OpenStreetMap
Update to OSM Promotional Leaflets due to Padding errors
Posted by alexkemp on 31 January 2019 in English. Last updated on 5 February 2019.This is a small update to a sequence of posts on updating some small leaflets originally produced by Andy Allan:–
- Fonts missing from OSM Promotional Leaflets
- Github HowTo: Clone Repository then make a Pull Request
- Printing OSM Promotional Leaflets
- Update to OSM Promotional Leaflets due to Padding errors
- Adding a Preview JPG + crop-marks for printing
Diary website 500 errors
Yesterday & earlier today this website was producing a HTTP 500 errors (server error, explicitly reported as an error in communicating with a 3rd-party server). It occurred as I attempted to update my post on Printing OSM Promotional Leaflets. I sent an email to the Server folks.
A few minutes ago I succeeded in updating that post but again noticed occasional problems, which appeared to be connected with the Markdown used on this site. Openstreetmap.org is also sometimes very slow in loading a page.
Those paragraphs above were a quick heads-up for others that may be attempting to post on this site. Now back to the OSM Promotional Leaflets…
Update to OSM Promotional Leaflets due to Padding errors
Yesterday I should have reached the end of this little series of posts as the updated leaflets were printed & successfully delivered to my next-door-but-one neighbour. However, looking at them closely I realised that the padding was bad in places. In other words, a bit of a Curate’s Egg.
Right Reverend Host: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad Egg, Mr Jones!”;
The Curate: “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!”
GitHub Changes
I spent a few hours making a comprehensive fix, then uploaded those changes to GitHub. I’ve changed the GitHub layout to try to make it easy to spot the original (now out-of-date) SVG files within a Inkscape-r9886 directory, whilst the updated files are within a Inkscape-r15371 directory. The pre-prepared PDF file for printing (‘osmflyer.pdf’, a combo-pdf of both top & bottom parts of the leaflet) is within the top-level directory.
Within the Inkscape-r15371 directory, I have completely re-done the Guides for each SVG (by default, visibility for Guides is switched OFF so, until I looked, I did not know that Andy had included any). Each Guide now contains an explanatory label. They are:–
- 4 x Guides at page-edges (Page top, bottom, left & right)
- 4 x Guides at page-edge-padding (4mm Padding top, bottom, left & right)
- 3 x Guides at each fold (Fold centre, left & right
- 6 x Guides at each fold-padding (4mm Padding at left-fold-left & right, centre-fold-left & right + right-fold-left & right
Complicated to explain in words, easy to understand when viewed inside Inkscape.
Once I had got all the Guides in place it was relatively easy (if immensely fiddly, and especially on the reverse side) to re-position and/or shrink content within the Guides rather than spilling over towards the page-edges.
Update Feb 1
Having just added info on the SVG Guides (above), and having loaded Inkscape-r15371/osmflyer1.svg to refresh my mind, I could not stop myself making some little improvements to the text layout between the Guides & re-uploading all changes.
If/when I use up all the current leaflets & get some more then I shall fix the already-out-of-date photos.
Discussion
Comment from annamalinowska1 on 1 February 2019 at 07:12
Hm. I dont use paper map but I have that one when my phone or gps have low battery.
Comment from zarl on 1 February 2019 at 10:11
I had a quick look at the PDFs (when it was too late to stop you from ordering) and already suspected a problem with the resulting prints.
With a PDF/X prepared for print (i.e. not using an office printing machine but professional offset or digital print) the concept of MediaBox (whole document), TrimBox ( and in this case the BleedBox (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_(printing) ) needs to be taken notice of. Still these are not correctly defined.
Also for print your the contents in your document which hit the edge need to actually extend about 2 or 3 mm around the border of the doc to allow for cutting.
As I’m used to QuarkXpress, InDesign and Illustrator I’ll need to dive into Inkscape and Scribus to come up with a better workflow (and / or a template) for this project.
Comment from alexkemp on 1 February 2019 at 11:32
Hi @zarl
Inkscape has an option during the Save As…(PDF) process to add bleed to the PDF. It also auto-saves the PDF in PDF/X, adding font glyphs to the PDF. There also appears to be options to add a colour-profile, though I never explored that.
I think that the padding issues came about due to a combo of:
The bottom line is that the printer I used was able to use the PDF to produce a print accurate to the drawing.