Post · bonfire.mavnn.eu

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currently trying to work out how to take a few words of text and make them fill a given space edge to edge by
1. breaking up the text into individual lines
2. altering the font size of the individual lines
3. fiddling the letter-spacing/tracking of each line
and then render to an image. Python GI CairoPango? (I can do this one, but it's not well documented) HTML+JS? (unclear how to get the text metrics unless I run it in a browser, then saving is fiddly.) Something else?

a card which has

SO FRESH (large blue text)
AND SO CLEAN (smaller blue text)
OUTKAST (large pink text)

all thhree lines are the same width. (Not the same height, obviously.) — a card which has SO FRESH (large blue text) AND SO CLEAN (smaller blue text) OUTKAST (large pink text) all thhree lines are the same width. (Not the same height, obviously.)

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · 4 weeks ago

success! hooray for python and cairopango, I say. A fun game for us at Christmas. Nicely done (and quick, although not all that cheap) from https://www.personalisedplayingcards.com

me holding a fanned deck of cards, where each of the cards shows a face naming a song title (in blue) and an artist (in pink). one of the cards shows the reverse, which reads 100 (singer emoji) 10 (clock emoji)

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · 4 hours ago

Pleased to report that the game with these cards was eminently successful to play during Christmas dinner cooking!

Peter Oliver

@mavit@bergamot.social replied · last month

@sil I did something along these lines once with Cairo/Pango (varying the font size and the number of lines to fill the space vertically, rather than horizontally as you're doing, but still). This was so long ago that I don't think GI was a thing yet, mind.

Andy Wootton

@woo@fosstodon.org replied · last month

@sil That sounds like a TeX issue. Knuth knows!

John Colagioia

@jcolag@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil When I did something like this for my blog (Codeberg preview things before Forgejo changed the OpenGraph preview image to match GitHub), I generated an SVG for each line of text, with the viewbox set to the (still estimated, though) width of the line. Then show each line-image at the same width and they scale as expected.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@jcolag the problem is that it's not that regular, because i need the heights to all add up to the correct thing as well 😊 but what you did is the sort of idea I am imagining, indeed!

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

obviously step 2 is then "turn this into an actual physical deck of 100 cards each of which have different words on", which I think is best done with a custom card printing service; doing this at home would mean a right faff printing on card and cutting them out, doing it double sided, etc. https://www.printerstudio.co.uk seem the best I can find so far (can do 100 cards not 52, in the UK, less than £30, can order one single pack) but I am open to suggestions here.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

extremely annoyed that I have my deck of cards designed, and I've gone through the whole deck creation process with printerstudio, and the price is OK (a little more than I wanted to pay at £40, but what the hell) but shipping takes a month and costs £11.50! it's one deck of cards, you thieves! gonna look around for alternatives. Irritated.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

Did it with personalisedplayingcards.com instead (who appear to be Ivory under the covers, although Ivory want you to do a run of 50 packs, not a one-off). Roughly the same price (£40), I had to do the 108 cards as two separate packs, and it was annoying to set up, but they ship next week for nothing (and 24h delivery was a fiver).

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

Companies: if you take money off a price so you can advertise it as being lower than the competition, but then put that same money back on shipping costs so you end up charging outrageous amounts to ship something tiny, then I will avoid using you out of sheer spite. Be told.

rythie

@rythie@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil see also: making your bottled drinks more expensive so the meal deal looks cheap.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@rythie ooh! I didn't even know about that one. That's rubbish

Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊

@brucelawson@social.vivaldi.net replied · last month

@sil that'll be illegal soon in the marxist EU. (Digital Fairness Act)

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@brucelawson drop shippers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains

Rodney

@dohbuheee@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil lol

Adam Cafolla

@adaliabooks@ohai.social replied · last month

@sil

Not sure if they do cards or something like that but I always used to use https://www.instantprint.co.uk/ for business stationery.
Cheaper than Vistaprint and no ridiculous delivery charges.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@adaliabooks I don't think they do anything like I want, I'm afraid.

Matt Machell

@realms@dice.camp replied · last month

@sil drivethru do some on demand card printing. https://www.drivethrucards.com/en/

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@realms they do but that’s oriented around “you want to sell this”, isn’t it? This is a one-off job. Maybe I’m wrong though?

Matt Machell

@realms@dice.camp replied · last month

@sil it’s been a while, but I think you can do a draft and then sample run. Might need a publisher account though. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/ Might be an option too?

Russell Phillips

@rpbook@gts.phillipsuk.org replied · last month

@sil we had some custom cards printed a while ago by https://www.makeplayingcards.com/

We were very happy with price and quality.

Michael Carducci

@Michaelcarducci@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil I have a lot of opinions (and experiences) with custom card production. Happy to chat!

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@Michaelcarducci ooh, goodness yes I can imagine! I think the actual card production on this one should be pretty simple, I'm basically looking for cheapness to get a set for me and the family to play at christmas; it's generating all the card images by programmatically fiddling all the text that will be awkward. But I would love to hear any thoughts you have!

Michael Carducci

@Michaelcarducci@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil have you considered turning the text into SVG? You could break the text into chunks, position them on the canvas you can scale linearly so each chunk is the same width.

Seems way easier than manually typesetting each card.

For card production, most companies use the wrong paper stock (should be three layers) and a finish (limits friction). Makeplayingcards.com is where I go to print cards these days. I usually opt for the higher quality stock and finish.

Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@Michaelcarducci I have considered that! the issue is: how do I, from a script that generates an SVG, know what font size to set? I don't know how to calculate the text metrics for an SVG without being in a browser, at which point I can have the browser scale text until it fits but then I have to manually save the calculated values out. Doable, but fiddly, especially since I need to generate 100 separate images. I can do it in browser, but I was trying to avoid it :)

Michael Carducci

@Michaelcarducci@mastodon.social replied · last month

@sil doing this in a browser would either be a weird hack or a weird flex.

I did something like this an embarrassingly long time ago.

Basically I defined some layout patterns (e.g. stacked large font, smaller font, large font) and defined optimal lengths for each row.

Each of these was a class that had a common interface. It had a max character length, a TryParse(string str, out ITextShape) method as well as a factory that would return a random, valid concrete.
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Stuart Langridge

@sil@mastodon.social replied · last month

@Michaelcarducci second tip for MPC, as well! This is a good sign. I've been looking at printerstudio here in the UK, who I think might be related, or possibly just design thieves ;-)
https://mastodon.social/@sil/115607133466510836

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