Software that makes placemats
Re: Software that makes placemats
Another feature is planned, about which readers might have opinions and ideas for improvements.
Too often there is faffing when ordering food, and again when it comes and people can’t remember what they ordered. So turn to the penultimate page of the example PDF output, on which votes for WOTN can be recorded. There is a column for each person, and a row for each wine.
Perhaps something similar could be done with food? One column for each person, one row per possible nosh. Rows could be ‘grouped’, the line between courses being heavier. For tastings at The Crusting Pipe the possibilities could be pre-entered (somebody please email me a picture of the menu); alternatively on the day the food titles could be hand-written in blank cells. The paper would circulate round the table, people entering into appropriate cells the likes of ‟✠“” or ‟Bleu”. The completed paper could be handed to the waiter” .
Thoughts? Improvements? Indifference? Not worth it?
” I recognise that more interaction with some waitresses might be desired. As always, the paperwork is intended to be an optional aid, not a straitjacket.
Too often there is faffing when ordering food, and again when it comes and people can’t remember what they ordered. So turn to the penultimate page of the example PDF output, on which votes for WOTN can be recorded. There is a column for each person, and a row for each wine.
Perhaps something similar could be done with food? One column for each person, one row per possible nosh. Rows could be ‘grouped’, the line between courses being heavier. For tastings at The Crusting Pipe the possibilities could be pre-entered (somebody please email me a picture of the menu); alternatively on the day the food titles could be hand-written in blank cells. The paper would circulate round the table, people entering into appropriate cells the likes of ‟✠“” or ‟Bleu”. The completed paper could be handed to the waiter” .
Thoughts? Improvements? Indifference? Not worth it?
” I recognise that more interaction with some waitresses might be desired. As always, the paperwork is intended to be an optional aid, not a straitjacket.
Re: Software that makes placemats
You have too much time on your hands! You need a job.
It is however an idea that appeals to my nature. A simpler option could simply be a small footer on each persons tasting note sheet to record "starter", "main" and "dessert".
It is however an idea that appeals to my nature. A simpler option could simply be a small footer on each persons tasting note sheet to record "starter", "main" and "dessert".
Ben
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Vintage 1970 and now proud owner of my first ever 'half-century'!
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Vintage 1970 and now proud owner of my first ever 'half-century'!
Re: Software that makes placemats
Actually, it won’t take that much time to code.
The footer solution works only if people are choosing food several days in advance. It also fails to centralise things: when food arrives people need to look at their own footers, and getting attention is hard. Whereas a separate piece of paper can be held by an alert somebody who can then direct food to people.
The footer solution works only if people are choosing food several days in advance. It also fails to centralise things: when food arrives people need to look at their own footers, and getting attention is hard. Whereas a separate piece of paper can be held by an alert somebody who can then direct food to people.
Re: Software that makes placemats
I approve of this suggestion - and with the small print.
"The first duty of Port is to be red"
Ernest H. Cockburn
Ernest H. Cockburn
Re: Software that makes placemats
I have never really found this to be a problem, so will be perfectly happy with whatever concensus is obtained by the masses.
Glenn Elliott
Re: Software that makes placemats
Reminder for this week’s tasting at TCP:
jdaw1 wrote:(somebody please email me a picture of the menu)
- Alex Bridgeman
- Graham’s 1948
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Re: Software that makes placemats
I will try and remember to take a photo of the Crusting Pipe's menu when we are next there.
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
Re: Software that makes placemats
Thank you for volunteering to try to remember.
- Alex Bridgeman
- Graham’s 1948
- Posts: 14916
- Joined: 13:41 Mon 25 Jun 2007
- Location: Berkshire, UK
Re: Software that makes placemats
No, I didn't try and remember to remember and do that.
I said that I would try, and remember, to take a photograph of the menu but got lazy with my commas. For which, of course, I apologise to any I may have offended.
I said that I would try, and remember, to take a photograph of the menu but got lazy with my commas. For which, of course, I apologise to any I may have offended.
Last edited by Alex Bridgeman on 20:12 Wed 08 Sep 2010, edited 1 time in total.
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
Re: Software that makes placemats
A first draft comments welcomed. (To see unscaled right-click > View Image.)
Re: Software that makes placemats
Truely marvelous. I am most impressed by your choice of desert.
"The first duty of Port is to be red"
Ernest H. Cockburn
Ernest H. Cockburn
Re: Software that makes placemats
If somebody wants to share, we can share. If nobody wants to share, I’ll share with myself: half each.
