Please to make blank playbook in format I can use

Guys.

Step 1: Figure out what you want your final layout to be.
Step 2: Remove all text (moves etc), but make sure the fonts used are installed and you have the ones used written down.
Step 3: Create a FORM.  Namely something that has a label that says Races: Which you can cut/paste text into, but which has a hard cap character limit etc.
Step 4: EITHER output to an XML file, or much much better, use TCPDF to just output a clean pdf by writing the text on top of the image of the un-texted background.  Can be done on the fly and saved to your local machine.  Can also add basic moves pages or GM pages with a toggle/checkbox and just splice the files together.

Easy Peasy.  I do this all the time.  Forcing the user to learn layout or use InDesign is not your ideal solution.  I promise.

The problem with Excel/Word/TCL/LaTex/InDesign is that you can't do a fair bit of backend pre-processing to calculate fits, number of lines etc.  The problem with InDesign is that many people don't have it.  All this would require is a machine with LAMP on it.

Stras, how do we style the headers in user inputed text in that process? (Or do we just not bother?) Like when the user adds a move called "I Like To Move It" how do we put "I Like To Move It" into the header font/style?

Sage, basically what a toolkit like TCPDF does is embed additional content into an existing file. Its kind of like if you put the blank character sheet into a typewriter, manually aligned it, typed your text, moved to the next point, typed... etc... Now, imagine that your typewriter had access to a handful of different fonts, and you could set them to bold or italic. It's not necessarily the cleanest solution, but it works in a pinch, and generally works well for filling out forms.

Huh. Probably should have googled that and figured it out myself. Okay, time to give it a look. Thanks!

@sage: The easiest way to do this is to have 2 labels: Header, and Body.  Separate.  With an 'add' button.  You can easily _POST this (although i would use basic ajax/js).

So you say 'you can do 10 moves with header at 200 chars, body at 2000 chars'.  They fill in a move, click add.  it appears below.  The space is still there for the add, but you can 'edit' or 'delete' it.  Just have a basic validation function for counts/bad_char_stripping.

I've got boardgames tonight, but I'll see if I can sneak in some time to do a mockup after work. If not tomorrow it is!

Also: TCPDF is just a couple functions laid on top  of PHP (which you know, bad language, but super easy to install/maintain for minimal effort to slap up something).  It allows for easy PDF creation.  You can layer some images in the background and type on top of them for example.  It's how I do a lot of auto-form population at work.  It's also very intuitive, so you can natural-language read the functions and it should make sense.

Seems doable, yeah.

stras, any chance if you have a prototype you could throw it up on github? I'm low on time at the moment (I'm getting married in just under two weeks) but sometime I'll have time to contribute.

@sage: for sure.  Whoa! Congratulations! Also ... what a time to have crazy kickstarter/game-publication >_< you're crazy dude.

What can I say, I'm hopeless about making stuff!

In fact, between the last two posts, I started looking for python PDF equivalents so I could work with django instead of PHP. Hmmm...

This is an excellent plan, I just haven't had experience with any Python specific PDF apps (all my py was AI/backend oriented).  Also, more overhead for installs and such.  I know people though ... I'll see if I can finagle a suggestion :)

Well, there's a pretty official suggestion: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/outputting-pdf/

I'm leaning towards django since (1) I have more experience there and (2) that's what the prototype monster builder is in. I'm also glad any time I get to code python. That said, I'm not that familiar with server-side web design, so who knows.

Ok ok ok... *cracks knuckles* Django and Python you say?

Stand back, there might be explosions. *digs up laptop*

If you're down with Django and python that's my preferred approach (I have hateful memories of PHP) but hey, I'm open to anything. I toyed around with it just a bit today and it seems very possible.

If you're down with Django and python that's my preferred approach (I have hateful memories of PHP) but hey, I'm open to anything. I toyed around with it just a bit today and it seems very possible.

Just to be clear. Sage/Stras what are your goals? It sounds like there are multiple things going on and I just want to get my head around them and understand where I may be able to add any assistance. (my day job is helping run a relatively large video game studio, but in the olden days I used to do a ton of more technically oriented content work, so I am more than willing to get my hands very dirty)

1. It sounds like stras is interested in making an online character sheet that is user editable and allows for custom extensions (user definable moves for example)

2. Sage are you looking at publishing the whole text as HTML and then possibly outputting as pdf from there?

3. I am interested in different ways of displaying and presenting the book data. For instance I think my campaign would benefit from class packages/character sheets the encompassed both the characters and the rules similar to world of dungeons, but of course bigger.

Sage it also sounds like you would like to focus and solutions around Python and Django?

Sorry for being simple, I just want to make sure I understand where folks are and where the community may be able to focus and help.

Stras and I are talking more directly now.

The goal is to be able to store classes (no matter who made them) and output them to PDF. The goal there is that anybody can use the site to make a custom class and print it, maybe even share it, but that's all tangential. At this point we (or rather stras) is trying to proof-of-concept something that takes class data (in whatever format) and outputs a character sheet that looks somewhat like our new character sheets. From there we can start worrying about how to store that data, authentication, all that.

Sage, sounds like you guys are on the right track.

Mtallen, I think you're point #3 is worthy of its own thread. You might want to start a new one and elaborate on what you're thinking in that regard.