hello desigeres,
for start: please cc me in replies, since i'm not subscribed on the designers@fsfeurope.org list
the idea of having a service for fellows, that produces print-ready business cards in a fellowship design as a pdf.
after wanting to do someething in that direction for some time, i now found some time to produce a working prototype of the generation code and reinhard mueller already has an idea on how to integrate with the fellowship database if i interpret my mail correspondece with him correctly.
asside from some minor code cleanup issues, there are some issues i still need help, and with some of them, people on this list might be able to help me: *) my code uses svg templates, and my current templates are, let's say, suboptimal since i'm more of a coder than a designer (see attachment). the requierements are pretty basic since my code is relativly flexible: * the template should be for a single card * the text parts that should be replaced are referenced via the 'id' attribute, so speaking names there would make the config file more readable * my current implementation does no like multi-lined text elements, therefor for multi line fields like address, there have to be seperate text elements for each line * my current plan woud be to include the data represented on the card in machine readable form (qr code) on the backside, so if suitable from the design point of view, would it be possible to include a square with a edge length of 2.5 to 3 centimeters there? (it may mark me as a techno freak, but i have seen people, escpecially secreteries waste a lot of time copieng the data by hand and smartphones and webcams with correspondig software are quite common nowadays, so it struck me as usefull) *) for the placement on the pages i also use svg templates with rect elements as placeholders (currently i have them with 1 card centered for sending to printing shops, an n-uped to a4 and a3 for home/office printers. however i have a small problem: when n-upping 8 cards onto a a4 page, the standard inksacpe feature produces marks that are to big (overlap into the neighboring card), does anybody now of a way to produce good crop/bleed marks in the needed size without drawing them by hand? *) to produce pdf's usable for pre-press, i currently pdf's with version 1.3 and cmyk colors in the final step that should, theoretically be in conformance with the pdf/x3 standard, does anybody by coinsitance now a free (as in freedom) tool to verify if that is really true?
thx
yours, albert
ps: i hope my design aux pas is not to offending for somebody tho actually has knowledge reagrding design -- Albert Dengg - Team Austria Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [] (http://www.fsfe.org) Join the Fellowship of FSFE! [][][] (https://fsfe.org/join) Your donation powers our work! || (http://fsfe.org/donate)