Re: Software that makes placemats
As you witnessed first hand last weekend, the same principle can be applied to "individual" steak and kidney pies.jdaw1 wrote:If somebody wants to share, we can share. If nobody wants to share, I’ll share with myself: half each.
"The first duty of Port is to be red"
Ernest H. Cockburn
Ernest H. Cockburn
Re: Software that makes placemats
For those not in the know, a vendor local to DRT does fantastic S&K pies, of a size best described as ‘generous’.
Re: Software that makes placemats
Done: uploaded.
Re: Software that makes placemats
A trend has been established recently that made me think of a suggested improvement to the software. By "trend" I mean something that has ocurred on at least 5 consecutive occassions.
It would perhaps be useful if all placemets designed for use at the Crusting Pipe would automatically generate a bonus space for the inevitable late addition of a Sandeman 1982?
It would perhaps be useful if all placemets designed for use at the Crusting Pipe would automatically generate a bonus space for the inevitable late addition of a Sandeman 1982?
"The first duty of Port is to be red"
Ernest H. Cockburn
Ernest H. Cockburn
Re: Software that makes placemats
”ƒThe manual wrote:In some multi-page tastings, for each page all the wines have something in common. A typical example is a multi-horizontal, in which wines from several houses are tasted from two or few vintages. As everything on a page has a common feature, perhaps this common feature should be marked, faintly, as in the two-session four-page example
Re: Software that makes placemats
At The Bell, for the Christmas tasting on 16 December 2010, for the first time, glass stickers were used rather than placemats. At the Bell glasses and space is tight, there just not being space for each person to use three pages of A4 of table.
The following quotations all come from the review thread.
It would be relative easy to add boolean flags that produce one sticker per glass per person, with some number of extra blank people, and that the Names loop be outermost. This would put all of each person’s stickers on the same page, except those who crossed a page boundary. Extra boolean controls could prohibit crossing page boundaries. But this could still be difficult to cut, as roughly illustrated in the following text diagram, in which the people are A, B, C, etc.(If boundary-crossing is prohibited pages would look like the left of these, with the last row empty.)
The cutting would have awkward 90° turns. Better suggestions welcomed.
The following quotations all come from the review thread.
jdaw1 wrote:This was the first placemat-free tasting, with glasses being identified with stickers. Feedback welcomed.
uncle tom wrote:Stickers for glasses works really well, except that we need one sheet of stickers person (or per two people) as we were constantly passing the sheets around and trying to find our respective labels - at one point [somebody] put one of his on his forehead so he could find it later!
jdaw1 wrote:Problems:
- At the time the PDF is made, it isn’t yet known who will be sitting next to whom.
- One sheet has 65 stickers, so one sheet per person would waste two-thirds to three-quarters of each sheet.
WS1 wrote:Indeed one sheet per person would be too much waste; but would it be possible to slot the stickers of two or three people on equal sections onto one sheet (each person has ~20 stickers)? They could be after printing cut into the portions of the individual person.
The glass stickers were also rather hackerish to produce, so some improvement to the code is required.JacobH wrote:The stickers also worked extremely well; thanks Julian. As Wolfgang suggested, the only improvement would be to have each person’s stickers as a block so they could be cut up and distributed before the tasting starts. Also, for blind tastings it might be nice if the number took up only half the sticker so that we can write the name of the wine in when revealed.
It would be relative easy to add boolean flags that produce one sticker per glass per person, with some number of extra blank people, and that the Names loop be outermost. This would put all of each person’s stickers on the same page, except those who crossed a page boundary. Extra boolean controls could prohibit crossing page boundaries. But this could still be difficult to cut, as roughly illustrated in the following text diagram, in which the people are A, B, C, etc.
Code: Select all
AAAAA FFFFF
AAAAA FFGGG
AABBB GGGGG
BBBBB GGGGH
BBBBC HHHHH
CCCCC HHHHH
CCCCC HIIII
CDDDD IIIII
DDDDD IIIJJ
DDDEE JJJJJ
EEEEE JJJJJ
EEEEE KKKKK
FFFFF KKKKK
The cutting would have awkward 90° turns. Better suggestions welcomed.
