William Overington

Is there anybody who is willing to say that they think this is a good idea please? This could be because you would possibly like to buy a licence to print some copies of art sold in this way, or because you like the idea of trying to earn some money from your art in this way, or because you like an optimistic, positive idea for progress, or because you like opportunity creating infrastructures, or for some other reason, or some combination of those. Such support for the idea would be good. I opine that this would be a forward-looking facility to implement. William

I have now started a new thread to discuss the idea. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/177025-can-pdf-documents-of-art-with-a-licence-to-print-a-small-number-of-copies-be-sold-from-the-serif-affinity-store-please/ William

A side discussion arose in another thread, starting with the following post, then continuing. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/176510-futurist-style-or-thereabouts/&do=findComment&comment=1018117 The side discussion about how to earn money from producing output using Serif Affinity software. Will Serif consider my idea about selling, from Serif Affinity Store, PDF documents of art produces by users of Affinity software, with a licence to print or have printed up to five copies for personal use by the purchaser or to give to family and friends please? I think it is a good idea and could be an incentive for users of Affinity software to produce good quality art in a pure electronic PDF document form, potentially earn some money from sales of licences to print a small number of copies of their work, and perhaps result in new opportunities for them. William

Even if one sells a few, one's work could become displayed in people's homes and maybe offices. Who knows who might see the print and admire it. Maybe the artist might get a commission for some custom work, maybe the artist might be invited to exhibit in an art gallery. Maybe, maybe not. There is a saying in the History and Philosophy of Science "Chance favours the prepared observer". I think in similar terms over putting forward new ideas and new output. Lots of people miss the opportunity for a second order effect to benefit them by not pursuing an activity at which they could do well yet that has no obvious first order substantial benefit to them. Too many people stop because someone tells them something like "you'll never be a singer" or "you'll never be an artist". William

I have not suggested Serif having a print on demand facility as that would involve post and packing and physical delivery. I am suggesting that it would, if Serif choose to do it, to sell for £1 or £2 or so the download of a PDF document with a licence to print a number of copies, say up to five, for personal use and to give to family and friends. I am wondering if that would be no more difficult to add to the Affinity store than the sale of the download of a clip art collection. The printing would need to be organized by the purchaser at the purchaser's expense. That could be on the purchaser's own equipment or over the internet, such as at Viking Virtual Print House, or wherever, at whatever quality of print the purchaser chooses. Whether Serif chooses to implement this idea is a matter for Serif. When I put forward a suggestion I never attempt to guess whether the business(es) assessing it will be enthusiastic. Well, the artist would not be selling his or her output for £1 to £2. He or she would be providing one PDF document to Serif and an unlimited number of copies could be sold with no further work by the artist. The artist would retain copyright. If a purchaser wanted more than five copies, pay another £1 or £2 for a licence to print another five copies. Suppose, however, that only a relatively small amount of money is received by an artist, it would be money earned because people appreciated his or her art and wanted a print and were prepared to pay to obtain that print, and the prints being about could possibly lead to something good for the artist. I don't know what that could be, but it does happen. People often miss that and opine downbeat without considering indirect effects. I have never used TIFF so I won't comment on that. I have used jpg as that is what is needed for producing what is called a photo card at papier.com though I don't use a photograph as such, I use a jpg of the correct size as output from a Serif product, initially Page Plus X7 for two cards, Affinity Publisher after that. I really like PDF documents, particularly if the image is vector. Each to his or her own preference, but I export a PDF document if the end use can use a PDF document. In fact, PDF is one of the few formats that Viking Virtual Print House will accept as input. It depends on the licensing. I have not looked into the licences of clip art that is available yet that I have not purchased. William

