Editing Templates - lifelike/countersheetsextension GitHub Wiki
Most interesting uses of the countersheetsextension requires editing SVG templates or creating new ones from scratch. This tutorial will show the general method for this (or one possible method) without going into any details about how templates are made or all the parts they can be made up of.
It is assumed that the reader has already had a look at the Your First Countersheet tutorial and that the counters.svg file is open in Inkscape and unmodified. If counters have been generated just remove those layers. Familiarity with Inkscape is assumed as in the other tutorials, in particular some basic understanding of groups (see for instance the Official Inkscape Basic Tutorial).
A good idea is to copy counters.svg and counters.csv and work with copies, so that the original files still remain to be used with other tutorials later.
A template is really just a group of objects in a Inkscape SVG file. There is no special format or programming required to make templates for the countersheetsextension. That is the whole point of building it as an extension for Inkscape rather than a stand-alone application!
In the examples the templates are found outside of the page area in the images. That is useful because after generating a countersheet the templates will not get in the way or end up visible in PDF exports.
Templates can be spread out in different layers, although each template must be confined to a single layer because it needs to be a group and groups can not span multiple layers.
Find the template in counters.svg.
Select it and Inkscape will say that 1 group has been selected. To edit a template it is usually easiest to first ungroup it. While Inkscape has support for editing objects inside of a group it is usually more convenient to just ungroup it (ctrl-shift-G), edit it, and then group it again (ctrl-G) when done editing, so that is the approach that will be used here. Forgetting to create a new group will result in an error message when creating the countersheet.
So select the template group and ungroup it. Now the individual parts (objects) are selected. Any one of them can be modified or moved around using the usual Inkscape editing commands (outside of the scope of this tutorial).
Have a look at the Object Properties of the objects (right-click and object)! The large rectangle (square) in the back of the counter has id unit. That is how the extension finds this template when generating the countersheet (see the unit template in counters.csv?). The rectangle is used when laying out the countersheet to know the relative positions of the parts on the counter, and how big it is. Every template needs a rectangle like that with a id set to find it.
(Why not use the id of the group, asks the experienced Inkscape user? Because then it would be lost when the template is grouped and then re-grouped, making editing more error-prone! Also having a rectangle is very useful to find the size of the template and the relative positions of its contents. The rectangle can of course be invisible (alpha 0) or there is a trick to use in the CSV to not include the rectangle when generating the countersheet, although that is outside of the scope for this tutorial.)
The two large digits in the template have ids combat and move. These of course match the columns with those headers in the CSV.
The simplest thing to do is to just make visual changes. Change some colors or shapes and move things around. Add a background image perhaps? Then re-group (select all parts and press ctrl-G) the template again and run Create Countersheet. The result should now be the same countersheet as before, but counters should look like the new design.
Also try to make a change affecting the CSV. For instance what if counters should have separate attack and defend combat ratings instead just one combat value? Duplicate (not Clone!) the combat value and arrange the now three digits on the counter (the Align and Distribute dialog can be very useful for things like this). Look at the Object Properties and make sure the id of the digits are set to attack, defend, and move. Remember to group the template again when done editing. Now the CSV must be modified as well. There is no longer a combat part in the template, so change that heading to say attack instead and add a new column with a defend header. Add some values for the counters. Generate Countersheet to see the results!
| unit | attack | defend | move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 5 | 7 | 4 |
| 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
It is easy to add more simple things like that. Maybe each unit needs a name? A size? Range? Name of parent formation? Just add text objects (possibly rotate them if the text should be vertical) and make sure they have an id matching a new header in the CSV.
The same things can of course be done to add new content to the example cards.svg template. Try to add a cost to each card as a number in a corner of that template and add a cost column to cards.csv.
Optional: Check that the alignment of any added text object is correct. If text (or numbers) of different lengths are added to counters it can be important if that text is right-aligned or centered or left-aligned. This is configured in the Text and Font dialog (ctrl-shift-T) for each text object.
Warning: Make small changes and save often! Test to generate a sheet and then immediately undo (ctrl-Z) to remove the generated sheets and get back to editing the template. Save multiple copies of the SVG (or better: use version management software) to be able to go back to a known working version when something was accidentally broken.
A single SVG can contain multiple templates to use for different counters. It is also possible to create counters by Combining Templates.
See also: Editing Counters, Templates and Examples