Re: Software that makes placemats
My Niepoort 1942 had Woolfgangs' sticker on it but I do not recall this having any adverse effect on the contents of my glass
Last edited by Deleted_User_1 on 12:49 Sun 19 Dec 2010, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Software that makes placemats
Would your cool have survived Wolfgang drinking your Ni42? (You’ll be pleased to know that your post made it to Apostrophe crimes.)Cookie wrote:My Niepoort 1942 had Woolfgangs sticker on it but I do not recall this having any adverse effect on the contents of my glass
Back to the subject. Would it suffice to have a boolean compelling each person’s stickers to start on a new line? That strikes a balance between simplicity of cutting and not wasting too many stickers.
Code: Select all
AAAAA EEEEE
AAAAA EE
AA FFFFF
BBBBB FFFFF
BBBBB FF
BB GGGGG
CCCCC GGGGG
CCCCC GG
CC HHHHH
DDDDD HHHHH
DDDDD HH
DD IIIII
EEEEE IIIII
- JacobH
- Quinta do Vesuvio 1994
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Re: Software that makes placemats
Does Postscript have a modulo operand? If so a slight optimisation would be to test to see whether the stickers should be arranged horizontally or vertically by calculating the number of wasted stickers left. For example, consider 4 people (A-D), tasting 5 wines, with a 5 by 4 set of stickers:jdaw1 wrote:Back to the subject. Would it suffice to have a boolean compelling each person’s stickers to start on a new line? That strikes a balance between simplicity of cutting and not wasting too many stickers.
Code: Select all
Hoz. Vert.
AAAA ABCD
A... ABCD
BBBB ABCD
B... ABCD
.... ABCD
Code: Select all
1cut 2cuts
AAAA ACEG
A... ACEG
BBBB ACEG
B... ACEG
CCCC ACEG
C... BDFH
DDDD BDFH
D... BDFH
EEEE BDFH
E... BDFH
Re: Software that makes placemats
Yes, mod, though even if it didn’t one could be written as something like /Mod {2 dict begin /n exch def /m exch def {m 0 ge {m n lt {m exit} if /m m n sub def} {/m m n add def} ifelse} loop end} def.JacobH wrote:Does Postscript have a modulo operand?
You’re right about it being possible to find tighter fittings, still with complete cuts, but fewer cut or fewer wasted labels. However, my immediate reaction is that the problem of minimising could be a form of Knapsack problem. Also, before veering off to a completely general case, with the parameters actually likely to be used, is this really useful? With the 5×13 labels, and quite a few glasses per person, wastage will not be much worse than lightly sub-optimal. I’m reluctant to rearrange and rewrite code for a more general case that will be encountered rarely, and with little gain to the simple case.
Is that unreasonable?
- JacobH
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Re: Software that makes placemats
I suppose the simplest way of dealing with it is to have one option to choose whether force a line-break after each person's stickers or not, and another to choose whether to arrange the labels horizontally or vertically. That is especially true since the optimisation is perhaps a bit more subtle than I had first thought: the aim is to have the remaining labels in the largest block so they are most likely to be reusable. For example:jdaw1 wrote:You’re right about it being possible to find tighter fittings, still with complete cuts, but fewer cut or fewer wasted labels. However, my immediate reaction is that the problem of minimising could be a form of Knapsack problem. Also, before veering off to a completely general case, with the parameters actually likely to be used, is this really useful? With the 5×13 labels, and quite a few glasses per person, wastage will not be much worse than lightly sub-optimal. I’m reluctant to rearrange and rewrite code for a more general case that will be encountered rarely, and with little gain to the simple case.
Code: Select all
xxx
x..
xxx
x..
xxx
x..
...
is less preferable to:
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
...
...
...
Re: Software that makes placemats
I was hoping to avoid the extra coding of allowing either order of laying out. But you’re basically right though the code will directly compute wastage and go from there.
- JacobH
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Re: Software that makes placemats
I understand the theory, but the last time I printed a very large set of placemats, it did take a disproportional amount of time. I think the problem was because of the density of complex vector patterns in the file which are inexpensive in terms of instructions--hence the small file size--but expensive in terms of rendering. I think when the file is unpacked into the printing stream the amount of data exponentially increased to such an extent that it choked the printer (100s of megabytes). Looking around this seems to be a general issue with PDFs (particularly with patterns), although apparently when printed on a printer without postscript support, since those with postscript support can print the vectors in the document natively.jdaw1, in ‟[url=http://theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4447&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=125#p41767]A birthday tasting 2011 - 4th April 2011[/url]” wrote:Not so. The printing is of the PDF, which has been distilled. The calculations for each page have been done. (Average page size: only 4k!)