Software that makes placemats

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jdaw1
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

So there are two schools of thought about how to arrange glasses on the page: either prioritise set-up, with youngest wines furthest away; or prioritise drinking, with oldest wines furthest away. Neither preference is unreasonable.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by Glenn E. »

jdaw1 wrote:
Glenn E. wrote:Which means that I developed my habit organically on my own, as I was introduced to placemats via jdaw1's preference and could not have been indoctrinated by observing placemats produced by Roy. It remains possible that I was indoctrinated by G-man or SushiNorth, but I find that difficult to believe based on timing.
The first version of the /BottomToTop feature was added to the code on 19th October 2008, shortly after making for RAH the placemats used on 18th October 2008. (And my oh my, that was a tip-top event.) Also, I vaguely recall a conversation with Roy at this time about this desideratum. So RAH was the cause of that piece of functionality.

Which might or might not help ascertain the origin of GEE’s preference.
Interesting. I was not aware of that feature of the software back then - when I made placemats in the style that I prefer, I would manually order the Ports in the circle arrays so that they would show up as I wanted them on the placemat. It took trial and error to do, because I didn't yet understand the software and so often couldn't figure out ahead of time how many rows of glasses there would be, or which rows would be the longer ones if there were varying row lengths.

It wasn't until last year at about this time that I knew of the row ordering feature. (Relevant discussion starts on page 20 of this thread. Roughly post 490. I don't actually chime in on the subject until page 21, post 517.)
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by djewesbury »

jdaw1 wrote:Neither preference is unreasonable.
I didn't expect to find woolly, relativistic liberalism on the Port Forum!
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by Glenn E. »

jdaw1 wrote:So there are two schools of thought about how to arrange glasses on the page: either prioritise set-up, with youngest wines furthest away; or prioritise drinking, with oldest wines furthest away. Neither preference is unreasonable.
Or you can prioritize both at once if you prefer to drink the oldest wines first from the front of the placemat. :wink:

Luckily the software allows for all combinations. Except for Daniel's desire for each taster at a tasting to have their own custom ordering. :mrgreen:
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by PhilW »

Glenn E. wrote:Luckily the software allows for all combinations. Except for Daniel's desire for each taster at a tasting to have their own custom ordering. :mrgreen:
Thank goodness - you can imagine how well that might work out during the pre-pouring.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by djewesbury »

PhilW wrote:
Glenn E. wrote:Luckily the software allows for all combinations. Except for Daniel's desire for each taster at a tasting to have their own custom ordering. :mrgreen:
Thank goodness - you can imagine how well that might work out during the pre-pouring.
That all depends on how many pre-pre-pouring quality control samples the pre-pourers have had.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

Glenn E. wrote:Or you can prioritize both at once if you prefer to drink the oldest wines first from the front of the placemat. :wink:
I meant in the sense that AHB elaborated.
AHB wrote:But when I follow the order in which the glasses are placed, I prefer to work from the top left to top right and then down the page. I find this tends to minimise my chances of spilling, knocking over or trying to return glasses to spaces which are occupied. I am at my most sober when trying to get glasses from furthest away and at my least sober when dealing with the glasses that are closest to me.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

Glenn E. wrote:Relevant discussion starts on page 20 of this thread. Roughly post 490.
In [url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=175&start=490]post 490 of the Software thread[/url] jdaw1 wrote:In setting up the recent Taylor vertical, AHB was pouring and DRT and I were distributing. Naturally enough, the young vintages were pre-poured first, and soon enough the front rows were filled with glasses. Then the older glasses had to be lifted awkwardly behind the already-full first row. It was fiddly.

This problem could be solved by reversing the order of rows of on the sheet. AHB remarked that having the older vintages nearer would help his smelling of them.

There is already a parameter, very rarely changed, PackingDirectionVertical, which can take values /TopToBottom or /BottomToTop. So the change isn’t tricky.

