Abilities to load templates from external files

[wizzomafizzo]

[Furluge]

I'm glad to see this is being worked on. I did not really want to have to host this to myself just to use a new template. :D

[asturur]

Do you often do templates? how do you find the svg format required?

[Furluge]

Well currently I'm planning on starting a collection and I'm looking at what my options are for printing, construction, etc. So I haven't made any templates for this project yet.

Since I'm not hosting this myself, and thus can't use the editor right now to do my own templates I had been planning to make templates in Photoshop and do them in PSD format rather than SVG. I'll be honest, I've worked in SVG before but I've never been good with doing everything in vector. It's just easier to have a very large file size big enough for printing and work in raster mode.

That being said, given the project has already provided SVGs, if I did have to work in SVG I'd start with those. I had really just wanted to stick to the current templates and change up the art on the side so for each system. Also I was playing around with the idea of going with square shapes vs rounded corners since a label maker would spit out a square label.

[asturur]

we don't have a psd parser to have the designer read psd, what you can do if you like to use the designer for search and pdf production, is to make a sandwich with two raster layer and define with the svg where the main image should be placed.

[Furluge]

Interesting.

Just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding, the ability to load a template from an external file still isn't an option in the current designer, right? To actually use the designer with a new template I'd need to host the web page myself and then add the template in, right?

That's why I brought up PSD, only in the context of not using the designer since it can't load up custom templates unless you host it yourself. It wasn't a suggesting that you should add PSD functionality. :)

[asturur]

Well you can run it locally, is very simple, is just a couple of commands that we can clearly document in the readme ( if are not there already ).
To add a template to the designer today you need to copy the files in a folder and reference them.
We do not have templates that reference static images, so i m not exactly sure how that would work. The best bet would be to use data url strings for raster layers, that are extremely ugly but as of now are a safe option.

I don't use windows anymore, so i m not sure if under windows is as simple as having nodejs installed or you need something else, but under linux or macos is straight forward.
Clone the repo, yarn , yarn dev, and the designer is running on your localhost.

You could like to use the designer if:

• you find the layour on the a4 easy to use
• you like the quality of the pdf output
• you like the search engine

Having those 3 combined together is faster than doing it manually in photoshop.

templates can also be a very simple background jpeg, if we propose svg is just if you really like to have a neat printing option, but jpegs are ok too.

We usually develop features when we see there is interest in using them, last months i didn't do much on the designer because i didnt find people looking for features.

I love adding templates, so if you have templates you would like to contribute please do so.