Spriter - a chart generator for Mac

[ScienceDad]

*** Updated to version 0.3.3 beta ***
*** Updated to version 0.3.1 beta ***

Hi folks,

I've been working on an open-source version of KG Chart for a few weeks and finally put some finishing touches and generated an application bundle for Mac OS X. I've attached a zipped copy at the bottom of this post. Share and Enjoy!

(Oh, and please let me know if there are any bugs or features you'd like to see. This is, after all, a work in progress!)

Here's an example of Spriter in action:

A PNG file. The colour palette MUST be the full (default) 16.7 million colours. If it is compressed to 256 colours indexed then it won't work!

This is no longer true as of version 0.3.3. Spriter now supports indexed PNGs as as well as alpha channels.

You just have to drag-and-drop the PNG file onto the Spriter icon and it will spit out a PostScript file.

crono.png (2.04 KiB) Viewed 11899 times

When you double-click the PostScript file [note: Spriter now automatically opens the PostScript for you as of version 0.3.1], your Mac will automatically convert it into a PDF like this:

crono_from_pdf.png (257.73 KiB) Viewed 11356 times

I hope someone out there finds this useful!
- sd.

[Lord Libidan]

Hey ScienceDad,

I've seen you posting a few things here and there about this, and as a mac user I'm very interested, but like complete programs and not fiddling around with script, etc.
However, I drag my png in, and it says "processing" and then quits. Nothing follows. Was I doing something wrong? I believe my image was the full colour set too.

Also, reading your post, have you considered being able to:
1 - 'print' the pattern as a pdf?
2 - Being about to change the size of the image? KG chart has a lot of customize-ability, and this is clearly very new, but I use that feature a lot...

Also, I'd quite like to see a full set of icons, I noticed some of your colours had icons, some not, I regularly use images with very similar colours, so different icons is a must for me really...

Although all that said, thank you so much for making one Its about time someone did, us Mac users are a bit left out...

[ScienceDad]

Hi LL,

Thanks for your feedback :-)
If you do a drag-and-drop, Spriter will pop up a window that says processing and then automatically quit. There should now be a new file in the same folder as your *.png file called *.ps (where * is whatever the filename prefix was).

Please let me know if it worked ok!

Could you please explain what you mean by printing a pattern? You should be able to open up the PostScript file in Preview and print from there - or am I confused? :-)

Re: changing size of image, I could work that into a revision but that's the sort of thing I tend to do in GraphicConverter. Having said that, the PNG library in Python may have that kind of functionality.

Re: icons, I coded an adaptive algorithm that detects which colours are similar to one another and then only annotates the minimum of colours that it needs to distinguish those "neighbours" from each other. I'm working form the philosophy of keeping the chart as simple as possible. KG Chart output looks cluttered to me, IMHO :-)

Cheers,
- sd.

[ScienceDad]

Hi again,

Now that I've had a good look at my Chrono Trigger example, I can see that it could use some more "icons" (I call them annotations ). So I'm going to lower the sensitivity so that Spriter is more liberal about assigning icons to differentiate similar colours.

I'm also going to try having Spriter automatically spawn a new window containing the PostScript image so that when you drag-and-drop a PNG file onto the Spriter window, something will actually happen. Better user experience and all that

Thanks again for your feedback!
- sd

[Lord Libidan]

If you do a drag-and-drop, Spriter will pop up a window that says processing and then automatically quit. There should now be a new file in the same folder as your *.png file called *.ps (where * is whatever the filename prefix was).

Nope, nothing happens at all... did a search too, and it doesn't produce anything.

Could you please explain what you mean by printing a pattern? You should be able to open up the PostScript file in Preview and print from there - or am I confused? :-)

The example pattern is quite small, but I do some up to 2 foot wide, so printing one image would massively shrink it so you can't really see whats what. So some way of saving it as a pdf, which splits the image up, like KGchart does so each page has only 65x45 'cells' so you can see the whole thing a lot easier. I used the word print as to do it on KGchart you need a separate program which acts like a printer to save it as a pdf.

