Software that makes placemats

[jdaw1]

As the 1975 horizontal was ending, Tom was calculating the damage. Some people had brought Port, most hadn’t, and there was the cost of the food. Tom looked up from his scribbling and asked that, to help do this, there be an accounting page.

Sure. But what should it be?

[flash_uk]

As the 1975 horizontal was ending, Tom was calculating the damage. Some people had brought Port, most hadn’t, and there was the cost of the food. Tom looked up from his scribbling and asked that, to help do this, there be an accounting page.

Sure. But what should it be?

Something like this perhaps.

Picture1s.jpg (30.44 KiB) Viewed 46246 times

The bottles contribution line is completed at the start of the evening, a per person average computed (in this case 41.50), and this is also completed in the bottle cost line. Once the bill arrives, the meal cost per person is completed. Finally the calculation is made column by column for who owes/is owed.

[uncle tom]

Something like that would be very helpful - thankyou..

[jdaw1]

In the voting sheets, there is one column per name (example on right). This arrangement was chosen partly because, happily, we typically have more wines than people. This is the same arrangement as Mike’s spreadsheet.

But the Accounting page has only a few fields per name, so it seems more natural to have one name per row rather than one name per column, which is the transpose of Mike’s spreadsheet. Objections?

Draft parameters:

Code: Select all

/AccountingNumCopies 1 def

/AccountingTopText (Accounting) def

/AccountingColumnTitles [  % Array of even length, alternately header for group of columns, and array of those columns' headers
[
	(Bestowals)  [ (Wine) ]
	(Costs)      [ (Food &c)  (Wines) ]
	(Settlement) [ (Owes) (Is owed) [(P) /quoteright {-0.08 Kern} (d?)] ]
] def

/AccountingColumnRelativeWidths [ 4 4 4 4 4 1 ] def

/AccountingExtraRows [ () (Total) () ] def

Comment welcomed. Notes follow.

AccountingNumCopies: Inserted following Flash’s suggestion three posts below.

AccountingTopText: must be a parameter to allow non-English possibilities.

AccountingColumnTitles: In the instance in which a group of columns has only one column, the group’s column title should be short: hence “Bestowals” rather than “Contributions”. Do suggest better. Also, should there be a few columns with blank titles? If so, within the groups already present, or in a new blank group?

AccountingColumnRelativeWidths: allows “P’d?” column to ne narrow, holding no more than a tick.

AccountingExtraRows: extra rows under those of the names, to cope with extra people, sub-calculations, changes of mind, &c.

Is this wanted? Is this what is wanted?

[PhilW]

As the 1975 horizontal was ending, Tom was calculating the damage. Some people had brought Port, most hadn’t, and there was the cost of the food. Tom looked up from his scribbling and asked that, to help do this, there be an accounting page.

Sure. But what should it be?

I would suggest it should not be. Several reasons:
- During a tasting is not the best time to do the calculation (note the accuracy of voting summations).
- This is only really relevant for larger tastings where either a large amount of wine comes from a subset of the individuals, or there is significant disparity due to some bringing much older wines. In previous tastings (at least some of those I have organised) some people have been very generous in providing their (significant) contribution either as "if this covers me, I don't want anything more for it" or at very low cost. Such gentlemanly behaviour is appreciated and should not be discouraged (and yes I think group analysis might do so).
- Given such variations, a spreadsheet is more reliable.
- During a tasting is not the best time to do the calculation (I know, I said it already, but it's the most important reason).

[Glenn E.]

- During a tasting is not the best time to do the calculation (I know, I said it already, but it's the most important reason).

Translated into post-tasting speak:

- doing the calcing-thing not now right. Hey is that bottle empty?

I have no objections, but likely wouldn't use the function. If there are remunerations to be made, I calculate and distribute them prior to the event (and bring a copy with me).

[flash_uk]

As the 1975 horizontal was ending, Tom was calculating the damage. Some people had brought Port, most hadn’t, and there was the cost of the food. Tom looked up from his scribbling and asked that, to help do this, there be an accounting page.

Sure. But what should it be?

I would suggest it should not be. Several reasons:
- During a tasting is not the best time to do the calculation (note the accuracy of voting summations).
- This is only really relevant for larger tastings where either a large amount of wine comes from a subset of the individuals, or there is significant disparity due to some bringing much older wines. In previous tastings (at least some of those I have organised) some people have been very generous in providing their (significant) contribution either as "if this covers me, I don't want anything more for it" or at very low cost. Such gentlemanly behaviour is appreciated and should not be discouraged (and yes I think group analysis might do so).
- Given such variations, a spreadsheet is more reliable.
- During a tasting is not the best time to do the calculation (I know, I said it already, but it's the most important reason).

