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Post by clivel on Oct 21, 2023 20:17:15 GMT
Was going through my latest edition of Linux Format (online edition) and Clive's excellent Album Easy is listed in the Hot Picks section. Oh that is great, thanks for sharing Alyn ( iswscwebmaster ), I will look for the hardcopy issue on my next visit to Chapters Clive
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rednaxela
Member
Posts: 177
What I collect: Germany in all its facets since 1871 (especially German Reich used including postal statinoneries, used), USSR, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Denmark, France. I design all album pages for my collection myself and partly make them available to the general public for use.
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Post by rednaxela on Oct 22, 2023 7:21:04 GMT
Was going through my latest edition of Linux Format (online edition) and Clive's excellent Album Easy is listed in the Hot Picks section. This is awesome for Clive and our hobby! Well done Clive. Linux is predestined for album design with AlbumEasy: You can permanently control the results on the PDF pages, because the Linux PDF reader (I do use Atril) immediately shows the generated changes of the TXT file. When working with Windows, the PDF reader has to be closed and then restarted every time a change is made to make it visible, which can sometimes be quite enervating. I myself work with Linux Mate on my main laptop, but I also have a laptop with Windows just in case (which I use less and less, however, since there is a Linux solution for almost all tasks; even older Windows programs can be used via WINE).
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 4, 2023 4:36:58 GMT
I'm a HUGE fan of Linux. I've got a laptop running ArcoLinux right now. Though I mostly use a Mac now, I use the Linux laptop on occasion.
I want to make pages using LaTeX. It's like a programming language for page layout. I want to see if I can pull something off with it.
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rednaxela
Member
Posts: 177
What I collect: Germany in all its facets since 1871 (especially German Reich used including postal statinoneries, used), USSR, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Denmark, France. I design all album pages for my collection myself and partly make them available to the general public for use.
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Post by rednaxela on Dec 14, 2023 8:59:06 GMT
Vince ( stanley64 ) gave me an insight into a very good publication by Gibbons on how to arrange a stamp collection. Thanks again for that. In fact, despite 30 years of creating my own album pages, I have found the solution to one of my problems: How can I integrate the numerous USSR postal stationery items into my albums in a reasonably space-saving way? The answer is: with overlapping. I tried this out straight away and would like to show you the result together with the AlbumEasy source text. Perhaps it will also be useful for other collectors. Overlapping is at least acceptable if the focus is primarily on the printed stamps. And of course the postal stationeries from the second row onwards should only be attached with photo corners on three sides... Here the example: And here the AlbumEasy code (the main parts are marked in red): ################################################################################ # AlbumEasy file: Muster Ganzsachen.txt # Generated: 08:31, Do. Dez. 14, 2023 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ # # Note: # All text following the # character is ignored by AlbumEasy, it is used to # demarcate comments placed in the file for the convenience of the user. # # All measurements are in millimetres except for font sizes which are in # points. # ################################################################################
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ # Setup page elements that are common to all pages in this album. # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (210.0 297.0) #Set the album page size to A4 ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINS (25.0 12.0 15.0 15.0) #left, right, top and bottom page margins ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINSE (12.0 25.0 15.0 15.0) #margins mirrored on even numbered pages ALBUM_PAGES_BORDER (0.1 0.0 0.0 1.0) #single thin line border around the page ALBUM_PAGES_SPACING (1.0 6.0) #set horizontal & vertical spacing for elements on a page
STAMP_INNER_BORDER (0.05 50.0) COLOUR_STAMP_INNER_BORDER (white)
STAMP_BOXES_SIZE_ADJUST(4.0) STAMP_HEADING_PADDING (-2.0)
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ # The first page of the album # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAGE_START PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (TB 14 "\n1985\n" 2)
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (TN 10 "Postal Stationeries" 2) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD_BLANK (2 70) STAMP_ADD (147.0 104.0 "" " " "" " ") PAGE_VSPACE (-52) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD (147.0 104.0 "" " " "" " ") STAMP_ADD_BLANK (2 70) PAGE_VSPACE (-52) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD_BLANK (2 70) STAMP_ADD (147.0 104.0 "" " " "" " ")
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 16:08:13 GMT
clivel I am trying to use the fonts PT Sans and PT Serif. They're installed by default by Apple and they're a .ttc file. Album Easy is not seeing them. When I click on the Font button, it sees other .ttc font files, so I am not sure why it can't see this one. I can send you the .ttc file if you want to take a look at it.
Also, any plans to support otf fonts?
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 17:27:33 GMT
Also need to know if there is a way to add 2 headers above a stamp, each with it's own style. I have one line with the stamp name and another line with the date of issue underneath it.
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Post by clivel on Dec 20, 2023 18:10:05 GMT
clivel I am trying to use the fonts PT Sans and PT Serif. They're installed by default by Apple and they're a .ttc file. Album Easy is not seeing them. When I click on the Font button, it sees other .ttc font files, so I am not sure why it can't see this one. I can send you the .ttc file if you want to take a look at it.
