A Rough Overview Of How I Created The Tryzub Stamp Album

Ok, for the nozy, I am going to try and explain how I made the Tryzub Ukrainian Stamp Album. I will add to this post as I have time to clean up code and post things.

I will release all the tools I used after all the posts are over, so you can try and do this stuff yourself. I might even make a screencast so you can see how it's done.

But here is step 1:

STEP 1: GET IMAGES AND ENTER STAMP DATA

I enter my stamp data into an XML file. The format for the XML is as follows:

 <stamplist> 
  <stamp> 
    <category>Commemorative</category>  
    <name>Stepan Bandera</name>  
    <fdoi>January 1, 2009</fdoi>  
    <width>30</width>  
    <height>33</height>  
    <description><![CDATA[was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in occupied Western Ukraine (Galicia), who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).  He was assasinated by the KGB on October 15, 1959.]]></description>  
    <image>bandera.png</image> 
  </stamp>  
</stamplist>

Typing the stamp data by hand got REALLY REALLY old using all those XML tags, so a friend of mine wrote a Java program that lets me enter data. It lets me enter data, but NOT edit data that's already there. The Java app looks like this:



You click browse to browse to the XML file and then enter data and hit the button on the bottom. The only tags the file needs to start is:

<stamplist>
</stamplist>

You can pick up where you left off. The file appends tags to whatever is already in the file. So you can stop and pick up where you left off.

The image file name is just the file name and extension. No path. The file can be in any format that Scribus supports. The images are not converted to black and white. If you want black and white, you'll need to convert your images beforehand.

The images I either took from personal scans, or I grabbed them from a Google Images search.

The height and width and the height and width of the stamp, not the stamp box. The scripts that make the pages will take this data and make a proper stamp box.

The actual descriptions were taken mostly from Wikipedia, either the US version, the Russian version or the Ukrainian version. Some descriptions, especially those of national parks were taken from obscure web sites dealing with national parks around the world or the actual web sites of the parks. This is where it helps to be fluent in Ukrainian.

You can only do one stamp per title/description. I did some major cleanup of grouped stamp by hand, which I will explain later.

Once you have your last stamp entered, it's time to go to step 2, which is run the script and layout the page.

On side note, I entered the stamps is REVERSE RELEASE ORDER, meaning the last stamp of the year was entered first. I'll explain why later in the post.

Step 2 is to get the tools you need to get the job done:

1. Scribus Desktop Publishing app - http://www.scribus.net
2. Open Source Fonts - http://www.theleagueofmovabletype.com
3. Liberation Fonts (open source replacements for Arial, Courier New and Times New Roman) - https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/
4. Python scripting language and IDE - http://www.python.org
5. Image editing tool - Gimp is free/open source http://www.gimp.org

Next thing you will need to do is load up Scribus and create a document template to use.

Load Scribus and choose File->New

I opted for a large header on top and wanted make sure the header was outside the margin for proper use of the align and distribute tool.

I used the following settings:



I set my default value to milimeters, since that's the unit stamp measurements come in. I made sure the left margin was bigger than the right and bottom to account for the binder rings. I then went and edited my master pages and added the header and drew the border and saved it. I made seperate master pages for Commemoratives, Definitives and Semi-Postal stamps.

You go under Edit->Master Pages to edit the master pages.



Once I had that done, I went and picked the number of pages I think the supplement is going to be, and added them by going under Page->Insert and made sure to choose the proper master page:



Once that's done I went to the LAST page and clicked on it and got ready to run my script.

So, once you have the page template layed out, and have the XML file with your stamp data, it's time to run the script and make some stamp boxes.

The script runs through and does the following:

1. Makes a box that's 5mm wider and 5 mm taller than the stamp.
2. Take the associated image file and shrinks it 5mm smaller in all directions, places it inside the stamp box and centers it.
3. Takes the stamp title, places it 3mm above the stamp box, centers it, and makes it 10 pt Liberation Sans Bold.
4. Takes the stamp description, places it 4 mm below the stamp box, centers it, resizes it so the text all fits in it, makes it Liberation Sans, 8 pt, and makes it flush right justified.
5. Takes all these things and groups them together.

It then rips through all the stamps in the XML file and stacks them one on top of the other, as seen below:



Quite the mess huh?

And this is why the stamps are in reverse release order in the XML file. The stamp on top is the first stamp of the year. Right click on the stamp on the top of the file and choose Cut. Then scroll up to the top the first page and right click and Paste it. You go back and forth until you have the stamps you think will fit onto page 1.



Now it's time to use the Align and Distribute tool to clean the pages up. With the 3 stamps on the page here I did the following:

Align the tops:



Distribute the stamps horizontally:



Group the stamps

Center the botom image against the margins:



And finally distribute the stamps veritically on the page:



And you go and repeat this procedure for each page until you run out of stamps.

Then it's a matter of laying things out the way you like.

On some of the stamps, I have descriptions and title on the right, or the left. I made some scripts to do that.

Flip title and descrition to right script:



Flip title and description to the left script:



Put the tile and description back on the top and bottom:



With two clicks I can flip stuff around any way I want them to lay.

Once all the pages are done, save your work, export to PDF and you're off.

I'll try and post all the script tomorrow. Feel to ask for more detail now.

Fascinating but appears to be very complicated for my old deteriorating brain.

How old am I?

When GOD created Adam and Eve…

I was the gardener!

The only reason why I bothered with the scripts was because I am a geek and like to learn new computer stuff. I also got to about 1998 and decided at that point that I was going to finish this album no matter what. It was a serious labor of love at that point. I find descriptions incredibly important on stamp album pages, especially on pages for foreign countries where their history is not taught in your school.

apastuszak, I am impressed. Back in the days when I actually worked for a living, I used cobol, basic, jcl,
visual basic, etc. I used xml somewhat the last 2 years and found it a pain, but then, like Timm, I date back a while.
regards -

I tried to use a CSV file at first, but there were different "flavors" of CSV, and I didn't want to have to deal with it.

I put my scripts up here, if anyone wants to look at them:

http://code.google.com/p/scribus-st...wnloads/list

I go back to punch cards, FORTRAN, ASCII, Bulletin Boards -- for cryin' out loud--I'm a dinosaur!! I'm going back in my cave ~ 100000000000000100001001010010101000000101000101000001

Technology Memories: Dropping decks of punch cards. Paper tape, Chad & Chadless. Reading binary and/or octal error codes from the lights on the computer front. Machine language compilers. Gate logic. 6802. 286. Hexadecimal math. When memory was measured in bits & bytes, not kilo, mega, or giga. False floors. AIR CONDITIONING. Oh, and who remembers "XYZZY" ???