I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. I agree this is only really relevant for the bigger tastings with an imbalance in bottle provision - the sheet can be an optional, like many others in the software. It is true that attempting the calculations during, or at the end of the tasting could lead to error, however that is not caused by having a sheet available. It happens because 13 or 14 people are standing around with cash/cards in their hand trying to be helpful and make a fair contribution. Sheet or no sheet, Tom found himself needing to undertake difficult maths at a less that ideal time - the sheet could only have helped I believe! And there is nothing to stop gentlemanly contribution continuing, which is always appreciated

[jdaw1]

the sheet can be an optional, like many others in the software.

…

Code: Select all

/AccountingNumCopies 1 def

…
AccountingNumCopies: Inserted following Flash’s suggestion three posts below.

There would also have to be administrative parameters such as PageOrderingAccounting, and perhaps others.

[uncle tom]

If one has all the numbers to hand in advance, then a computation at a sober moment is preferable, but that's only possible at a minority of events - the food bill is usually variable, and late additions and deletions to the wine list are not uncommon.

A simple computation sheet would therefore assist..

[DRT]

Experience tells me that shared costs should be calculated, notified and settled in advance of large structured tastings. If people then decide to bring extras or not show up that is their choice. Ideally the bottles should also be collected in advance to eliminate the problem of late withdrawals or no shows on the day.

[jdaw1]

… not the best time to do the calculation …
… a spreadsheet is more reliable…

… should …

I agree with both of you.

… optional…
… Sheet or no sheet, Tom found himself needing to undertake difficult maths at a less that ideal time - the sheet could only have helped …

If one has all the numbers to hand in advance, then a computation at a sober moment is preferable, but that's only possible at a minority of events - the food bill is usually variable, and late additions and deletions to the wine list are not uncommon.

A simple computation sheet would therefore assist..

I agree that this is alien to Planet Should, and really belongs on Asteroid Helpful. Which is a yes, partly grudging. Would it be sensible for the default to be that it appears if the length of Names is ≥7?

[DRT]

I don't think what appears to have happened to Tom this time should be encouraged.

[jdaw1]

Do you believe that the existence of an Accounting sheet on the placemats would materially discourage or disincentivise early administration?

[DRT]

Yes. "I'll sort it out on the night" could become the normal behaviour.

[jdaw1]

"I'll sort it out on the night" could become the normal behaviour.

Why the conditional mood? With very few exceptions^†, we do attempt to “sort it out on the night”. It has been suggested that if the Accounting page exists, we would attempt it neither more nor less often — i.e., it would remain “the normal behaviour” — but might be done more accurately.

Do you agree with these assertions?

† So far this year, I recall only the 1985 horizontal in which finances were computed in advance. And even those were altered on the night.

[DRT]

Admittedly, I have not been to many tastings recently. Normal behaviour for this part of the organisation appears to have changed. As I am unlikely to organise a major tasting in the foreseeable future my view on the matter is of little or no significance.

[jdaw1]

Admittedly, I have not been to many tastings recently. Normal behaviour for this part of the organisation appears to have changed.

For the verticals, in which a minority of bottles were the majority of the cost, accounting needs more attention. We seem to have been doing horizontals recently.

As I am unlikely to organise a major tasting in the foreseeable future my view on the matter is of little or no significance.

The matter is settled democratically, by a weighted vote, in which my vote is the only one with non-zero weight. Good reasoning is what matters; not whether you will organise a tasting.

[jdaw1]

Please comment:


(Edited to update image.)

[flash_uk]

The accounts page looks good to me. Presumably with 4 people at the test tasting, it was not put to use?

[jdaw1]

Presumably with 4 people at the test tasting, it was not put to use?

Correct. My home printer isn’t happy, and I wanted to see a page — which has resulted in some minor improvements to the aesthetic.

[jdaw1]

How many glasses can sensibly go on one sheet of /USL2 = US Ledger = 17″×11″? This has been discussed on . As a test Eric Menchen printed this test PDF (which has pages of 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, and 21 glasses), and has posted photographs of glasses on these 17″×11″ pages. Answer: sixteen.

[DRT]

How many glasses can sensibly go on one sheet of /USL2 = US Ledger = 17″×11″? This has been discussed on . As a test Eric Menchen printed this test PDF (which has pages of 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, and 21 glasses), and has posted photographs of glasses on these 17″×11″ pages. Answer: sixteen.

Surely this depends on which style of glasses are used?

[jdaw1]

Surely this depends on which style of glasses are used?