Also, any plans to support otf fonts?
Writing the code to handle TTF/TTC font files was a fairly complex exercise not helped by the confusing and contradictory specifications that I found online for the font file formats. So, in the end, I decided to take a few shortcuts resulting in AlbumEasy being able to work with the majority of TrueType font files, but unfortunately, not all.
Unfortunately, though, the majority of the font code was written some 10 years ago so I forget what all the issues were. However, one which I do recall (and I don't think that it applies to your PT fonts), is that the licence flag in some TrueType font files does not allow the font to be embedded into a document which is necessary for the PDF files generated by AE.
To check whether a font is compatible with AE, click on the configure button on the AE toolbar to display the configuration dialog box, select the Advanced tab, and then enable the "Display incompatible fonts ... " check box. After which, when you next select the font button, the font dialog will also include a list of incompatible fonts.
To try the PT fonts, I initially downloaded the PT Sans . ttf fonts from Google Fonts - PT Sans, and found that they work. However, checking on my virtual Mac, I, like you, discovered that the Mac PT . ttc fonts are incompatible. One solution would be to download these fonts from Google and save them in the AlbumEasy/fonts folder which should pick them up when you next start AlbumEasy.
OTF fonts are on my list of things to do, but, I don't think that I will be getting to these anytime soon, especially as I have found online convertors that convert OTF to TTF can be used instead.
Clive
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Post by clivel on Dec 20, 2023 18:21:55 GMT
Also need to know if there is a way to add 2 headers above a stamp, each with it's own style. I have one line with the stamp name and another line with the date of issue underneath it. Two (or more) headers, yes, by using a new line indictor ("\n" sequence) to split the text into lines. e.g STAMP_HEADING(TN 12 "Heading Text Line 1\nLine 2")
Different style, unfortunately not, however, the ability to do so is right on the top of my list of things to do for the next release of AE, which will hopefully be some time in the next few months.
Clive
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 18:23:44 GMT
clivel I am trying to use the fonts PT Sans and PT Serif. They're installed by default by Apple and they're a .ttc file. Album Easy is not seeing them. When I click on the Font button, it sees other .ttc font files, so I am not sure why it can't see this one. I can send you the .ttc file if you want to take a look at it.
Also, any plans to support otf fonts?
Writing the code to handle TTF/TTC font files was a fairly complex exercise not helped by the confusing and contradictory specifications that I found online for the font file formats. So, in the end, I decided to take a few shortcuts resulting in AlbumEasy being able to work with the majority of TrueType font files, but unfortunately, not all.
Unfortunately, though, the majority of the font code was written some 10 years ago so I forget what all the issues were. However, one which I do recall (and I don't think that it applies to your PT fonts), is that the licence flag in some TrueType font files does not allow the font to be embedded into a document which is necessary for the PDF files generated by AE.
To check whether a font is compatible with AE, click on the configure button on the AE toolbar to display the configuration dialog box, select the Advanced tab, and then enable the "Display incompatible fonts ... " check box. After which, when you next select the font button, the font dialog will also include a list of incompatible fonts.
To try the PT fonts, I initially downloaded the PT Sans . ttf fonts from Google Fonts - PT Sans, and found that they work. However, checking on my virtual Mac, I, like you, discovered that the Mac PT . ttc fonts are incompatible. One solution would be to download these fonts from Google and save them in the AlbumEasy/fonts folder which should pick them up when you next start AlbumEasy.
OTF fonts are on my list of things to do, but, I don't think that I will be getting to these anytime soon, especially as I have found online convertors that convert OTF to TTF can be used instead.
Clive
From what I read, OTF fonts are a bit of a mess. OTF fonts are containers that can contain TTFs or Adobe Type 1 fonts, or other Postscript font formats. Support for those may not be very easy.
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 18:25:30 GMT
Now that you've GPLed the code, I wonder if there are open source third-party libraries you can use to help with further development.
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Post by clivel on Dec 20, 2023 18:45:28 GMT
Now that you've GPLed the code, I wonder if there are open source third-party libraries you can use to help with further development. The actual PDF generation is done by a 3rd party open source library libharu. Unfortunately, there have not been any significant changes to this in years, which is one of the reasons for the some of the TrueType limitations. But, as libharu works very well for the most part, and given what an enormous task it would probably be to try and replace it, I find it easier to just patch the library when necessary. Clive
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rednaxela
Member
Posts: 177
What I collect: Germany in all its facets since 1871 (especially German Reich used including postal statinoneries, used), USSR, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Denmark, France. I design all album pages for my collection myself and partly make them available to the general public for use.
