[FM Discuss] Challenges in rendering automatic covers

[adam hyde]

i did find some time ago a javascript that enabled 90 degree rotation 
alignment of text...good for the spine...on a plane now so will check 
when i am at the doc sprint hotel

adam

On 14/10/11 17:29, Tuukka Hastrup wrote:
> 2011-10-14 05:34, adam kirjoitti:
>> actually, why not just use html and convert to pdf?
>
> Yeah, maybe that's ok for now although it doesn't give as much options
> as Inkscape for the artist.
>
> To get the required PDF with front, spine and back on one page from HTML
> format, we would need to figure out a way to combine the three separate
> PDF pages, *or* make the combined layout as well as the spine text 90
> degree rotation in CSS. Would anyone know how to do a HTML/CSS design
> like this right away?
>
>> On 10/14/2011 01:50 PM, Tuukka Hastrup wrote:
>>>
>>> I made some progress with help from Elisa on IRC.
>>>
>>> First, she sent this example of what kind of a result we're ideally
>>> targetting, although it could be much simpler at this point:
>>> http://tuukka.iki.fi/tmp/example-cover.png
>>>
>>> Second, a new idea to alternatively use Scribus for this came up in the
>>> discussion, as Scribus is meant for page-making given text and image
>>> assets. Unfortunately, on the IRC channel #scribus, I heard that the
>>> efforts to make Scribus suitable for automatic rendering are still
>>> experimental. Thus, someone could explore e.g. running Scribus headless
>>> with Xvfb and scripting it with Scribus Scripter2 which was part of the
>>> GSOC this year:
>>> http://scripter2.jainbasil.net/
>>> http://jainbasil.net/scripter2/
>>>
>>> Third, on the IRC channel #inkscape, I learned about the current
>>> limitations of the SVG approach such as flowed text (automated
>>> text-layout) being Inkscape-only and Inkscape not supporting
>>> high-quality rendering of SVG images nested within an outer SVG image.
>>> It might be possible to convert the flowed text to non-flowed with
>>> Inkscape then use something like wkhtmltopdf to convert standard SVG to
>>> PDF. wkhtmltopdf crashes when I try to convert an SVG though. The link I
>>> got about nested SVG in Inkscape was this:
>>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.user/14208
>>>
>>> The three earlier issues still remain as well:
>>>
>>> 2011-10-14 02:05, Tuukka Hastrup wrote:
>>>> I hit some "challenges" trying to render book covers automatically as
>>>> needed for lulu.com integration. At the moment, I can render a blank
>>>> PDF
>>>> of the right dimensions ;-) I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas on
>>>> how to solve (or work around) these:
>>>>
>>>> 1. How to express in SVG a float layout similar to an IMG tag floating
>>>> on the right of a text paragraph in HTML?
>>>>
>>>> 2. Alternatively, how to combine separate HTML-to-PDF renderings of a
>>>> front cover, spine, and back cover into a single PDF *page*?
>>>>
>>>> 3. In either case. how to scale the font size of the book title in SVG
>>>> *or* HTML so that the title width matches the horizontal page available
>>>> in the cover?
>>>>
>>>> Actually, I wouldn't mind if someone else wanted to whip up something
>>>> for this as it's only tangential even though required for the lulu.com
>>>> integration.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>> Tuukka
>>>>
>>>> P.S. Here's what I use for the blank test PDFs: wkhtmltopdf-i386
>>>> --page-width 210 --page-height 297 --load-error-handling ignore
>>>> /dev/zero a4.pdf
>>>>
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>
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