Printing Tactical Console

[BHough]

I need to print my tactical console. Does anyone know how to do this? Im looking for 1 sheet with all the small stat blocks on them so I may keep track of them in a Table top game.

 

[Tarmor]

I think the only way you could do that would be a "Print Screen".

 

[manchuwook]

The hard way would be to do Custom Output, XML, entire portfolio, and then do an XSLT to transform it into a printable webpage.

 

[zarlor]

The hard way would be to do Custom Output, XML, entire portfolio, and then do an XSLT to transform it into a printable webpage.

Ouch. You've just made my brain hurt.

D In part that's just because I've looked at messing with print output from Hero Lab before, especially for making custom sheets or even outputting to a form-fillable pdf file, but it was just way too hard for me to work through it all, especially without any easily usable, or at least affordable, XSLT tranform tools.)

 

[manchuwook]

I'm a bit spoiled because I have an old copy of Altova Stylevision/XMLSpy.

 

[Dhrakken]

Use windows snipping tool and print that, easy peasy.

 

[Paragon]

Yeah, the most straightforward way would be a screencap of some stripe. Assuming, of course, the whole thing fits on one screen.

 

[jfrazierjr]

Ouch. You've just made my brain hurt.

D In part that's just because I've looked at messing with print output from Hero Lab before, especially for making custom sheets or even outputting to a form-fillable pdf file, but it was just way too hard for me to work through it all, especially without any easily usable, or at least affordable, XSLT tranform tools.)

I don't know how it works, or how well, but Notepad++ has a menu item for XSL transform. I use XML Spy for the functionality, so I can't say how good it is or is not.

Also, another "EASY"(well.. easy once you have the xslt file done), is to simply include the xst reference in your xml and open in a browser. From what I have read, there are some limitations, but for the simple cases, you can build most normal html structures such as tables and such and/or use css styling.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms757857(v=vs.85).aspx

If one were to install Perl and a few extra specific xml modules, I could write up a simple command line script to output a transformed file in about 10 lines or so.

 

[zarlor]

I had played with the character sheet output stuff some to see if I could figure out some other ways to make sheets, even using a version of Altova, but it wasn't easy for me to figure out usefully. There are plenty of form fillable PDF files for Savage Worlds settings, too, so I'd also thought about the possibility of sending out the fields that way.Suffice to say I'm just not familiar enough and even after a few days couldn't really unravel how to, at least not easiy, deal with the XML to do any of that.

 

[jfrazierjr]

I had played with the character sheet output stuff some to see if I could figure out some other ways to make sheets, even using a version of Altova, but it wasn't easy for me to figure out usefully. There are plenty of form fillable PDF files for Savage Worlds settings, too, so I'd also thought about the possibility of sending out the fields that way.Suffice to say I'm just not familiar enough and even after a few days couldn't really unravel how to, at least not easiy, deal with the XML to do any of that.

I don't know pdf tranform stuff(looked into it briefly years ago, but it made my head hurt and I had no "need" to complete the studies). However, I have a large amount of experience with xslt(more) and html(not quite as much), and could absolutely help if you have any question and/or could get you started if you give me some guideposts as to what you might be interesting in it to look like.

 

[zarlor]

If I remember right the with a form-fillable PDF it's really just pointing to the field number and telling it you wanted this output to go there, so I think that part was easy for me (although I last looked at this more than a few years ago so I maybe misremembering) it was just having an easier way to figure out what I was pulling in from Hero Lab and how to send it. I did end up messing around with the non-xslt stuff (sheet_standard1.dat and sheet_standard2.dat files) to create a big thing I needed for my players, which was a sheet that had the complete text of things instead of just the summary text (you can find those in this thread if anyone is interested). I have a few players that pretty much love to make huge assumptions about things from summary text, so forcing them to actually read the real text about that Edge they are trying to completely game on you was something I desperately needed.

I think the last time I really messed with it was from in this thread. I had figured a few things out (which I have long since forgotten since I've never messed with it since then). Largely I guess I just would prefer some way to do thing graphically, like when messing with a word processor being able to visually move elements around on a page to where you wanted and setting static things for campaign logos or the like. I long since gave up messing with it, though.

 

[jfrazierjr]

If I remember right the with a form-fillable PDF it's really just pointing to the field number and telling it you wanted this output to go there, so I think that part was easy for me (although I last looked at this more than a few years ago so I maybe misremembering) it was just having an easier way to figure out what I was pulling in from Hero Lab and how to send it. I did end up messing around with the non-xslt stuff (sheet_standard1.dat and sheet_standard2.dat files) to create a big thing I needed for my players, which was a sheet that had the complete text of things instead of just the summary text (you can find those in this thread if anyone is interested). I have a few players that pretty much love to make huge assumptions about things from summary text, so forcing them to actually read the real text about that Edge they are trying to completely game on you was something I desperately needed.

I think the last time I really messed with it was from in this thread. I had figured a few things out (which I have long since forgotten since I've never messed with it since then). Largely I guess I just would prefer some way to do thing graphically, like when messing with a word processor being able to visually move elements around on a page to where you wanted and setting static things for campaign logos or the like. I long since gave up messing with it, though.

Thanks for the links, I absolutely want more verbose sheets.

As I said, I a large part of my job for the past 17 years(well... tangentially in the first 6 years in a support role) has been dealing with XML and xsl in various forms(as well as plenty of backing code), so if you want to start looking at this again, I can absolutely help you with the xst setup of getting data from a base XML. Send me a PM if you want to coordinate more or let's open a different thread or bounce back to one of your sheet threads to keep this more clear.