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flash_uk wrote:I agree - top row should say shipper in full, bottom row should say the name.

I agree, or +1, whichever is preferred.

jdaw1 wrote:

flash_uk wrote:I agree - top row should say shipper in full, bottom row should say the name. The only potential headache I can see would be with long names on the top row. How would Feuerheerd, Constantino or Gould Campbell get on?

I haven’t written the code to have the rows different, but using the usual 5×13 small stickies, with most setting at or near default, the code can already make the following.

Which hopefully reassures.

Punch it Chewie.

My personal preference would be as per existing detail example (shipper/year abbreviation as main item with person initials above and below), though I have no cogent objection to the planned approach.

Additional note: Although I am less keen, if providing shipper and year in above/below then shipper preceeding year would look better than year preceeding shipper as currently (i.e. "Feuerheed YYYY" rather than "YYYY Feuerheed").

PhilW wrote:My personal preference would be as per existing detail example (shipper/year abbreviation as main item with person initials above and below), though I have no cogent objection to the planned approach.

Big stickers are for bottles, so not personalised, and have contents of Circlearrays top and bottom. Little stickers are for glasses. Currently littles are double-personalised, Names top and bottom, which is about to drop to single-personalised, Circlearrays at top and Names at bottom. You are deemed not to have sufficiently objected to count as an objection.

PhilW wrote:Although I am less keen, if providing shipper and year in above/below then shipper preceeding year would look better than year preceeding shipper as currently (i.e. "Feuerheed YYYY" rather than "YYYY Feuerheed").

It follows the order in the Circlearrays; hence is and will remain under the user’s control. Typically I put first the thing that varies: in a horizontal, the shipper; in a vertical, the vintage.

Done (= ‘punched’).

Re the discussion a few dozen posts ago about InlineTitles, there’s also a problem with Chrome, the PDF viewer of which mangles InlineTitles. This is known, and on 21^st May a bug report was submitted.

Speaking of InlineTitles, is there a reasonably simple explanation of the fix? I am idly curious about it since Distiller and GhostScript had such different interpretations of the code, at least as far as execution time is concerned.

What InlineTitles/InlineAbovetitles/InlineBelowtitles/InlineOvertitles do is stroke a very thick black line, then a slightly thinner white, then a slightly thinner black, etc, until the last line is very thin and black. All of this whilst the painting region is clipped to the boundary of the relevant string.

But, alas, PDFs thus made would print very slowly on a printer used by AHB (example complaint). So, to lessen that problem, LineWidthThatCoversPath was written, which computes the maximum number of lines needed (so if maximum distance from an internal point to the boundary is 10pt, it starts strokeing with a setlinewidth of 10pt×2 rather than 50pt×2). That horrible computation (request for algorithmic help, not usefully answered) repeatedly calls a PostScript operator infill, which — then unknown to me — is very slow in Ghostscript (bug report). Lordy — just can’t win!

So, now the code doesn’t do the infill-requiring estimation if in GhostScript, nor if InlineTitlesMaxNumberContours ≤ 2.

Edit: so in the last few posts mention has been made of needless slowless in AHB’s printer, needless slowness in Ghostscript, and rendering issues in Chrome. And the code also circumvents a bug in Distiller 8. No trouble at all.

Interesting, thank you for both the fix and the explanation.

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=90612#p90612]Here[/url] PhilW wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:The placemat code allows the adding of an annotation to glasses (GlassesAnnotations). After a blind tasting, should the placemat then be ‘changed’ to annotate what was what?

No. Final version of placemats is final version, including any errors. Scoresheet (including answers) is Scoresheet. Post-event update of placemats bad.

Having thought about this more, I disagree with Phil.

I’m about to make the decanter labels for the tasting of Sweet-Spot Vintages. When they’re made, I’ll change the placemats to /DecanterLabelsNumCopies 0 def. When Mike prints on the day, with whoever is and isn’t coming appropriately altered, he won’t be wasting the decanter-label pages. After the tasting /DecanterLabelsNumCopies 1 def will be reverted, and that will be the ‘final’ version.

This seems reasonable, at least to me. But it firmly clashes with Phil’s purism.

Further comment?

Well, the final version of the placemats will still be the final version. Really all you are doing is getting ahead of the curve with an interim print of the labels, and avoiding me wasting some paper when the placemats etc are printed. The content on the pages and labels will be exactly the same in the end, compared to what is in the final pdf.

flash_uk wrote:Well, the final version of the placemats will still be the final version. Really all you are doing is getting ahead of the curve with an interim print of the labels, and avoiding me wasting some paper when the placemats etc are printed. The content on the pages and labels will be exactly the same in the end, compared to what is in the final pdf.

We agree. Please allow me to probe your view a little further.

Imagine that a placemat has an error, that a Port is mis-labelled (e.g., D78 rather than DB78). Are you happy to add a non-printing annotation as an corrigendum? (Phil isn’t.) Non-printing, but added after the event.

jdaw1 wrote:

flash_uk wrote:Well, the final version of the placemats will still be the final version. Really all you are doing is getting ahead of the curve with an interim print of the labels, and avoiding me wasting some paper when the placemats etc are printed. The content on the pages and labels will be exactly the same in the end, compared to what is in the final pdf.

We agree. Please allow me to probe your view a little further.

Imagine that a placemat has an error, that a Port is mis-labelled (e.g., D78 rather than DB78). Are you happy to add a non-printing annotation as an corrigendum? (Phil isn’t.) Non-printing, but added after the event.