However, doing this by default would rather conflict with my sense of natural order. Vintage lists start old, and have the new at the end, allowing the list to be extended with the passage of time. My sense of old-to-new / top-to-bottom natural order is quite strong is that just me?
Though the parametrisation has changed, my preference hasn’t.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by Glenn E. »

jdaw1 wrote:Though the parametrisation has changed, my preference hasn’t.
I didn't mean to imply that it had. I mentioned that post as reference to when I first learned about this capability within the software. Prior to seeing that post, I manually arranged the bottles within the circle arrays, etc, so that they would display in the order I desired.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by flash_uk »

Great fun at the 60 vs 63 tasting, and a at the time I thought there were a few learnings for the software. On reflection, maybe it is just a case of creating a few more scoring sheets. The format was tasting of 60 and 63 vintages side by side from various shippers. The only known was that pairs were from the same shipper. We scored and guessed a number of things:
  • pairs compared, with 6 points distributed between the two, 6.0 5.1 4.2 or whatever;
  • guess the year, where the first of each pair was guessed as either 60 or 63;
  • guess the shipper;
  • WOTN with 6 points available to be distributed at will.
We faffed about a little to begin with, being unsure what to guess when, and what to reveal when. We settled on scoring each pair as we went, then at the end we declared our guesses on year and shipper, and scores for WTON. Once the shipper and year was revealed for all the bottles, the pair scores were summed by year to give a view on which year was preferred.

Tom and Rob can comment better, but I suspect that one additional scoring sheet would have been useful.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

All of that can be done by the software, but only if I think of doing it or somebody else asks. Be that somebody!
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Re: Software that makes placemats

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[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=44173#p44173]Here[/url], on Wed 10 Aug 2011, jdaw1 wrote:
RAYC wrote:- The sheet worked well, and totalling points was not an arduous task. I had slight difficulty when drunk with recording votes in the correct columns...though this is not a criticism of the sheet itself!
It wasn’t meant that way, but it is a criticism. A good user interface, which applies as much to paper as to electronic media, can be used by a drunk. Please ponder how it could be bettered. For instance, would it have helped if every fourth vertical line were thicker? Would it be worth repeating the names at the bottom of the page?
I was reminded of this by my mistake on Tuesday (picture showing THRA’s vote in EDN’s column, then scribbled out), and it has now been fixed: if there are ≥6 names then every third vertical line is thicker. An example can be seen in the draft placemats for the 2011 horizontal on Sunday 23rd April 2051:
Image

(RAYC’s original comment was about the tasting of Port from the Nineteen Nineties held on Monday 8th August 2011.)
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=75076#p75076]Here[/url] jdaw1 wrote:DB78 — though on the placemats, erroneously, as “D78” …

The placemat error has resulted in a new feature to the code, GlassesAnnotations.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=75398#p75398]Here[/url] jdaw1 wrote:Wednesday 14th May 2014, requested at short notice by Oscar Quevedo (placemats).



• The longest name was so long that a problem was revealed, though rather too late to be resolved here. Detail of page 97:
Image
To be fixed, at least eventually. Pro tem, use names shorter than this.

Edit: even though fixed too late for these placemats, it has been fixed (software version ≥ 22:00 Wednesday 14th May 2014): Names that would be too big are now automatically resized.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

The Manual wrote:FlightSeparationLines is fiddly, and if one wine is added or taken away, will need to be completely reworked. Hence it is recommended that division into flights be saved until late in the planning.
In illustration of which, behold. We start with the planning for the 1997 Horizontal on Monday 16th June 2014, as of the morning of Friday 23rd May.
Image

Then an extra circle was added, necessitating a substantial re-arrangement. Changing what needed to be changed except FlightSeparationLines made a mess.
Image
Ick!

This was then fixed.
Image

Subsequently there were further changes.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=76626#p76626]Here[/url], re the [url=http://www.jdawiseman.com/2014/20140603_1958_OJMQ.pdf]placemats for the 1958 horizontal[/url], PhilW wrote:A minor note, the names at the bottom of each of the glasses pages seem to be being impinged on slightly by something; see the B in AHB for example, or the top of IDJ; as if some white space is *just* over-drawing the top of the name.
Strange. There is no white painted near there, neither in front nor behind. Nor is that text subject to an aggressive clipping box (my clipping boxes always have a little slack in them, and this is clipped to the whole page).