@VectorVonDoom Can I suggest that if you sell things that you state a price. Or if something is free, then it is free absolutely. Also, if you can achieve it, try to sell through the Serif store, rather than a direct sale as I, and possibly others, are wary about paying via some otherwise unknown website. I don't know at what minimum price Serif would allow a product to be sold. Serif should get something for use of the facility, and I don't know how much of what a customer pays goes to the banks and the like such that the customer can pay by credit card or debit card. So if, say, someone made a clip art collection and it were available from Serif store, would it even be possible to try for an income by pricing something at £1 in the hope that the very low price would make more money than pricing at £5 or £10, on the basis that if a hundred times more people buy at £1 rather than at £10 that might be a bigger income? A big issue though is what conditions are attached. There are various fonts for which I would have happliy bought a licence, but if I use a font I need to be able to embed a subset of it in a PDF document to go on the web without some payment for each time someone reads it. So with highly restrictive End Use Licence Agreements attached, I just don't buy it. But what are reasonable licensing conditions for clip art? Please discuss. Sometimes I see things that say it can be free or what you choose to pay, so I end up not having it, because I think, well, I wouldn't feel right about having it free if the person is hoping to get some money, and if I were to pay, what is reasonable such that I would not be being mean nor paying far more than reasonable. I appreciate that fixed prices does mean that someone's personal financial situation may well be a barrier to some things, whether going on a World Cruise, buying a fancy meal, buying some software, but I am not claiming to have all the answers. And I avoid getting anything from a site that has a "give a money tip" facility. I am not expecting to get everything free, I am happy to pay as long as I have certainty that the price I am paying is the price with which the seller is content to do business, and if money is involved it is business. What I am wondering is this. If someone produces, say, an A3 size PDF document of his or her artwork, what would be the situation if it were offered for, say, £1, from Serif store with it being stated that the person may get up to some low number of hardcopy prints made at the purchaser's expense for use personally by the person and/or as gifts to family and friends? Yet the PDF document has no security protection on it. It might sound unstable on the theoretical basis that a copy could be passed around, but would it work in practice on the basis of people being fair about it? For example, I have seen artwork in Share you work of which I would like to get a print to frame, but I do not do so as I feel it would be wrong to do so unless there were explicit permission to do so. Yet if the image were available in a PDF document at a standard paper size, plus bleeds if the colour goes to the edge rather than a white border, and I could pay £1 at Serif store and thereby be allowed to upload the file to an online virtual print house and buy some prints, perhaps 2, perhaps 5, maybe 2 now and know I can get another 3 anytime if I choose to do so, then that would be good. Maybe it would need to be £2. I know it could be more, but if there were various PDF documents available, several at £2 each adds up. Can we all have a lively discussion about this please? If people like the idea, maybe Serif will implement it. William

Thank you. What is "Paper Cut Woodlands Assets" please? William

So what would that mean. A Behance-type experience yet in relation to Serif Affinity products. So now I have registered to follow this thread as I think it may well be significant. There are at present 210 pages of threads in Share your work. So those people who want to do so could each start a thread with a title of Portfolio [username] for their own username and that thread could contain a list of links to the Share your work threads of that person. Then it could be the practice that when someone starts a new thread that the person also adds a link tto that thread in their own Portfolio thread. Now that could be done now in the Share your work forum. Yet if Serif moderators so decided, a new forum, Portfolios coukd be added and each Portfolio thread put in that forum. ---- Now another possibility could be a thread that is a Curator thread, where someone, or more than one person, includes links to Share your work threads on particular theme, for example, a thread Curator Science Fiction Curator Robots Curator Art Deco Curator Art Nouveau Curator Steampunk and so on. These too could be in the Share your work forum or in a separate Curator forum. --- William

I had not known of Behance before today. So this thread is good because I have learned something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkkLvdO7Ojk William

I know that sometimes when I log onto a Windows 10 computer I get shown a picture and I am asked to choose whether I like it or not. The next picture shown might perhaps take that opinion and maybe my choice of the two options for earlier pictures into account. If that were extended to several questions each with a scale of 0 to 10, and a picture shown each day, how long would it be before the system could present me with pictures that it deems that I would like? Yet wait! What if the answers I give seem inconsistent, yet in fact vary wit my feelings at the time as human feelings can vary in time based on factors the system does not know about. So how can it choose, or generate, a picture to match my choices? William

Oh I didn't realize from where the name came, yet not an exact copy, but then there is the cy-près issue ("so close"). Lemon juice anyone? 😀 (This being an oblique reference to what is popularly known as The Jif Lemon Case) William

I notice that you put your name as Marc. I think that would go down well. Art by Marc. How do feel about using your full name on your art, not necessarily in this forum but on your prints? ---- What exactly are you meaning by "cheap junk" please? For example, how would you feel about getting some A3 size digital laser prints on 350 gsm paper as "Loose" items from this site. https://viking-virtualprinthouse.co.uk/ I have got some prints, maybe two, maybe five, of some of my own artwork, just for my own art collection. I realize that there is a vast difference between me getting a print of my own artwork for my own hobbyist-artist level enjoyment and a professinal artist buying a print then selling it at a price that includes money to provide the artist with an income. ---- What I would be intrested to know is your view on the following please. Given that you could get prints of high quality made from your artwork, how do feel as whether to produce work in limited editions or in unlimited editions? How do you feel about signing prints, about numbering them, or what? When a print is a print handmade by an artist using, say, a woodcut that he or she has produced, the very physical process of printing takes a lot of time and the block can wear, so a limited edition can be a result of thoise factors, but where the reproduction is from a digital file by machinery then whether to limit the number of copies available for purchase is on a different basis. So, for example, if high quality with provenance prints of your art become much sought after, would you prefer the potentially higher value of a limited edition, or would you prefer the lower value yet more widely available unlimited edition, or some combination of the two in some way? William

Thank you for the suggestion. Possibly. I had deliberately avoided having a parameter in a sentence. This avoidance was because I got the idea it could introduce complications in automated localization. Yet if the parameter is just a number or a non-localizable text string, possibly. I don't know if it ever came up in our discussions, but does Comet Circumflex mean anything to you? http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/c_c00000.htm Yet my format for the sentence.dat file for the present localizable sentences system is very simple. If a parameter is used it might need to be listed as a parameter before the sentence, so pushed onto a stack, so that the sentence localization process can pop it off the stack and apply it. Thus adding complication due a deliberately simple automated localization format. William