Yes.

I used a Schott Zwiesel SIZA Port Wine Glass. I think this the same as an IVDP glass. It has a squared stem with a notch in it. The base diamter is 2¾", whereas the bowl appears to have a maximum diameter of 2½".

[Glenn E.]

The SZ has a larger base than the INAO tasting glass. I have held tastings with both 18 and 20 INAO glasses on /USL2 and it works fine. Examples, in fact, can be seen in Roy's most recent newsletter.

[jdaw1]

For the sake of completeness, there is now a /A3 test PDF, with circle sizes as follows.

Code: Select all

On /A3 = 420mm×297mm:
13 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 128.918 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 3.58″ ≈ 91.0mm 
14 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 122.466 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 3.40″ ≈ 86.4mm 
15 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 118.978 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 3.30″ ≈ 83.9mm 
16 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 113.932 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 3.16″ ≈ 80.4mm 
18 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 110.614 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 3.07″ ≈ 78.0mm 
19 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 107.034 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 2.97″ ≈ 75.5mm 
20 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈ 103.868 pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 2.89″ ≈ 73.3mm 
21 glasses   ⇒   radius ≈  98.4921pt ⇒  diameter ≈ 2.74″ ≈ 69.5mm

[PhilW]

Just out of interest, why did you skip 17 and 19?

[jdaw1]

Just out of interest, why did you skip 17 and 19?

Because I missed them on /USL2 = 17″×11″. Why did miss them on /USL2? Because they are the same as the +1 pattern, except with a hole for the missing circle.

But now I have checked, that isn’t true of 19 on /A3. The obvious repair has been made to PDF and table in post two above.

/A3	/USL2

[jdaw1]

I had been thinking, given my recent adventures on the subcontinent, that we would be using some form of local script (e.g., http://www.omniglot.com/writing/malayalam.htm)

feel free to explore and revert

I have explored, and am unable to get any Malayalam script to render using my software. This is being filed under ‘known bugs about which nothing will ever be done’.

is this problem the same across all 345+ languages found on the subcontinent? Can't do Hindi, Kanada, tamil, etc. etc. ?

Probably. Not tested.

That would seem like a pretty huge limitation in your otherwise very malleable and impressive software...

Maybe. But fixing it would be a huge effort, for little gain. India is not a country of Port drinkers, nor a good place to store Port. The greater loss is the inability to handle Japanese. Indeed, for about eight years the manual has said:

The program was designed for left-to-right script, and the alphabets successfully used have been Roman (mostly), Greek (occasionally), and Cyrillic (rarely). Users with knowledge of PostScript who are able to assist with testing in other scripts—including right-to-left—are invited to contact the the author, perhaps after reading this request for assistance rendering “泉十段”.

[PhilW]

Could this thread be pinned/stickied or whatever the appropriate term is, so that it sits at the top of the list of threads in this sub-forum, and is easy to locate?

[Glenn E.]

InlineTitles now back to previous true. Instead three different parameters have new starting values:

Code: Select all

/InlineTitlesAttemptMinimiseNumContours {InlineTitlesMaxNumberContours 2 gt  IsDistiller and} def
/InlineAboveBelowOverAttemptMinimiseNumContours {InlineAbovetitlesMaxNumberContours 2 gt  InlineBelowtitlesMaxNumberContours 2 gt  InlineOvertitlesMaxNumberContours 2 gt  or or  IsDistiller and} def
/InlinePlaceNamesAttemptMinimiseNumContours {InlineTitlesMaxNumberContours 2 gt  IsDistiller and} def

[/small]All now working well and quickly.

Please verify same.

Provided late, but confirmed and verified. http://www.ps2pdf.com will once again convert with /inlinetitles true. Apologies for taking so long to re-test, but alas I have not needed to produce any placemats for a year. Thankfully, I have had (and will have) a few uses this spring and summer.

Note to self: /inlinetitles true yields outline lettering, /inlinetitles false yields solid black lettering.

[jdaw1]

Note to self: /inlinetitles true yields outline lettering, /inlinetitles false yields solid black lettering.

And, belatedly, I have realised that less ink is more white is better visibility of colour of wine.

Please post similar acknowledgement in FTLOP thread. Thank you.

[Glenn E.]

Note to self: /inlinetitles true yields outline lettering, /inlinetitles false yields solid black lettering.

And, belatedly, I have realised that less ink is more white is better visibility of colour of wine.

Please post similar acknowledgement in FTLOP thread. Thank you.

Done.

[Glenn E.]

While working on these placemats (final version here created by Julian) I was admiring the way that the flights are separated and thought of another feature that, while useful, might be difficult to code.