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Post by rednaxela on Dec 20, 2023 20:51:35 GMT
Now that you've GPLed the code, I wonder if there are open source third-party libraries you can use to help with further development. The actual PDF generation is done by a 3rd party open source library libharu. Unfortunately, there have not been any significant changes to this in years, which is one of the reasons for the some of the TrueType limitations. But, as libharu works very well for the most part, and given what an enormous task it would probably be to try and replace it, I find it easier to just patch the library when necessary. Clive I tried the following as an emergency solution: A second "invisible" box is placed "above" the stamp box with the heading in a certain style, the heading of this second box has the second style. This is certainly a tricky matter, because you always have to try out how much the second, invisible box has to be "moved up" (with PAGE_VSPAXE (-x)), which depends not only on the size of the visible box, but also on the font size of its heading. The "actual" box and the "virtual" box must each be defined in a separate row, otherwise they would be next to each other. By defining two columns, I can at least realise such a solution for two stamps "next to each other". If more columns could be defined (which at least I can't see), there would be correspondingly more. This is the result: The code looks like this: ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (215.9 279.4) #Set the album page size to US Letter (8.5 x 11) ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINS (25.0 12.0 15.0 15.0) #left, right, top and bottom page margins ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINSE (12.0 25.0 15.0 15.0 15.0) #margins mirrored on even numbered pages ALBUM_PAGES_BORDER (0.1 0.5 0.1 1.0) #triple line border around the page ALBUM_PAGES_SPACING (1.0 6.0) #set horizontal & vertical spacing for elements on a page PAGE_START PAGE_COLUMN_START (50 46.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 46.0) PAGE_VSPACE (4) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD (29.0 35.0 "" " " " " " " ") STAMP_HEADING(TB 14 "Line 1") PAGE_VSPACE (-51) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD (0.0 0.0 "" " " " " " " ") STAMP_HEADING(TI 12 "Line 2") PAGE_COLUMN_NEXT PAGE_VSPACE (4) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD (35.0 29.0 "" " " " " " " ") STAMP_HEADING(TB 14 "Line 1") PAGE_VSPACE (-45) ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) STAMP_ADD (0.0 0.0 "" " " " " " " ") STAMP_HEADING(TI 12 "Line 2") PAGE_COLUMN_STOP
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 21:07:19 GMT
OK, I'm tearing through the documentation, so I am not "That Guy," but I can't find a way to increase the line thickness of the stamp box. I want to make a double line box around the stamp. I have the inner border all set and I've changed the thickness of that. But I can't find a way to change the "outer border."
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rednaxela
Member
Posts: 177
What I collect: Germany in all its facets since 1871 (especially German Reich used including postal statinoneries, used), USSR, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Denmark, France. I design all album pages for my collection myself and partly make them available to the general public for use.
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Post by rednaxela on Dec 20, 2023 22:08:31 GMT
OK, I'm tearing through the documentation, so I am not "That Guy," but I can't find a way to increase the line thickness of the stamp box. I want to make a double line box around the stamp. I have the inner border all set and I've changed the thickness of that. But I can't find a way to change the "outer border." Here, too, is an emergency solution: Use the inner border with the desired thicknes as the factual outer border by entering a negative value for the difference to the original outer border (which now serves as the inner border). Example: STAMP_INNER_BORDER (-2.0 0.5) However, the general specifications for how much larger the boxes have to be than the stamps (for example 4 mm) should then also be adjusted accordingly.
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Andy Pastuszak
Member
Praying for my family and everyone in Ukraine.
Posts: 1,533
What I collect: United States, Ukraine, Ireland
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Post by Andy Pastuszak on Dec 20, 2023 22:18:36 GMT
OK, I'm tearing through the documentation, so I am not "That Guy," but I can't find a way to increase the line thickness of the stamp box. I want to make a double line box around the stamp. I have the inner border all set and I've changed the thickness of that. But I can't find a way to change the "outer border." Here, too, is an emergency solution: Use the inner border with the disired thicknes as the factual outer border by entering a negative value for the difference to the original outer border (which now serves as the inner border). Example: STAMP_INNER_BORDER (-2.0 0.5) However, the general specifications for how much larger the boxes have to be than the stamps (for example 4 mm) should then also be adjusted accordingly. That still leaves one box thicker than the other. I want both the inner and outer box the same thickness.
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Post by clivel on Dec 21, 2023 0:26:27 GMT
OK, I'm tearing through the documentation, so I am not "That Guy," but I can't find a way to increase the line thickness of the stamp box. I want to make a double line box around the stamp. I have the inner border all set and I've changed the thickness of that. But I can't find a way to change the "outer border."
The thickness of the stamp box borders are set as a parameter to the ROW_START commands e.g ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0) #start a row of stamps with 0.1mm thick box borders.
The thickness of the inner border is set by the STAMP_INNER_BORDER command, the first parameter is the padding between the inner and outer borders, the second is the thickness of the inner border e.g STAMP_INNER_BORDER(1.5 0.1)
Hopefully this is what you are looking for.
Clive
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