Schildergenerator

A web service to quickly create and print signs using a common design. Especially useful for events.

You might find it useful in the following scenarios:

• You need to set up an event where visitors need signs to point them around.
• You often need to change some signs in your organization.
• You're bored in the Fachschaftsbüro.

What you need for this tool to unleash it's maximum potential:

• A printer on premise.
• Some kind of server, preferrably running a flavor of Linux, capable of printing on said printer via lpd interface. A RaspberryPi would suffice, even if it's slow.
• Web clients of any type being able to connect to said server.
• The knowledge to modify a LaTeX template to fit your organizations design.

After you put in the initial work of setting this up, you'll have a service where everyone on your team can quickly create a new sign as soon as they see a need for it (provided they've got a mobile web client) just by typing a headline and some text, selecting or uploading an image -- and by the time they arrive at the printer, the sign is already printed and ready to be posted on the wall. All while heeding the event's design.

This script frees the event organisators of the responsibility to pre-think all the details of sign-making. Instead, this part can simply be delegated to the helpers who are setting up the event by showing them the web frontend of this tool.

Dependencies

• python-flask, python-genshi
• python-pythonmagick, graphicsmagick
• pdflatex, latex-beamer, texlive-latex-extra, lexlive-lang-german
• cups, cups-bsd
• some pypi-packages: requirements.txt
• libapache2-mod-wsgi for production use (or anything capable of running WSGI apps really…) or
• docker.io, docker-compose

Download

   $ git clone https://github.com/kif-ev/schildergenerator.git

Config

• for testing and production use using wsgi: copy config.py.example to config.py and edit it to your needs.
• for production use using wsgi: copy schildergen.wsgi.example to schildergen.wsgi and edit it.
• for using docker: copy config.py.docker to config.py and edit it to your needs.

Modify the templates

A suitable test workflow might be recreating the same sign in the webinterface while always saving under the same name.

After you're done with modifying the template, you might want to run

$ python schilder.py --recreate-cache

to delete all cached pdf and image thumbnails, then re-run pdflatex on all saved signs. Accessing the webinterface will recreate the rest of the cached image thumbnails.

Running in test/debug mode

You need to have the config done. Then you could just start the server in debug mode:

   $ python schilder.py

This will serve a webpage at http://localhost:5432/ for testing purposes.

General directory layout

schildergenerator
    ├── schilder.py
    ├── config.py
    ├── schilder.wsgi
    ├── data	(sign store: needs to be writable, recursively)
    │   ├── cache	(template preview cache)
    │   ├── images	(image store + thumbnail cache)
    │   ├── pdf	(pdf versions of all signs, including thumbnails)
    │   └── upload	(image upload handler temp dir, non-empty only after errors)
    ├── static	(static web UI files)
    ├── templates	(web UI HTML templates)
    └── tex		(strictly LaTeX sign templates only)
        └── support (everything your LaTeX template needs: includes, macros, logo files, ...)

Webserver Deployment

See http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/deploying/ for all deployment options.

Example config for the Apache Webserver, following http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/deploying/mod_wsgi/:

    LoadModule wsgi_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_wsgi.so
    WSGIRestrictStdout Off

    <VirtualHost *:443>
            ServerAdmin admin@server.test
            DocumentRoot /path/to/schildergen
            ServerName server.name.org
            AddDefaultCharset utf-8
            ErrorLog /path/to/log
            CustomLog /path/to/log
            
            SSLEngine on
            SSLCertificateFile /path/to/www.example.com.cert
            SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/www.example.com.key

            WSGIDaemonProcess schildergen user=www-data group=www-data threads=2
            WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/schildergen.wsgi

            <Directory /path/to/schildergen.wsgi>
                    AllowOverride All
                    WSGIProcessGroup schildergen
                    WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}
                    WSGIScriptReloading On
                    Order deny,allow
                    Allow from all
            </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>

Contributors

• Dave Kliczbor dave@fsinfo.cs.tu-dortmund.de
• Lars Beckers larsb@fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de
• Moritz Holtz moritz@fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de
• Konstantin Kotenko konstantin@fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de
• Christoph Heinen heinen.fsinfo@uni-bonn.de

Image Sources

• USNPS pictograms taken from the Open Icon Library: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openiconlibrary/
• Font Awesome pictograms are taken from the Font Awesome project: https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/