Could the flights be additionally distinguished by shading?

[jdaw1]

Could the flights be additionally distinguished by shading?

Yes, with suitable parameters in the current code. But it would cause wines of similar colour to appear different — methinks not desirable. Instead the regions could be clipped, and ‘shaded’ with patterns both thin and different, as was done for the 1997 horizontal on 16 June 2014. Non-trivial parameters though.

[jdaw1]

Phil and I discussed the ‘interface’ between a Placemat Wizard and the PostScript (see thread entitled Placemats UI?). FTR, we agreed as follows.

• There will be some parameters that the Wizard changes.

• The Wizard inserts these at the start of the PostScript, above the line containing “move changed parameters”.

• The Wizard then removes those parameters from the setting. Assume the parameter is called Parameter.
◊ Find the line starting with the word (so followed by white space) “/Parameter”. That is the start.
◊ Find the next word “def” that is not preceded on the same line by a “%”. That is the end.
◊ Perhaps replace that with spaces, or with “% Parameter replaced by <Wizardname>”, truncating if necessary, padding with spaces if necessary.
◊ Optionally define two parameters in the following form:
/WizardVersionDateTimeAdobeFormat (D:201604262300) def
/WizardLongName (Wizard for placemat software by …) def
This data will appear in the PDFs log page.

[Glenn E.]

My memory could be faulty, but I believe that there are parameters that depend on other parameters above the insert line.

My assumption, then, is that the wizard cannot modify either the dependers or the dependers, thus limiting the wizard somewhat.

[Glenn E.]

Autocorrect fail via Tapatalk. Second depender should be dependee.

[jdaw1]

The parameter dependency tree isn’t a problem.

Assume that, ab initio, C depends on B depends on A. The Wizard then puts B at the start of the file, and assigns it some non-depending value. That wouldn’t disturb A. And C still depends on B, and so refers to the assigned value of B. What harm done?

[jdaw1]

Recently Glenn told me that several American placemat makers prefers the rows on the glasses pages to go bottom-to-top, rather than the standard top-to-bottom.

This is not my taste, because the glasses pages then go in the opposite direction to the TN pages, but those who enter directly to digital would have no care of that.

Alas bottom-to-top was fiddly, as it had to be entered for each possible glasses layout. That has been simplified: direction can be changed by a single ‘global’ boolean parameter.

PermittedPackingStyles renamed to PackingStyles. Relatedly, the parameters /PackingNestingColumnMajor, /PackingDirectionTopToBottom and /PackingDirectionLeftToRight did exist at the level of an individual item of the parameter now called PackingStyles; there are now ‘global’ parameters of the same name, applicable unless overridden by an individual packing style.

(This post also on FTLOP—if discussing please check there for comment.)

[jdaw1]

For the forthcoming vertical of Quinta do Noval, do experts agree that on recent Noval labels the serif font is Newton (“QUINTA DO NOVAL”)? Is “VINTAGE” in a Newton variant, and if so, which? The “2003” seems to be in a wide thin Helvetica: is it obvious precisely which variant?

[jdaw1]

FWLIW, a link to the software thread on JancisRobinson.com.

[DRT]

FWLIW, a link to the software thread on JancisRobinson.com.

Screen Shot 2017-01-22 at 21.04.55.png (21.59 KiB) Viewed 47139 times

[jdaw1]

Testing a deeper black: does CMYK print as a deeper black than RGB? Please print the first page of each and report back. Thank you

[flash_uk]

On my HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus at home, RGB is considerably darker and sharper. Will bring the prints to the next tasting we attend together.

[jdaw1]

On my HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus at home, RGB is considerably darker and sharper. Will bring the prints to the next tasting we attend together.

Wow! That is very surprising. Thank you for testing.

[PhilW]

Testing a deeper black: does CMYK print as a deeper black than RGB? Please print the first page of each and report back. Thank you

Very marginal, but CMYK very slightly darker and better defined than RGB as printed on Dell C1760nw laser.

[flash_uk]

On my HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus at home, RGB is considerably darker and sharper. Will bring the prints to the next tasting we attend together.

Wow! That is very surprising. Thank you for testing.

Maybe I'll just check that I got them the right way round.

[jdaw1]

Maybe I'll just check that I got them the right way round.

Thank you.

[DRT]

For the purposes of testing this you could force the software to output CMYK or RGB somewhere on the sheet.

[Andy Velebil]

For the purposes of testing this you could force the software to output CMYK or RGB somewhere on the sheet.

Did DRT just get all computer technical and stuff. Julian what have you done to him?