Assuming this would mean that if you printed said updated pdf, the error would still be shown, then I'd be OK with a non-printing annotation. One could argue that the final placemat pdf is the one stored after the tasting has finished, containing some info about the tasting (including errors discovered etc).

flash_uk wrote:Assuming this would mean that if you printed said updated pdf, the error would still be shown

Yes, that is what is meant.

flash_uk wrote:then I'd be OK with a non-printing annotation. One could argue that the final placemat pdf is the one stored after the tasting has finished, containing some info about the tasting (including errors discovered etc).

Splendid. We agree.

Would you go further? For a blind tasting, would you want the reveal to be added, again as a non-printing annotation? E.g., after the SSV should the Roman numbers (I, II, III, IV, …, XII) be non-printingly annotated with Port names?

jdaw1 wrote:

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=90612#p90612]Here[/url] PhilW wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:The placemat code allows the adding of an annotation to glasses (GlassesAnnotations). After a blind tasting, should the placemat then be ‘changed’ to annotate what was what?

No. Final version of placemats is final version, including any errors. Scoresheet (including answers) is Scoresheet. Post-event update of placemats bad.

Having thought about this more, I disagree with Phil.

I’m about to make the decanter labels for the tasting of Sweet-Spot Vintages. When they’re made, I’ll change the placemats to /DecanterLabelsNumCopies 0 def. When Mike prints on the day, with whoever is and isn’t coming appropriately altered, he won’t be wasting the decanter-label pages. After the tasting /DecanterLabelsNumCopies 1 def will be reverted, and that will be the ‘final’ version.

This seems reasonable, at least to me. But it firmly clashes with Phil’s purism.

Further comment?

As Ian has already pointed out, this isn't really an edit of the final placemats. It is simply turning a switch on/off to make printing more convenient. Therefore it is acceptable practice.

To me, though, your further questions are not acceptable edits. I do not see the placemats.ps file as a historical record of the entire tasting, but rather simply a data file that's being preserved. The non-printing edits that you suggest belong more appropriately in the review thread for the evening or the tasting notebooks of the participants.

Glenn E. wrote:simply a data file that's being preserved.

Would you be willing to see it as proto-paper? Qualities relating to its proto-paper are not to change, but other qualities might change.

(For me, marking errors as such is good. But I am ambivalent about de-blinding.)

jdaw1 wrote:Would you go further? For a blind tasting, would you want the reveal to be added, again as a non-printing annotation? E.g., after the SSV should the Roman numbers (I, II, III, IV, …, XII) be non-printingly annotated with Port names?

Yes seems fine. Although of course in the SSV case, there are currently only a couple of ports that need a reveal. All the others are known, as we have included sticky labels in the pdf.

flash_uk wrote:Although of course in the SSV case, there are currently only a couple of ports that need a reveal. All the others are known, as we have included sticky labels in the pdf.

In theory the VIII, say, could be non-printingly annotated with D70 (or whichever it is). So not “of course”.

jdaw1 wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:simply a data file that's being preserved.

Would you be willing to see it as proto-paper? Qualities relating to its proto-paper are not to change, but other qualities might change.

(For me, marking errors as such is good. But I am ambivalent about de-blinding.)

In my case the discussion is merely theoretical, so my comments should not override those of people who actually make use of the preserved placemats.ps files.

So, still speaking theoretically, I still feel as if the file should be preserved as it was used. I understand the desire to annotate errors, but in my head I cannot resolve actually altering the file to do so. That "destroys" the historical record. In the perfect world of my imagination, the errors would be annotated in the file storage system so that the Port tasting placemat archaeologists of the future would be able to understand what went wrong while still having a perfect record of that wrongness.

Glenn E. wrote:while still having a perfect record of that wrongness.

At the tasting is paper, not an electronic file. And there is a perfect record of the paper.

I observe that the computer-professional people, Phil and Glenn, are anti, whilst Mike and Julian seem more relaxed about it.

Glenn E. wrote:...I still feel as if the file should be preserved as it was used. I understand the desire to annotate errors, but in my head I cannot resolve actually altering the file to do so. That "destroys" the historical record. In the perfect world of my imagination, the errors would be annotated in the file storage system so that the Port tasting placemat archaeologists of the future would be able to understand what went wrong while still having a perfect record of that wrongness.

The electronic file could be defined as record of everything that happened, not just of the papers that appeared at the event. By adding the non-printing annotations, are you not giving the Port tasting placemat archaeologists of the future a wonderful audit trail?

flash_uk wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:...I still feel as if the file should be preserved as it was used. I understand the desire to annotate errors, but in my head I cannot resolve actually altering the file to do so. That "destroys" the historical record. In the perfect world of my imagination, the errors would be annotated in the file storage system so that the Port tasting placemat archaeologists of the future would be able to understand what went wrong while still having a perfect record of that wrongness.

The electronic file could be defined as record of everything that happened, not just of the papers that appeared at the event. By adding the non-printing annotations, are you not giving the Port tasting placemat archaeologists of the future a wonderful audit trail?

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Why not include everyone's tasting notes in the file too, then?

Glenn E. wrote:Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Why not include everyone's tasting notes in the file too, then?

Well, technically we do include Derek's notes when he attends

Glenn E. wrote:Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Why not include everyone's tasting notes in the file too, then?

PDF shows what the Ports are, not of what they taste. Your straw man seems to be a substantial step beyond the proposal.