Re: icons, I coded an adaptive algorithm that detects which colours are similar to one another and then only annotates the minimum of colours that it needs to distinguish those "neighbours" from each other. I'm working form the philosophy of keeping the chart as simple as possible. KG Chart output looks cluttered to me, IMHO :-)

I find it a bit cluttered too, I try to use a free online one as much as possible http://www.patternsforyou.com/en/pattern_maker.html but it has a size limit, so isn't as useful as I'd like...

Also, what about limiting the colours? Something I never really use, but I've seen people cut down full photo's to 10-20 colours. Although even for someone who doesn't understand programming, I can work out that'd be hard.

No need to thank me, its something I've been looking for, for a while now. I'm just glad someone's working on it Message me if you need a tester or anything, but I'll keep my eye out for newer versions anyway.

[ScienceDad]

If you do a drag-and-drop, Spriter will pop up a window that says processing and then automatically quit. There should now be a new file in the same folder as your *.png file called *.ps (where * is whatever the filename prefix was).

Nope, nothing happens at all... did a search too, and it doesn't produce anything.

Aw, MAN.
That's weird because I've tried downloading the app on my work computer and it processed the Chrono balloon example png just fine.
Could you please post the *.png file you were trying to use so that I can try to reproduce the problem on my side?

Could you please explain what you mean by printing a pattern? You should be able to open up the PostScript file in Preview and print from there - or am I confused? :-)

The example pattern is quite small, but I do some up to 2 foot wide, so printing one image would massively shrink it so you can't really see whats what. So some way of saving it as a pdf, which splits the image up, like KGchart does so each page has only 65x45 'cells' so you can see the whole thing a lot easier. I used the word print as to do it on KGchart you need a separate program which acts like a printer to save it as a pdf.

Ah, I get it. Ok, I will work multiple page printing into a revision.

Also, what about limiting the colours? Something I never really use, but I've seen people cut down full photo's to 10-20 colours. Although even for someone who doesn't understand programming, I can work out that'd be hard.

Yes, I've thought about that. I've been meaning to try a k-means clustering algorithm that will take the number of colours you want to end up with and collapse down the colours in the image accordingly. That'll have to wait for another revision!

No need to thank me, its something I've been looking for, for a while now. I'm just glad someone's working on it Message me if you need a tester or anything, but I'll keep my eye out for newer versions anyway.

Well this feedback has been really valuable already

cheers,
- sd.

[Lord Libidan]

If you do a drag-and-drop, Spriter will pop up a window that says processing and then automatically quit. There should now be a new file in the same folder as your *.png file called *.ps (where * is whatever the filename prefix was).

Nope, nothing happens at all... did a search too, and it doesn't produce anything.

Aw, MAN.
That's weird because I've tried downloading the app on my work computer and it processed the Chrono balloon example png just fine.
Could you please post the *.png file you were trying to use so that I can try to reproduce the problem on my side?

Well I first tried it with your chrono image, but I've done it with loads of other png's and they don't do anything either. I'm running OS X 10.5.8, if that helps...

[ScienceDad]

Well I first tried it with your chrono image, but I've done it with loads of other png's and they don't do anything either. I'm running OS X 10.5.8, if that helps...

And that last statement was the missing piece of the puzzle!
I was packaging the application using the default version of Python (2.6) on Snow Leopard (10.6). Your Mac, being on Leopard, most probably runs an older version of Python (2.5). So now I've re-packaged the Spriter application using Python 2.5.

Hopefully it will now work properly on your machine! I am updating the attachment in the first post at the top of this thread, rather than spam the forum with multiple versions. Please, please let me know if this fixes the problem for you

Cheers,
- sd.

[ScienceDad]

Oh, and an unfortunate issue that I did not anticipate is that one must be running at least OS X 10.5 (Leopard) for this revision of Spriter (0.2 beta ) to work properly.

If there's anyone out there running 10.4, then I may be able to package another version of Spriter that should also run. Just lemme know!

[Lord Libidan]

Ah, now it works. I did notice 2 problems though. Firstly the colour list can go 'off the page' if they image isn't wide enough. And secondly, a colour came up twice... I put an image in so you could see. The colours also seem slightly off. The pattern I posted doesn't really show it, but I uploaded an earth with a definitely blue sea, and it came out one of the most purple threads there are... I'll still experiment some more and see if other colours are a bit off too, but on the most they look fine.

plumber.jpg (362.65 KiB) Viewed 11731 times