theme; field borders turned off):

Printing Theme

Click for a Larger View (Original Size)

Partial Screenshot (“Invisible” Theme)

invisible
You can’t see the field label (“Picture”)! This opens up new opportunities: for example, you could use this to create a stationary with a logo – which was another frequent request.

Enjoy!

Download: Printing – Theme
Unzip the file and double-click it: the two Themes will be installed automatically, regardless if Bento is running or not. They will go into the Neutrals folder in the Theme Chooser. If that folder doesn’t exist, it will be created.

Comments

18 Responses to “Printing Theme”

  1. Giuseppe Carbone on May 12th, 2009 9:29 pm

    Excellent! Your “Printing Theme” package loaded perfectly and does the trick — I hope to dig into your instructions from March 4 about customizing further (e.g., to change the font), but in the mean time, thanks for the instantly useful invisible theme.

  2. daikoma on May 23rd, 2009 9:31 am

    Thank you very much for the new Theme Pack. It’s very usefull :-) I made (again) a small review of it on mac-tv.de.

  3. Florian on May 23rd, 2009 2:10 pm

    Lieber Oliver,

    besten Dank für die netten Worte und Deine Besprechungen im Mac.tv Forum. Wie mein Name verrät, ich bin Österreicher. Ich lebe aber seit 20 Jahren in den USA.
    Ich hätte auch gerne ein deutsches Bento…

  4. Leeds Davis on January 21st, 2010 5:56 pm

    I’m a new user to Bento 3 (trying to get away from the AppleWorks database that worked so beautifully for me until MacOS 10.6.2). I’m trying to print my forms without the field names, and your “Invisible theme” was recommended. When I click on your download, a ZIP file is saved to my desktop; but opening it does not unzip anything to double click. What to do??? Many thanks….LD

  5. Florian on January 21st, 2010 6:21 pm

    Hi Leeds,
    when you unzip the file look for a file with the extension “.themePack” which will install into Bento when you double-click it.

  6. Leeds Davis on January 21st, 2010 6:32 pm

    OK….disregard the last query. The unzipped file wasn’t where I thought it would be. Got the “invisible’ theme on the desktop form; but it still prints the field labels even though they don’t show on the screen. Any ideas??? Thanks….LD

  7. Florian on January 21st, 2010 6:36 pm

    Yes, one:
    the background of the theme is not true white, so make sure you check “don’t print background” in the print options (print dialog box).

  8. Robert on February 12th, 2010 8:36 am

    Thx for helping us with printing issues. I am still trying to enlarge the printing font of your “Print” theme. When I open the .plist file, I don’t see anywhere to customize the font sizes. Am I just too think to see it? Your help is greatly appreciated!
    RLP

  9. Florian on February 12th, 2010 12:34 pm

    Robert,
    you might be looking at the wrong .plist file. You have to dig several layers deep to get inside the .bundle file (which is inside the .themepack file).
    Once you’re there, look for the “fieldFont” (for the five sizes).

  10. Robert on February 13th, 2010 4:16 am

    Florian,
    Thx, but still – I navigate Library>Application Support>Bento>Themes>Neutrals>.plsit and I get this:

    bundleName
    Neutrals

    I don’t see anything indicating “field font”. Hope you can clear this up.
    Thanks again! It’s not easy to get help here in Saudi Arabia!!!
    Robert

  11. Florian on February 13th, 2010 7:53 am

    Robert,
    that is the wrong .plist file. Don’t change that one.
    You have to go one level deeper – in the Neutrals folder: ctrl-click the name of the theme you want to change. Choose “show package content.”
    A new finder window opens. Click on “contents” then “resources.” There is the .plist file you want.
    Change the font size, save the .plist file. Then restart Bento.

  12. Robert on February 14th, 2010 9:40 am

    Florian,
    You’ve helped me get SO close…I trust Bento cannot print larger than 36pt, so I used a font that reads slightly bigger (Futura) so now the field data is acceptable, I just need to enlarge the “label” fonts and get seem to identify what they’re called. Is there a limit as to how large Bento will print them?

    Thx again!

  13. Florian on February 14th, 2010 11:19 am

    Robert,
    I haven’t tried to change the label font before, but it should be the one called labelFont (duh…). The size listed in the .plist file is probably the medium size.
    I’m not aware that Bento has a font size limitation for printing. So for both settings (labelFont and high point sizes) you just have to experiment.

    Tell me how it turns out!

  14. Robert on February 14th, 2010 9:03 pm

    I surrender. I changed every font size I could find and still no increase in label size. And I also seem to have maxed out the print size to 36 pt…even though I made it 60 pt in the .plist. But it suits my purposes for now…thanks again for the help. I’ll keep playing around once I have some time.

    Robert

  15. Florian on February 14th, 2010 9:07 pm

    Robert,
    I’ll play with it myself and will report back.

  16. Florian on February 14th, 2010 9:31 pm

    Robert,
    I found out three things: the 60 pt clearly works for me! Are you sure you changed the right parameter? The key is called “fieldFont_largest.” And to make totally sure you’re not missing the obvious step: back in Bento change the text size to “largest” in the Forms menu…

    I wasn’t able to change the field label font size. As it turns out, by “labelFont” they mean the labels inside the list fields (addresses, URLs,…).
    But since Bento 3 offers three label font sizes for the fields, the biggest one is actually pretty big. You are aware of this setting in the Forms menu, I assume.

    And again, as a reminder: you have to quit and restart Bento after each new change you make to the .plist file. And make sure it stays a plain text file.

  17. Florian on February 20th, 2010 10:11 am

    To anyone who might have followed our discussion, here’s the good result:
    Robert and I continued the discussion over email. I created a Bento template for him that replaces his pre-printed form from Word with all the data built in.

    The problem was that Bento does not have any page guides on its forms. When you try to print a form, Bento squeezes the data into whatever paper size and orientation you choose. So you have to play around until you get the desired results. We finally did, but it would be nice if Bento had a print setting with a WYSIWYG option where a 60 pt font actually prints at 60 pt!

  18. Grace Suarez on March 7th, 2010 7:22 pm

    Wow, thanks for the printing and invisible themes. Perfect for emailing pdf’s of my case summaries. I’m a big Bento user, and I seem to be creating a new form every day.

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