Temp Charsheet Notes
From Sagataflwiki
This is a repository for notes pertaining to the layout of the printable character sheet output from the Libre Office "Calc" spreadsheet. It's not about the spreadsheet itslf, only about layout and content, focusing initially on the "front page", the one supposed to give as many of the basics about the character as possible. Therefore this material is not intended to be eventually moved out into other articles properly written, formatted and explained.
Paper formats
A4 vs Letter
A4 is 210mm x 297mm, while the "Letter" format used in the USA and a very few other countries, is 215.9mm x 279.4 mm.
To make an output area that'll work for both, the sheet will start with a default assumption of A4 in landscape (wider-than-tall) format, and 10mm margins at top and bottom and 20mm margins at left and right sides.
Then users who have a Letter printer must manually change the paper size to Letter, and change the margins (in Calc, this is done in Format->Page or something) of left and right from 20mm to 10mm. The top/bottom margins are left unchanged (maybe add 2mm to top and 3mm to bottom).
This gives a "field to work with" of 257mm in width (297mm widest measurement, from which we subtract 20mm twice), and 190mm in height (210mm height measurement, from which we subtract 10mm twice).
Or maybe it's easier simply to invent a custom paper format that is 257mm x 190mm, and then let the end user and/or the end user's computer and software figure out how to deal with it. One might foresee less hassle and confusion with Letter format users that way, since they won't have to actually change anything.
(On second thought, going for a width of 256mm, 1mm less, gives a huge benefit, as described further down.)
140% zoomability
All pages should be splittable down the middle, along the long axis (i.e. by a vertical line) so that they can be printed each onto two sheets of physical paper, creating a x1.4 zoom, so that the font size is effectively TNR 14 instead of TNR 10. This is for the benefit of users who are slightly vision-impaired. Users with more severe vision impairment cannot be serviced, but most find their own solutions (and ideally share then with others).
This means that the front page of the character sheet must be symmetrical with a split straight down the middle, whereas the previous versions have tended to be lopsided with "wider" boxes on the left size and the most narrow boxes on the right side.
The 2nd page, probably for a list of Advantages and Perks, should likewise be split down the middle.
Same goes for the Skill output pages, both the shorter ones for in-play use (which may well contain 4 columns of Skills per sheet) and the detailed ones that deal with character advancement (the SP cost for each of the next 6, or 7 or 8 - still undecided - Skill Levels) and contain additional information such as APT.
The need to be able to split the Skills pages down the middle is also why the Landscape format is retained. Otherwise the plan would have been to use Portrait format (taller-than-wide)
Font use
Oh yes, Times New roman (TNR) will be used, because it's the "safe" font that almost everybody has. It is regrettable that a nicer font like Goudy Old Style (the Chief Designer's all time favourite font) cannot be used, but using a font that not everyone has will almost certainly cause problems, with output pages not fitting onto the paper, for some users, and barriers-to-adoption should be minimized when possible.
First page
The first page is the "this is what the character is"-intro, and should define the very basics of the character. Almost from the get-go, the idea has been to have a lot of white boxes on a grey background (20% grey because lighter shades of grey doesn't always show as visible on all printers, e.g. laser printers with partially spent toner cartridges), with one box for each Primary Attribute (and one for Strength) but each such box also defining all sub-Attributes, and also pertinent Derived Stats. For instance, the Creativity or Creative Derived Stat goes in the Intelligence box.
Until now, these boxes have all been laid out in columns, with the sheet typically being divided into 6 columns not of equal width, often with a very wide column on the left side, then some middle-width columns and a somewhat more narrow column on the right side, the idea being that the boxes on the right side would tend to contain fairly long text strings such as Character Name followed by the full name of the character, whereas the boxes on the right side would tend to be very terse in their content, containing a short stat name followed by a simple one-digit numerical value.
Also present are additional boxes for things like Flaws, appearance description (hair colour, beard, hairstyle, voice, et cetera) to emphasize that a Sagatafl character is an individual and not a stick figure, a box for Reflexes (if that's not combined into one of the existing boxes), a Sagatafl FFRE logo, and a box defining Sagatafl's scale, i.e. "3 is average et cetera".
The logo will remain present. The scale will be contracted so that only odd numbers are given. This almost halves the number of cells the scale box "costs", because values like 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 can be left out.
As for the boxes themselves, they'll no longer be organized into fixed width columns, but instead each be as wide as required.
This is accomplished by dividing the width of the sheet into 71 columns each 3.6mm wide (totalling to just under 256mm). The 2 outmost columns are used for border, leaving 69 columns to be alocated to boxes all as wide as they need to be, achieved via cell-merging.
Internally in each box, the old style will be maintained. At the top of each Attribute box is the name of the Attribute in a right-justified cell, in boldface. To the right of that in non-boldface is the numerical value of the Attribute, in a left-justified cell.
Below is another row, where the name of the stat is in boldface unless it is a sub-Attribute (then it's non-boldface) again followed by the numerical value of the stat.
When needed, these two sub-cells are merged to form one very wide cell, e.g. for the character's name.
