This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.

What do you think about errata text in the Glossary?

Yes, I actively want errata in the Glossary.
4
19%
No, I actively oppose errata in the Glossary.
8
38%
Meh, I do not particularly care.
9
43%
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#585812
patrick wrote: Thu Sep 22, 2022 10:51 am Is it possible to detect if an entry won't fit in the current column, and then move it to the next column entirely? (The "property: DS9" as the first line of the second column is a bit weird. Would be nicer of "AKOREM LAAN" was on the second column there as well.)
It's hard. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Auto-generating PDF files with PHP code is all done through an old extension called FPDF, and it is kind of nightmarish making page layouts work.

I would like to do this, and we'll just have to see if I manage to find time for it, but your request is noted and expressing a desire for a thing always makes me more inclined to do it.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#585823
Some updates made. Sadly couldn't work out the column-layout issue. Sorry, patrick. Maybe I or someone else will crack it in the future.

If this document meets with general approval, my next steps will be posting this "officially" and figuring out how to get it into the Compendium.
 
By Winner of Borg (Stefan Slaby)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
1E European Continental Champion 2023
1E Austrian National Champion 2023
2E Austrian National Champion 2022
1E Borg Region Regional Champion 2023
2E Borg Region Regional Champion 2023
#585889
awesome that you're actually working on this! already looking good.

i agree that it would be important to have no page (or column) breaks within a single card. (i'm assuming you generate this using CSS, so maybe a div around each card with something like "page-break-inside: avoid;"?)

there's still a lot of potential to save space (and ultimately paper) by:
- reducing whitespace between lines, and maybe using a different font (the text currently feels rather spaced-out, more like a 2020s screen font than a print font.)
- eliminating extra whitespace between paragraphs (if you *justify* the paragraphs, there's no need to have more space between paragraphs than regular lines, the un-justified last line of each paragraph should do the job.)
- reducing size of, and eliminiating extra whitespace after, card titles. (a bit of extra whitespace between cards, or before each card title, should be enough to separate the blocks visually. maybe give card titles a small negative indent to make them stand out more.)
- reducing the page margins

also, there seems to be an issue at least with the Admiral Riker entry? (perhaps because the errata doesn't affect the "regular" version of the card?)
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#585903
Winner of Borg wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:44 am awesome that you're actually working on this! already looking good.
Excellent!
i agree that it would be important to have no page (or column) breaks within a single card. (i'm assuming you generate this using CSS, so maybe a div around each card with something like "page-break-inside: avoid;"?)
Oh, man, I so devoutly wish I had CSS in here. Here's the actual code:
Code: Select all
if ($pdf->GetY() > 700) { 
			if ($pdf->AcceptPageBreak()) { 
				$pdf->AddPage(); 
			} 
			$pdf->SetLeftMargin($pdf->xnow); 
			$pdf->SetX($pdf->xnow); 
		} else { 
			$pdf->SetLeftMargin($pdf->xnow); 
			$pdf->Cell(0,10,'',0,1,'L'); 
		}
		$pdf->AddFont('FuturaMd', '', 'FuturaMd.php');
		//$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',8);
		$pdf->SetFont('futuralt','',9);
		$pdf->SetLeftMargin($pdf->xnow);
		$pdf->SetX($pdf->xnow);
                $nameUpper = strtoupper($name);
		$nameClean = clean($name);
		if ($errata['significance'] <= 0) {
			$pdf->SetTextColor(128,128,128);
		} else {
			$pdf->SetTextColor(0,0,0);
		}
		$pdf->WriteHTML("<a name='$nameClean'></a><p><B>$nameUpper</B> ({$errata['datetime_formatted']})</p> $whatToPrint");
The method WriteHTML() supports only the following tags (and it was pretty clever of, I assume, Chris Lobban to work out how to make it process HTML at all): b, i, u, a, br, ol, li, and p.

I think most of what you're asking for is possible! It's just an order of magnitude more frustrating than working with a nice clean stylesheet, so it will come slowly.

Probably the easiest thing to change is font. It's in Futura right now, because that's the font of the cards themselves, so using Futura makes it "feel" like 1E. But if it's hard to read, then it may as well just be in plain ol' Garamond. Readability is king!
also, there seems to be an issue at least with the Admiral Riker entry?


Nuts, thought I'd fixed that one. I think that one's easy, though!
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#585925
Update:

* I tried several fonts and was surprised to find that Futura was actually the one with the lowest page count! So I stuck with it. I did shrink it by 1pt, from 9pt to 8pt. Hopefully it's still readable in printout.

* I pushed it to three columns and was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually worked fine. This removed several pages and was the biggest "win" for page size of the day.

* I got rid of padding between card titles and the body of the entry. I toyed with margins where I could do so without reaching deep into the guts of the PDF maker (mostly between columns). This was modestly successful in reducing the page count, and it's still nicely readable.

* I kept padding between entries and within entries that have multiple changes, because I think we'd have to indent paragraphs if we did that (like regular printing), and I figured that would lose nearly as much space as it saved, while looking bad.

* I toyed with adding links to the card pages in each entry, but it looked terrible, and I figure this is mostly going to be a print-out document, so not really necessary or useful anyway.

* Fiddling with line spacing is possible, but goes deeper into the code for the PDF maker thingy than I'm willing to dive right now.

* I tried shrinking the bottom page margin, which seems too large to me, but couldn't figure out how to do it. I'm sure there's a trick to it, but the thing I thought controlled it ("if ($pdf->GetY() > 700)") apparently doesn't affect it. We might squeeze one more page out of that.

But I think this document is fast approaching its final form.

That said? Anyone wants to take a crack at this, I can post the full source code for this page (with sensitive database info removed) for others to see and critique.
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#585939
Excellent work, but don't forget, the user can cut the page count in half by printing doubled sided, so now you are down to a very admirable 7 pages.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#585952
Would it be useful to have an option to only print gameplay-relevant errata?

I'd do it through a URL parameter, so "print_errata_sheet.php" would give you the full 14-page document, but "print_errata_sheet.php?gameplayOnly=1" would give you just the gameplay-relevant errata. My guess is that's only 8 pages.

But I don't know how people use/plan to use an errata document, so am not certain that would actually be helpful.
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#585955
If it is not too much extra work for you, then I'd say yes, as options are always better.
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By winterflames (Derek Marlar)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#586149
NoComment wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 3:54 pm errata belong on the card-site.
I think you mean "Card's webpage" or "On the card" (this could just be a different usage than my own?) In which case, it already is?

But some games take place where internet is spotty, so being able to download an errata document (or print the thing) is helpful.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#591519
BCSWowbagger wrote: Thu Sep 22, 2022 4:19 pm If this document meets with general approval, my next steps will be posting this "officially" and figuring out how to get it into the Compendium.
I still haven't figured out where to post this document "officially."

However, I was trying to avoid doing some writing on a script that seems hard and scary (but which I need to write), so, as a procrastinating tactic, I added the errata list to the Compendium. It's in Appendix B. There's still a couple things I'd like to do (link back to card pages, replace icon codes with actual icons), but hopefully it's helpful to those who thought it would be helpful.

LMK about any technical problems with this or with the Compendium generally.
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