Have you considered approaching businesses that produce cards of various types? https://www.art-angels.co.uk/ https://www.greenpebble.co.uk/ https://www.papier.com/ William

Thinking about this further, if the train has a code number, in a similar way that aeroplane flights have a flight number, then this could be used after the Please consider a train. sentence. I have also thought of two sentences to add to the set. So now a list of eight sentences. ---- Please consider a train. The destination of the train is as follows. The scheduled departure time is as follows. The train is running on time. There is no information about the train. The new departure time is as follows. The train is cancelled. The train will leave from the following platform. ---- William

You might perhaps like the links in the following thread. Futurism in the 1920s https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=337 William

As a header sentence, including so that in a sequence of sentences one can list more than one train. For examples Please consider a train. The destination of the train is as follows. Salisbury The scheduled departure time is as follows. 1215 The new departure time is as follows. 1832 The train will leave from the following platform. 5 Please consider a train. The destination of the train is as follows. Edinburgh The scheduled departure time is as follows. 1314 The new departure time is as follows. 1707 The train will leave from the following platform. 7 Please consider a train. The destination of the train is as follows. Brussels The scheduled departure time is as follows. 2016 The train is cancelled. William

I have this morning thought of a practical application for localizable sentences technology. I was watching Sky News. https://news.sky.com/watch-live Just after 8 am there was live reporting from some railway stations. Due to strikes and the weather there is travel disruption. One reporter said about people having problems finding out what is happening, particularly if they are visiting from abroad and don't know English. So I am thinking that if there were some standardized localizable sentences, such as the following, each with a symbol ans a code number, that could be helpful. ---- Please consider a train. The destination of the train is as follows. The scheduled departure time is as follows. The new departure time is as follows. The train is cancelled. The train will leave from the following platform. ---- Even those six localizable sentences could be very helpful to someone who does not know the language of the country where they are travelling. Even a credit card sized card showing the symbols and the meaning of each localized into the traveller's own language could be helpful. William

So, eleven views of the PDF document thus far, of which two are from me, so a net total of nine views from people other than me. Thank you for viewing. William

Thank you Alfred. Yes, that would explain why most people open the thread then do not open the PDF document, especially before I mentioned that the PDF document included artwork produced using the Pen Tool and the Node Tool. Yet a few people have opened the PDF document. Maybe some of them have understood the poem in English. Perhaps some have delighted in localizing the poem into another language, maybe French, maybe Polish, maybe German, maybe other languages. Perhaps some have regarded the way each symbol tunnels through the language barrier as ... choose an adjective . If anyone is interested, there are documents about the research. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_research.htm And two novels, one complete, one a work in progress, that feature the invention and the research. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/novel_plus.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/locse_novel2.htm All free to read, no registration required. The symbols are not emoji, as each of these symbols has been assigned a precise meaning, whereas the culture of emoji has developed such that many emoji can each express a variety of meanings. Yet, like emoji, each symbol is not linked to any specific language. So will the invention ever thrive in application or will it be like a piece of pure mathematics that never got applied, a structure beautiful within its own bubble, yet just inside that bubble. William

I wrote the poem, and illustrated it, yesterday, influenced by the view from a window of my home. William

Well, yes, but the number of views of the A4 PDF document has increased to five. Maybe someone will print it, frame it, mount it on a wall, then post a photograph. I am hoping to get a print but I have no printer here, but there is an online virtual print house that I can use. I set the artwork up as A4 plus 3mm bleed areas, so to get a print from the online virtual print house it will be best to export an A4 PDF document with bleed areas as the colours go to the edges. The PDF document available in the first post of this thread is without bleed areas. Does anyone know what is the effect of trying to print an A4 PDF document that has 3 mm bleed areas on a typical home or office basic printer please? For example, does it get scaled down so that the A4 plus bleed area sizes is scaled down to A4 width or A4 height, or does the computer interface to the printer detect the bleed area and simply disregard it, or what please? Although I do not have a printer it would be good to know because I tend to produce versions with and without bleed areas if there is other than white at the edges. So I am wondering if that is necessary or whether I could just produce a version with a bleed area. William

How strange. Forty-five views of the thread, including about three from me. Yet only two looks at the PDF document that I uploaded, one of them being me when I tested it was working fine. So with one exception, thank you to you whoever you are, people looking at the thread have not then looked at the PDF document. I wonder why, given that they had chosen to look at the thread that they did not then look at the PDF document. Perhaps it would have helped if I had mentioned that the poem is illustrated with images that I produced using the Pen Tool and the Node Tool. William

Please find the poem in the attached PDF (Portable Document Format) document. winter_poem.pdf This may help in understanding the poem in English. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_037.pdf William

I opine that you have got him evilly looming in the clouds very well done. I was referring to the text on the back. If you had described him as evil or wicked then that would be his character. I just feel that use of dark seems, well, unfortunate. William