William Overington

By the way, if you have a go, please mention the river somewhere as I found that the inclusion of where the Main flows into the Rhine helped in comparing it with Google maps, and how you got it to that particular stylised shape. William

I have not made a video though I have produced a document about the making of a PDF that has a design in it.. So maybe have a look first please at the document that it is about. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/design_influenced_by_choice_of_palette_solid_lines_version.pdf Then have a look at the following document. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/about_a_design_influenced_by_choice_of_palette_solid_lines_version.pdf Could you now have a look back at the first document and consider whether the "about" document gives an insight into the design in the original document. So that is what a "making of" video, or a "making of" PDF or whatever can do. It might help to plan it from back to front. Can I explain how I mean with an example. Suppose that someone is learning how to program a computer. Suppose that the requirement is to calculate the area of a rectangle. Where to start if he or she does not know how to start writing such a program. Well, start with the output. Write software to state something like write "The area of the rectangle is ", area, "square metres." or however the syntax of the particular computer goes. So, there is a variable named area and it has a value. From where does that value come? By putting before that output line something like area := width * height; Yet from where do width and height come? Two more variables that each need a value. Read them in from the keyboard. So add something like the following before the calculation. write "please input the width of the rectangle in metres "; read width; write "please input the height of the rectangle in metres"; read height; So then add before all of that a declaration of the three variables. Then a little tidying up like adding a comment of the name of the aithor and the date and there is the program. So, for the tram map, you could start with the finished result and then work backwards. In which order did you draw the lines. Explain how you got the lines all so precisely aligned. Choosing the colours. Deciding how many route lines and in which direction they need to go. Explain the method of converting map information into the stylised diagram with its straight lines. Where did you get the information of the tram system in Mainz? Why choose Mainz? I hope this helps. William

I have now worked out how the video relates to your map. If one views the video from 7 minutes in, (that is 420 seconds in), here is a direct link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjLxGh17rA&t=420 there are tram lines displayed. Please note the statue in the distance, the video is going to go to it. The statue is of Schiller, who wrote the words of The Ode to Joy, sung in Beethoven's ninth symphony. That is in Schillerplatz as can be found in Google maps and is a stop on some of the lines going downwards right from the railway station on your picture. In the video, going on from the statue is a huge flower bed. One can search for Mainz Schiller statue in Google maps. If one tries for Google Street view on the Statue of Schiller then although there is no street view as such there is a panorama showing that flower bed and the statue (rear view) is in the background. After that, the video goes away from the tram lines to the statue of Gutenberg, the cathedral, and the river. In both Google maps and your picture the location of where the river Main flows into the Rhine is a useful point to observe how the two tie together. It seems that after SchillerPlatz that the video goes away from the tram system. William

Thank you. I am trying to work out which route is the tramlines near the start of the video, thus far without success. I note that the river Rhine is shown. The video mentioned in my previous post goes from the railway station to the Rhine and then returns to the railway station. What do each of your coloured lines mean please? For example, is each line some track, or is each line a route sometimes travelling over the same physical track as another route for part of the way? Can tram systems have points like railways? William

You might like this video. It starts at the railway station. Previously I have watched it all the way through and compared it with Google maps and a few panoramas from the map, though alas there is no street view presentation. I was looking for the statue of Gutenberg and the Gutenberg museum at the time, not looking for trams. I have just had a look near the start and there are tram lines along the road and I did note a tram going away in the distance at one time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjLxGh17rA William

Ah, I had a document set for Print (Press-Ready) by default and when I started again with Web, or Print it is the same as in PagePlus. I am wanting to produce a PDF for the web so that the colours look like as in the said wallpapers, yet would look "good" (is that the word?) if someone decided to print them out. William

Hello Alfred It is the red and the green in the Artichoke wallpaper and the colours in the Seaweed wallpaper that are typical of what I am trying to get. I have been "adding white" in RGB by starting from R=255, G=0, B=0 and then increasing both G and B to have some value x, so as to have R=255, G=x, B=x for some x less than 255. I have now been trying HSL. Thank you for the advice. A strange thing is that R=255, G=0, B=0 looks a lot brighter and redder in PagePlusX7 than in Affinity Publisher. Is there some reason for that - maybe that Affinity Publisher is somehow set for print and PagePlus for web or something like that? Or something else? William

I am wondering how is the best way to produce a type of colour. I am using Affinity Publisher. Could you please look at the illustration of the Artichoke wallpaper shown in the following Wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper#England I do not think the colours would be called pastel. Do they have a special name? I have tried adding white to a colour using RGB values and I have tried transparency. Those sort of colours seem typical of William Morris style images. Maybe it was the colour of inks at the time. Maybe they have faded. I would like to try to produce designs in that style with those type of colours. Any advice please? There are some more illustrations in the following page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Dearle William

Unlike PagePlus, Affinity Publisher does not have any fonts bundled with it. A person who has previously had PagePlus may still have the fonts that were bundled with it. I regularly use fonts that were bundled with PagePlus and DrawPlus. I regularly use Goudita SF and its bold, and Aldine401 BT and its italic. I also have discs of some versions of Serif software from over a decade ago where there are fonts bundled that did not always get bundled with later versions. One such font from long ago is Sea Monster. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/seamonster.PDF However, from where can a new user of Serif software, starting with the Affinity range, easily get fonts that have permission to embed in PDFs on the web and have provenance of being legal to use? Could Serif have a look at this issue and perhaps bring out a product named Affinity Fonts please? William

I used Affinity Publisher to produce the design. William

I have been learning how to have text on a path. I found using centred text helpful. William

Following the above, I have made an svg intended to show whether the Hi! Bye! font attached to an earlier post in this thread is installed on the computer where the svg is displayed. The upper line of text is in one svg, curves.svg that had the text converted to curves, and then the curves_and_font.svg includes curves.svg and also the Hi! glyph and the Bye! glyph and not converted to curves. William curves_and_font.svg

Thank you. I have now found the following. https://www.w3schools.com/graphics/svg_text.asp I have not yet found out what happens with text maybe beyond ASCII, or maybe beyond 8-bit or whatever. William

Ah, yes, I checked that the file worked properly, but of course the font is installed on my computer, so it looks like the system found the correct font but just on my computer. However, it looks like U+E176 is the code point that has been used in some font for the glyph that is in your picture. Do you know from which font the glyph displayed in your picture comes please? I have just looked at the svg file in WordPad and the following is included. <g transform="matrix(1,0,0,1,380.758,1124.7)"> <text x="0px" y="0px" style="font-family:'HiandBye', 'Hi and Bye';font-size:400px;fill:rgb(0,0,255);">î…¶</text> </g> Ah, it is not the font that I published in the forum but the earlier TTF version, that does not have the OpenType liga table in it. That font is installed on my computer yet not elsewhere.. I am not sure what the >î…¶</ sequence is about, it may possibly (but not necessarily) be a UTF-8 rendering of the U+E176 code point. I remembered that there was something about converting text to curves when making an svg file so I have now made a new version using that facility. Please find the new version attached. @Alfred Could you try this new version please? William lady with a_tote_bag_blue_dress.svg

Here is an svg of the lady with a tote bag and a blue dress, upon a transparent background. William Supplementary note: This svg file had a problem that Alfred reported in the next post in this thread and I subsequently produced a revised version in the post after the post by Alfred. I have deleted the original svg file from this thread.