And I don’t see the problem.

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Re: Software that makes placemats

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[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=57366#p57366]Here[/url] PhilW wrote:
jdaw1 wrote:‟Pretentious? Qui, moi?” was not a criticism. But, for my taste, ‟/Lintel” is currently winning. Maybe it should be /PostsAndLintel, but brevity is desired.
Alternative: /Goalposts
The variant /Architrave, or /PostsAndArchitrave, has been suggested. I think it not worth the bother of the change.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

Flash has requested some extra functionality, that I propose to implement as flags for the /SquareGrid variant in PermittedPackingStyles.

The proposal is to add two optional flags to /SquareGrid:
/VerticalAlignment, with value being one of /Top, /Bottom /Middle (the default) and /Justify.
/HorizontalAlignment, with value being one of /Left, /Right, /Centre, and /Justify (but which should be the default?).

Does anybody else care?

Edited to fix error.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by djewesbury »

Yes. Do it. 10,000 people behind me on the Brandenburg Gate waving Germany shirts agree (I've made this bit up, I'm not there and they're not either. It's just scene-setting.)
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by flash_uk »

jdaw1 wrote:The proposal is to add two optional flags to /SquareGrid:
/VerticalAlignment, with value being one of /Top, /Bottom /Middle (the default) and /Justify.
/HorizontalAlignment, with value being one of /Left, /Right, /Centre, and /Justify (but which should be the default?).
Thx for making this enhancement. I'd make Middle and Centre the default as that will look OK in general, and anything different can then be specified.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

Code and manual updated. The following example includes the last line of the explanatory comments.

Code: Select all

% /SquareGrid only, /HorizontalAlignment is followed by one of /Left /Right /Centre /Justify; and /VerticalAlignment by one of /Top /Bottom /Middle /Justify.
/PermittedPackingStyles [
	[ /SquareGrid  /HorizontalAlignment /Justify  /VerticalAlignment /Top ]
] def  % /PermittedPackingStyles
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=54016#p54016]Here[/url], on Thu 27 Dec 2012, jdaw1 wrote:I’m considering adding two more parameters:
CopyrightOfPlacematsText
CopyrightOfPlacematsLink
with default values
(This work by Julian D. A. Wiseman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence.)
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- ... deed.en_GB) (here clickable)

Are there any objections, particularly to the choice of default values? (And if anybody knows how to use pdfmark to add a machine-readable CC licence to a PDF, please reveal. [Edit: question asked])
FYI, the default licence embedded in the placemat software has been changed, from Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported to Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. That’s a version update, 3.0→4.0, and also removal of the ‘NonCommercial’. If you passionately object, say so, giving reasons.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by jdaw1 »

Do any programmers know whether there would be sufficient advantages in moving my code to SourceForge.net? My prior is ‘no’, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by PhilW »

jdaw1 wrote:Do any programmers know whether there would be sufficient advantages in moving my code to SourceForge.net? My prior is ‘no’, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.
I can't see a significant advantage. The primary benefits of using Sourceforge are to be able to share your code in an online public repository, facilitating multi-user development and version control. Given that your code is a single file, you already have a web server where you make the file public, and you probably want to maintain control of changes, this would seem to offer minimal benefit at this time.
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Re: Software that makes placemats

Post by Glenn E. »

PhilW wrote:
jdaw1 wrote:Do any programmers know whether there would be sufficient advantages in moving my code to SourceForge.net? My prior is ‘no’, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.
I can't see a significant advantage. The primary benefits of using Sourceforge are to be able to share your code in an online public repository, facilitating multi-user development and version control. Given that your code is a single file, you already have a web server where you make the file public, and you probably want to maintain control of changes, this would seem to offer minimal benefit at this time.
+1
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