User talk:Hchc2009

• Archived discussions, 2009 - May 2015

Castle plans

I have been seeing and appreciating the castle floor plans you have uploaded. The clarity is admirable, but you have used PNG format (which, as you know, on a wiki is the Devil's own graphics format).

I have adapted the Portland Castle plan in SVG as File:Portland Castle plan.svg. SVG is the best format for plans - as a vector format, its lines are exact and scalable without limit. (I am aware that in adapting the plan I was not drawing a picture of the fortress but a picture of your picture of the fortress.)

I don't of course know how you did the plans. If you originally drew the plans in a vector format for example in PDF or EMF, an SVG conversion just takes a click or two, or it can be drawn from scratch in a programme like Inkscape. Hogweard (talk) 07:34, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! You'll probably wince a bit, as I suspect this is rather low tech, but I tend to use a combination of "hand-drawn" Inkscape for the first cut (I don't use it very efficiently, being self-taught), with Paint for pixel-by-pixel work, Photoshop as necessary, and then return to Inkscape again for labelling. For some reason, the font on my early Inkscape .svg's never looked right on the wiki - but that was a while ago! I'm conscious of the limitations of PNG as a format though. Is there an easy way of converting a .png to a .svg that you'd recommend? Hchc2009 (talk) 09:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I found the font problem too: the wiki programme recognises very few fonts, but it will recognise Liberation Sans and Liberation Serif. Alternatively (what I have often done) select the text and do "Path" - "Object to Path".

Converting PNG to SVG is not an exact thing, but you can select the picture and click "Path" - "Trace Bitmap". You'll need to tidy it up substantially from that point, and it is best to trace just the elements that you have hand drawn, or it will trace everything as one bit path. (I started working on your Cromwell's Castle plan with roof.png picture and for the bits representing the cliffs around it I blanked everything else in MS Paint first so it could trace just those lines. The cobbles in the courtyard are the bit I have not finished yet - I am doing them more geometrically but you can imagine why I put it aside for a rest!)

Hogweard (talk) 12:30, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I have finally got round to finishing off Cromwell's Castle plan with roof.svg. I hope it will do. I think I will call it a day with that one. Hogweard (talk) 22:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Hannibal Barca coin

I responded to your deletion request at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Carthaginian coin of Hannibal Barca depicting Melqart, 220-202 BC.jpg. --PericlesofAthens (talk) 23:26, 26 October 2016 (UTC)