Help With Plating #11

My, you guys are on the ball. I asked a couple of questions and went to bed. The next day we're rolling out a new database. I'm absolutely in.

I believe most often the "i" (lower case), and "L" (upper case) are used so that they are not confused with other characters. Doesn't really matter with the E or e, but most folks use "e", following Chase's lead.

I think the 1200 dpi and the straightening of the design are acceptable. We could pole the folks who intend to, or think they may, participate in the submission process to see if most are ok with 1200--it's just better.

And I agree that more than one copy should be captured and posted due to the different shades and plate wear exhibited by some copies.

Don, thanks for taking this on. Let me know how I can help. BTW, I'm not plating the 1 centers yet, but I see myself headed that way.

Art

Achilles...I was thinking earlier, 'man we've hijacked his thread'.

Great stuff!

Is the Elephant in the room, who's gunna be sure plating is correct? Dats a whole lotta stamps!

I agree with Classic on the image spec; there are many pros and cons in settling on the best image resolution and format. I have no real skin in this discussion but it would be best to hammer this out now.

I recommend 1200 dpi and a PNG or JPG format. Stamps should be cropped close to the edge of the image. Please note that any image submitted should not be copyrighted; don't scarf random online images and call them your own. Note: ideally we can settle this spec now, but if we decide at a later date to increase or change this, it would simply be a matter of uploading new images. The rest of the database and web front end would work fine with whatever resolution we want.

The lower case fixes have been made and the 2600 database records are now uploading. In a few hours I will post a link for consideration, I will probably use 2-3 of Steven Ruecker images but this will just be for demonstration purposes.
Don

Don, you and Gary agree, 1200 dpi is the way to go. I think we're all in on that.

I will only be submitting images of stamps I have in hand.
But, again, who's going to edit/certify submissions?

stampcrow,
This is the beauty of 'crowd sourcing', much like this forum it is a community effort. If anyone spots a problem we address it; with all of us working together this task should not be an obstacle.

We will have permissions (log in) for the editing/adding functionality, I would only expect those who we trust as knowledgeable will be the ones who we give this access to. I will disable deleting the entire record but will allow overwriting of the image.

Here is the first draft with the database loaded,
http://www.stampsmarter.com/SCF_Plate.php

The images are just placeholders for demo purposes. The search/filter, export, and print capabilities all work. If anyone spots any issues, please let me know.
Don

Don,

You do quick work! Thanks for getting this going so quick!

I would prefer to see a 13-plate (state)/26-pane index rather than a page index, so I can quickly get to the plate I'm interested in. Steven has this, but the index format could be better. The plate a 3-cent imperforate was printed from can be identified at a glance in most cases from recutting styles.

I don't know if you discussed indexing the recut variety numbers, and adding that as a searchable field. Carroll Chase developed the recut variety # index, and it is shown on the USPCS site at the below link. In addition to a field, this might work well as a side bar.

http://www.uspcs.org/the-1851-1860-...amp-plating/

Another thing to consider would be image annotations like on the Richard Doporto's site (below). I also like Richard's page layout. The contributors could add annotations before uploading, but there surely would be a wide range of annotation styles. It may be best to have only one person annotating.

http://www.slingshotvenus.com/Frank...inFrame.html

Feel free to add my 1200 DPI 3L3 image from this thread.

Good Morning Classic,
Thank you for the input.

I have changed the page design to include a 26 pane layout, the default is now 26 pages (to one page per plate). FYI, it supports allowing user to make the page hold as many as they desire. When they click on 'Define page Size' button they will be presented with the dialog box shown below and can customized the number of positions shown per page.



This also support 'quick filter' which is a 'filter as you type' capability. So if you wanted, for example, to see all the 1L0 positions side-by-side, simply type 1L0 into the filter area as shown below.



Users can clear the filter by clicking on the clear filter button as shown here



The default filtering is 'contains' but users can change this to other types of filtering such as "=".



Users can actually construct complex filtering too by clicking on the Create Filter button. I also added the new field to hold recutting info as per your request.
I assumed that image annotations would be added to the image itself along with arrows. This would have the benefit of making our images unique. But if desired, I can add an 'annotation' field if that is better. What is your opinion on this?

I am working on an 'edit' page which allows others to upload images and make other changes to the database, This will require a log in. If anyone would like to contribute, you will need a StampSmarter account. If you already have one you can use the same user name and password. I will email a link to make contributions to those who want it.

Lastly so far we only have one primary page, now that we have this info in a database we can build many other pages using the same data. This is what makes using a database foundation so flexible.
Don

Don, The changes look great!

It may be a terminology conflict, but it would be good to be able to search on pane/plate or just plate in the same field (example: R1L or 1L). I tried entering 1L, and that didn't work either.

Thanks!

I must not be understanding, when I filter OR search with 1RL I get these results returned...





You can also filter in multiple columns if desired.

I have the edit page done, if anyone wants to help by contributing please let me know. Note, if folks just want to send me images via emails that works too.
Don

Classic,
I feel your pane (pun intended) but I think it's terminology. Try searching "1-Late" in the plate column--or "1-Late Left". It's a matter of wording.

I think the most common used searches in this type of database will be the "comments" and "recutting info" columns. Someone mentioned this earlier and I agree that we should adopt the same phrases and nomenclature used by the USPCS in their plating guide, when adding comments to those two columns. This will make them easily searchable. I refer to their plating guide before searching any other resource.

Art

I forgot to add that Stampcrow has a very important question that still needs to be answered before we begin posting images--"who's gunna be sure plating is correct"...and "who's going to edit/certify submissions?" We can't just have anyone who thinks they have a stamp properly plated send it in and have it posted--a novice like myself for example, or even an "expert" that makes one mistake. The poster will then be taking down incorrectly plated images.

Do we need to establish a panel of sorts to agree that an image is properly plated before it gets posted? This is no easy task. For example, there are a few images posted on the Ruecker site that I don't necessarily agree with. I wish I had jotted a position down for a better example.

If desired, we can add a new field. Perhaps something like 'Released' or 'Reviewed', to differentiate between those record which have just been submitted vs. those which have been reviewed?

We could easily write a query which hides the new submissions if desired (although I think it best to leave them visible so others can put their eyes on them too).

I would like to exercise the database and get it populated. Are you guys (Stampcrow, Art, and Classic) going to be able to get me some images in next week or so? Do you want edit access (which will allow you to upload images yourself)?
Don

Don, I find searching for a specific plate-state or pane non-intuitive. Also, having the list refresh automatically each time a character is entered in the search field is annoying. Waiting for a return keystroke would help.

A much easier (to me) solution would be changing the plate filter to a pull-down, since there are only 26 panes. That way the user wouldn't have to know the exact format of the plate name to type in the filter field.

Also, I would drop "All positions" and similar wording from the Recutting Info results, since it only applies to one database record at a time.

Thanks!

Classic,
Off the top of my head I am not sure how to change the 'auto' filter but I'll poke around if I get a chance. I am reusing a lot of code, that page has many, many thousands of lines of dependent code. This effort was to demonstrate some basic ideas and to allow folks to begin populating the database (and the recutting info was simply entered as a test I was doing). So next step is to have folks exercise the data entry page and make sure everything is the way we want it. Once more data has been entered we can move on to exploring more ways to display it including drop down boxes. But I do not want to pour more hours into this project developing new ways to display the data only to have unconsidered obstacle(s) pop up. (Been there, done that.) There are many potential issues that could cause us to go back to square one and start over. I have other hard deadline projects that are pulling on me, I am moving back to them until folks are able to start entering data and images.
Don