Graphics for Pirate Party Australia. (@ppau on GitHub.)
There are several purposes for this repository:
- Version control and general ability for collaboration with source documents.
- Build an infrastructure that allows us to seamlessly update authorisation tags and, if necessary, printing tags.
- ... and in turn, permit self-serve poster generation with appropriate tags.
The system works by having the artist insert placeholder text, such as PPAU_AUTH_TAG, in the artworks instead of something like Authorised by Name, Address. The script will perform a textual find-and-replace and then render the artwork to a format more suitable for distribution, currently PNG and PDF.
sudo apt-get install python3 git-lfs inkscape imagemagick poppler-utils fontconfig
git clone https://github.com/ppau/ppau-graphics.git && cd ppau-graphics
./font-installer.py
nano print_tag.txt
./render.py
If running on a server with WSGI you can leave print_tag.txt as is.
The following programs are required by the render script.
- a working Python 3.5 (or newer) install to run it.
- Inkscape (version 1.0 required)
find(1)sed(1)grep(1)pdfunitepngcrush(optional)
If you do not specify a correct path to inkscape, pdunite or pngcrush, the script will attempt to find it with which(1).
pdfunite is usually installed as part of poppler-utils or poppler-tools.
find, sed and grep should be installed by default on any POSIX system, but may be missing on Windows.
Most files (in particular, the SVG artwork source files) in this repository are tracked using Git LFS. See the .gitattributes file for a detailed list. An example line:
*.jpg filter=lfs diff=lfs merge=lfs -text
Git LFS isn't usually installed by default. You'll likely need to run git lfs install before cloning - consider doing it even if your package manager has it installed. Otherwise most of the files will be broken.
You'll need the various fonts, too; at a minimum Open Sans (including Condensed) and Gehen Sans, although others might have been used. You can run python3 list_fonts.py to get a JSON of all the fonts used in the project and what files use them. This will be found in FONTLIST.json; it is recommended to run list_fonts yourself rather than relying on the JSON being up to date.
Run font_installer.py to attempt to install fonts automatically, or refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for a a fairly comprehensive list of download links.
To render the SVGs in the source directory, run the script render.py from the command line, perhaps with something like:
python3 /path/to/render.py
Add the help flag: python3 /path/to/render.py --help for a full list of options.
Replacement tags are specified in auth_tag.txt and auth_tag_basic.txt (authoriser) and print_tag.txt (printer).
There will be three possible variants of each file rendered:
- with authorisation tag only (
*-auth.*), - with both authorisation and printing tags (
*-both.*), - with no tags (
*-none.*) if the source file doesn't provide for them.
Each variant will be rendered as a PNG for digital use and as a PDF for printing. An SVG with text replacement corresponding to each type is also placed alongside.
So the single source Artwork/youtube/youtube.svg will result in the following files being generated:
Renders/youtube/youtube-auth.pngRenders/youtube/youtube-auth.svgRenders/youtube/youtube-both.pdfRenders/youtube/youtube-both.svg
As of 2020, there are two levels of authorisation requirements, as well as printer identification requirements.
Both kinds of authorisation tags require:
- the name of the "disclosure entity" (e.g. "Pirate Party Australia")
- the name of the person authorising it (generally the current Secretary; first initial and last name suffice)
"Basic" requirements for PPAU communications apply generally to non-printed material such as :
- the town or city of the disclosure entity, or else the town or city of the authorising person
"Full" requirements generally apply to physical material such as posters, stickers or how-to-vote cards:
- the full street address or the disclosure entity, or else one where the authorising person can be contacted
There's only one kind of printer tag:
- The name of the printer (or more likely, company name)
- The full street address of the printer (it might be necessary in some cases to use head-office location)
The render script will by default output the basic auth tag in auth-only files, and the full auth tag in files that also contain a print tag.
To temporarily override the placeholder authorisation tag text:
python3 /path/to/render.py --auth_tag AUTHORISED_BY_CTHULHU
Be careful using the --auth_tag and --print_tag flags: remember that they define the text that is to be replaced. Specifying an empty string, or something that resembles SVG, will cause issues.
To specify an alternate file containing the authorisation tag:
python3 /path/to/render.py --auth_tag_file /path/to/file
SVG doesn't support multi-page documents, but it is now possible to collate SVGs into a PDF (this is why pdfunite is needed).
This is done by a file naming convention: foo/bar_p1.svg, foo/bar_p2.svg, foo/bar_p3.svg will all be collated as foo/bar.pdf. Numbers are handled correctly (11 comes after 2) and missing pages are simply skipped.
The exact format used is the regex (.*)(_[pP])(\d+)(-\w*)?$ where the first group is the name, the second group marks a page number, the third group is the digits of the page number, and the fourth group is an optional variant descriptor, e.g. "light" or "dark". Any file extension is stripped before the regex is matched. You may pass in a different regex with --collate-fmt but the groups will of course be interpreted the same way, so the only change advised is to group 2.
pngcrush is optional with --crush; crushing PNGs at time of writing shows an average saving of 15% size, and (on author's machine) takes about 5 seconds per image updated. Disk space is pretty cheap and plentiful these days, so crushing is off by default.
A log of timestamps between which rendered files have been crushed is kept in Renders/.crush_timestamps.tsv. If you only sometimes crush PNGs you may be able to use this information
There's a semi-experimental WSGI implementation in the subdirectory of that name powering self-serve PDF generation.
Running create_index.py will generate you an index.html (which expects to be in the project root). It will also generate preview JPEGs which are much smaller than the PNGs, using ImageMagick's convert.
update.sh is designed to be run automatically on machines that don't edit the repository. It will perform a git pull, remove any deleted artwork's renders, render new/changed artwork and create index.html.
It takes several arguments:
- the "site root" (e.g.
https://example.com/ppau-graphics) is required; - whether to crush PNGs (
--crush) - the path to a log file (
--log /path/to/file).
N.B. this is changed from the previous behaviour as of 2021-07-06.
Artwork and text created by members of Pirate Party Australia is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0), unless otherwise specified.
Code created by members of Pirate Party Australia is released under the Free Software Foundation General Public License, version 3, unless otherwise specified.