Goal: convert TPB PDFs to baseball-card size (2.5×3.5) with a layout compatible with batch cutting.
The 1973 PDF cards are 2.75×4. Horizontal margins are 0.25, but vertical margins are only 0.125.
Margins on Scott’s 1977 set are equal! 0.25, I think. Also, I looked at a set of his as-shipped TPB cards. They are a little bigger than the PDFs, and are cut to 2.75 x 4.25, which is letter in eight pieces. They’re not cut to exactly the same size. I wonder why the PDFs aren’t laid out like the print job. Found out that the cards are laid out in Excel. (!)
Might be interesting to format them like print jobs (2.75 x 4.25) instead of 2.5 x 3.5.
Installed DarwinPorts and used it to install netpbm, Image Magick, and Xpdf.
netpbm documentation: main page and directory.
Xpdf is interesting. pdftotext will extract text, though it would take some complex parsing to grok it. (pdftotext -f 20 -l 20 -upw lenny -layout 1973_Hitters.pdf)
Brooks Robinson Baltimore 1973
Bats: Rsp TPB 2 Salary 2378
.264 vs L .254 vs R POS/R/E
0 - 10 Crazy Play! 0 - 10 3B/AV/17
11 - 70 Error? 11 - 70
71 - 80 ss LO 2b 71 - 80
81 - 96 Park Effects 81 - 96
97 - 136 gcf 1B gcf 97 - 141
137 - 151 lcf 2B rcf Pwr L: 1
152 - 188 ss DP 2b 142 - 188 Pwr R: 2
189 - 229 lcf 1B rcf 189 - 234
lcf 3B rcf 235 - 235 Speed: 6
cf SF cf 236 - 245 Steal: 2
HR 246 - 253 Jump: 1
HB 254 - 257 Bunt: 4
230 - 261 ss RG 2b 258 - 295 Clutch: T
262 - 335 BB 296 - 331 H&R: SP
336 - 349 K 332 - 345 Injury: 4
350 - 364 lfl 2B rfl Age: 36
365 - 397 ss RG 2b 346 - 384 RBI: 72
398 - 499 cf EF cf 385 - 499 BB: 55
AVG: .257 www. AB: 549 K: 50
OBP: .326 TPBaseball H: 141 SB: 2
SLG: .344 .com HR: 9 CS: 0
Info on the PDF file:
% pdfinfo -upw *** 1973_Hitters.pdf Title: 1973 Batters.xls Author: *** Creator: PScript5.dll Version 5.2 Producer: Acrobat Distiller 8.0.0 (Windows) CreationDate: Sat May 12 09:14:26 2007 ModDate: Sat Aug 25 07:37:25 2007 Tagged: no Pages: 63 Encrypted: yes (print:yes copy:yes change:yes addNotes:yes) Page size: 612 x 792 pts (letter) File size: 299175 bytes Optimized: yes PDF version: 1.6 % pdffonts -upw *** 1973_Hitters.pdf name type emb sub uni object ID ------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- --------- ArialNarrow,Bold TrueType no no no 224 0 ArialNarrow TrueType no no no 225 0 ArialNarrow TrueType no no no 195 0 ArialNarrow-Bold TrueType no no no 196 0 Arial-BoldMT TrueType no no no 197 0
pdftoppm will convert any page, but there’s some fishy font substitution. (pdftoppm -f 20 -l 20 -r 300 -gray -upw lenny -t1lib yes -freetype no 1973_Hitters.pdf x && pnmtopng x-000020.pgm > ! x.png)
pdftops does better on the fonts, but one of the bold faces is still wrong. Turns out the Arial is converted to Helvetica, but the bold & the narrowness is lost. That’s easy to fix.
Does the bold on the on-base rolls enhance or diminish readability? Here’s no bold:
Wrote card_munge.pl to rearrange a selected range of pages.
- PDF to Postscript.
- Tweak font definition.
- Convert to PBM.
- Cut out, pad, & scale each card. 2.5×3.5 in = 900×1260 pels @ 360 dpi. (Should scale, then pad.)
- Cat them together.
- Convert to PNG with resolution specified.
To do:
- Fix font tweak to be more general.
- Add guide lines/page.
- Border, scale to scale, border.
- Try big cards (8 up).