掲示板 Forums - [DEVELOPMENT] renshuu hanko (seal) store - discussion here!

[b]Test/preview page[/b]
http://www.renshuu.org/index.php?page=user/hanko_make


[b]Known bugs[/b]
None, currently

[b]Not yet finished[/b]
No saving to your profile
No points pricing marked on sizes, characters, and borders
[hr]

[b]What's a hanko[/b] -
Hankos are small, personal seals used by the Japanese in the way that we use signatures. They can range from 1 to 16 (or more?) characters in length, usually marking one's name and job position/company.

Here is a yahoo japan image search on hankos (I've attached a few I made to the bottom)
http://image-search.yahoo.co.jp/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=top_ga1_sa&p=%E5%88%A4%E5%AD%90

I'm going to make a hanko store at the site where you can make seals using your genki/suki points. They'd be larger than avatars, and you'd be able to display them on your uchi page as well as use them in place of your avatars (You can go to my pathetic sentences page to see what I mean by 'larger than avatar' - you could have a hanko replace most/all of your personal information on sentences, comments, etc. : http://www.renshuu.org/index.php?page=grammar/user&user_id=1 )


[b]Goals/Purpose[/b]
1. Be fun/interesting
2. Encourage activity throughout the site (writing comments, sentences, etc)

[b]Ways to customize[/b]
1. [u]Number of characters/size of hanko[/u]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 16 character arrangements (in square, rectangular, or straight line arrangements)

2. [u]Border around characters[/u]: no border, circular/oval, rectangle, rounded rectangle

3. [u]colors[/u]: white background with colored letters/border or colored background with white letters/border

4. [u]different japanese fonts[/u]: will initially start with 10-12 fonts, with more slowly added. Only a few are initially available; the rest will be bought with points.

5. [u]Message[/u]: write a Japanese message, using hiragana, katakana, kanji, ABCs, or numbers. All non-kanji characters are free, as are kanji you've studied a bit on renshuu. Kanji you haven't studied will cost a few points per kanji used in your message.

[b]How to buy a design[/b]
Your genki points and suki points will be currency. Your point totals will never go down, they'll just get 'used'.
[u]Colors[/u]: free!
[u]Borders, size of hanko[/u]: varying costs
[u]Fonts[/u]: varying costs (once you buy a font, you can use it for all future hankos)
[u]Characters in message[/u]: everything is free except for kanji you haven't studied before on the site.

There will be 4 different types of points: 3 types of genki points (based on where you got them), and suki points. Genki points will be split into: quizzing, creation (writing sentences), and helping (writing comments, making corrections, rating sentences, etc).

While some of the larger hankos and cooler fonts will be fairly expensive, most users will be able to make a simple hanko with only 50-100 genki points.

That's the gist of it! You'll be able to have a collection of hankos, and I might allow trading hankos back in for half-points or something.

Let me know what you think!

I don't have the software built yet so I had to whip up a fast one (and it could only support 2 characters), but... http://www.renshuu.org/index.php?page=grammar/user&user_id=1 (might need to hold shift and reload that page to force the new file to download)

I think it'd be cool if I could find a font like that to add to the collection, but at least in the beginning, the fonts will be 'normal' writing that, you know, normal people can read.

Just found some program for the example.

The hankos will be created by the server and will be output as an image for your account. It won't be actual text, so there won't be any issue with whether or not the other users have that font.

For example, I'll initially be started with some of the fonts here: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Japanese.html << they're all quite readable, but they cover a nice cross-section of styles.

There will definitely be examples of what can be made (it's just that now, there's nothing since the system hasn't been built).

As for explanations, though - I personally don't think users should feel tied into mimicking the patterns used in Japan. Over there, it's overwhelmingly for a)names and b)job positions. I think users should feel free to fill their hankos with whatever they want, whether it's

マイケル
練習社長
僕は最高

or whatever.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but there will be a preview feature on the creation page where you'll be able to see everything before you make a 'purchase'.

I've got a sandbox version in complete - it's by no means complete or without bugs, but I think it looks great so far, and wanted you guys to try it out.

http://www.renshuu.org/index.php?page=user/hanko_make

<strong>Known bugs</strong>
Sometimes (circular borders only?) the characters don't appear
On the rectangles, the borders aren't always the same thickness on each side

<strong>Not yet finished</strong>
No saving
No points pricing marked, just the explanation to the left
There's no buying of fonts yet, so they're all enabled by default

I had a lot of fun playing with it, I can't wait for this to go live!

My only minor issue was that I was hoping to be able to do the ones where you have one big, two little? So that if you had three characters they would make a square.

Here's what I came up with:

[img]http://pics.livejournal.com/mousapelli/pic/002pxfcz[/img]

I assume moussapelli means one big double-wide kanji and two small ones, but all the same height...or maybe one double-tall...etc?

something like this: http://www.alangratz.com/image_hanko.jpg

one minor request I would have is to allow a rectangular border with rounded corners, like so:

http://www.alljapankarate.com/albums/Misc-Website/prince_hanko.jpg

otherwise...super cool!

edit: also...generally the hanko I've seen have larger kanji and less whitespace, the second example above gives the idea...is there a way to make the font bigger so the characters take up more space in the border?

understandable. what are you coding the image manipulation with, out of curiousity?

what would be *super cool* (but a lot harder to implement) - allowing the characters to be sized/positioned by the user. this would handle both of the cases mentioned above...could potentially provide some kind of widget that allows drawing boxes on the chosen background, one for each character, then rasterize each character and resizing it to fit in the appropriate box.

but I guess if you're having a hard time spacing/positioning at it is, then this is a lot to ask :)

[quote author=mousapelli link=topic=837.msg4758#msg4758 date=1271365741]
Right, ダニエル's example is pretty close, only I didn't mean x1.5. I was thinking like if you had three characters, to have the first one take up two units of space, and then the other two would take up one unit of space each. So it'd still be square. The big one might be a touch elongated.
[/quote]

If you don't want it elongated, how will it be any bigger than the other ones? If there was no elongation, the first character would be centered vertically, but there's be a lot of white space above and below it.

[quote author=ダニエル link=topic=837.msg4757#msg4757 date=1271364614]
understandable. what are you coding the image manipulation with, out of curiousity?

what would be *super cool* (but a lot harder to implement) - allowing the characters to be sized/positioned by the user. this would handle both of the cases mentioned above...could potentially provide some kind of widget that allows drawing boxes on the chosen background, one for each character, then rasterize each character and resizing it to fit in the appropriate box.

but I guess if you're having a hard time spacing/positioning at it is, then this is a lot to ask :)
[/quote]

It's all with php's gd library. It's not great, but I've somehow gotten it working so far. I found someone else who had built an antialiased arc library, so I might be able to use that to round off the corners. I believe with that, though, the curve would only be on the outside of the rectangle, and not the inside.

positioning characters? You're crazy! Get back to me in half a year :P

I'm uploading some changes that'll make the characters fit more snugly.

[quote author=マイケル link=topic=837.msg4760#msg4760 date=1271369232]
[quote author=mousapelli link=topic=837.msg4758#msg4758 date=1271365741]
Right, ダニエル's example is pretty close, only I didn't mean x1.5. I was thinking like if you had three characters, to have the first one take up two units of space, and then the other two would take up one unit of space each. So it'd still be square. The big one might be a touch elongated.
[/quote]

If you don't want it elongated, how will it be any bigger than the other ones?
[/quote]

It would have to be elongated, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying, for the sake of squareness, I would be okay with the larger character looking somewhat stretched.