@jctay thank you, that was a good find, and your numbers made it easy to follow. Yes, there is a clear pattern, and it is all i1Profiler's own layout rule:
- Columns: i1Profiler puts as many patches across as the paper width allows. It needs 31 mm of margin plus the patches, so with 8.5 mm patches 12 columns need 133.0 mm and 13 columns need 141.5 mm (31 + 13 x 8.5). That is exactly your 141.4 / 141.5 switch. It also cuts anything you type down to 0.1 mm, so 141.49 still counts as 141.4.
- Rows and pages: the paper height must hold 35 mm plus the rows, rounded up to a whole millimetre: 171 mm for 16 rows, 163 mm for 15 rows. That is your 170.9 / 171.0 switch, and it is why rounding to whole numbers shows the pattern. The "Size: 13.3 x 17.1 cm" in the chart header is exactly that smallest page.
- Rows 9 to 16 are not missing: when the rows do not fit, i1Profiler uses as few pages as it can and shares the rows out evenly, so 16 rows become 8 + 8. Your screenshot says "Page 1 of 2", and rows 9 to 16 are on page 2. A slightly smaller page that would hold 10 rows still gives 8 + 8.
Does this affect ChromIQ's charts? No. ChromIQ never sets the paper width on one of these switch points. For your chart the .txf asks for 137.25 mm, which is in the middle between 133.0 (12 columns) and 141.5 (13 columns), so there are more than 4 mm of room either way. The paper height is 210 mm, far more than the 171 mm needed. Your .txf files are not outdated: ChromIQ 4.3.30 writes exactly the same settings for your chart. We also checked about 28,000 other chart sizes, and none ends up close enough to a switch point for rounding to change the column count.
If the paper size is changed in i1Profiler and it ends up with 13 columns, the import of that measurement is refused with a message about the grid, so a wrong grid cannot slip into a profile. Spreading the same 12 columns over two pages is fine and is accepted.
One correction to an earlier post of mine: I wrote that i1Profiler chooses the rows first. It is really the other way round: it takes as many columns as the paper width allows, then the rows it needs, and then evens out the columns. For 24 patches on 2 rows that still gives 12 columns, so the example stays true.
Your test plan
Yes, that is the test, thank you for writing it out so carefully. Just two small changes, and a little background.
Two small changes
- Please export the .txf after you have generated the chart with the spacers you will print (Black & White or Coloured), from that same chart. Then the file and the printed sheet are sure to belong together. Changing the spacers after the export changes the layout of the sheet, and the strips could end up different from what the .txf describes.
- Configuration 1 (4 × 6 kept as it is) is the check that everything works. The interesting ones are 2 and 3, and there the most useful thing is not the saved file but what i1Profiler does at the moment you scan: when it shows rows of 5 (or 12) and you scan one printed strip of 6, does it accept the scan, refuse it, or ask you to scan again? A screenshot or the exact wording of any message would help a lot.
Why this is different from your earlier files
Your earlier files were measured
once, on the right grid, and only saved again afterwards under other page layouts. i1Profiler then moved the finished readings to the new pages correctly, so they were all fine. This time the grid is wrong
while you measure, so i1Profiler has to decide where the scanned patches go. That is the one case ChromIQ's grid check is meant for, and the one we cannot test ourselves without a printer and an instrument.
About the complete file
You were clear, and I understand: i1Profiler only saves an .mxf when all 24 patches have a reading. That is exactly what worries us. If i1Profiler accepts a strip of 6 into a row of 5, the file can still end up with 24 readings, complete and saveable, but with some readings on the wrong patches. So:
- If i1Profiler refuses the scans in configurations 2 and 3, please tell us, that alone answers the question, and the risk is much smaller than we assumed.
- If it accepts them and you can save all 24, please send us those .mxf files. We can then compare the readings with your 4 × 6 file and see straight away whether any reading sits on the wrong patch.
Thanks again for your time!
