Software for wine-tasting placemats

Being new at WineBerserkers, it seems polite to come bearing gifts. This is the first of two (the second).

From time to time, being more often than medically recommended but less often than wanted, I help organise port tastings. Especially if not blind, it is useful to have a placemat, that elegantly labels which glass is where.

I have written a some software that makes such placemats, and associated tasting-note pages, and foldable pages to ‘label’ the people. The software is open source, written in PostScript, and free: £0 = $0 = €0 = ¥0. The manual is available via www.jdawiseman.com/placemat.html, and the PostScript code itself at www.jdawiseman.com/papers/placemat/placemat.ps.

Regular attendees of our tastings think them excellent. The code took a lot of writing, but takes not much using: it should be used more. Please, share and enjoy. And if you need help, just ask.

Welcome, JDA! (don’t forget to add your first name in your signature, please)

Those placements look fantastic! Thank you.

Should the water boxes always be on the tasting-note sheets?

Hopefully people won’t object to a gentle bump of this thread. The placemat software is still free (not freemium, completely and utterly zero-cost free), and has been much improved over the last four years. More features; better defaults; output that is more functional and more beautiful.

Indeed, some WB regulars think well of them — you can too. Use and enjoy.

Julian is a good friend and his program is quite easy to use even for my non-computer tech savvy self. For those who’ve been at any of my tastings most likely have seen me use his program.

Thank you Andy. Though maybe a 1975 horizontal wasn’t the classiest demonstration of it. Two others:

A horizontal of 1985s:






‘Port Fit For a Queen’, on the day that Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom:



(Though these are on A4 or A3, the software copes perfectly with 8½″×11″, with 14″×8½″, and with 17″×11″.)

This is so cool!!!

Thank you. I’ll respond with more examples.

A simple blind tasting:





A splendid horizontal, with the vintage as a kerned background:




And the placemats for tomorrow’s drinking of some motley young Ports. (Free for beer then Port in London on Mon 4th Jan 2016? Contact me.)



(The third page is a new page type, Accounts. It is being printed for this event as a test. Comment welcomed—start by reading this discussion.)

Thank you Julian, I can see using these at my next party!

If you need help using it, just send me a message or an email (contact details). If you want to request features or changes or anything else, the discussion thread is on [www.ThePortForum.com

](http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=175&start=9999#bottom)
. Or, if you prefer, you can be one of the unknown number of anonymous users.

But it is excellent software, even if I say so myself, and deserves to be more widely used.

Hey - aren’t you TPF guys supposed to come to New York so that we can share the bottle of 1978 Nacional that is sitting in my cellar that I bought at auction?

VERY COOL Julian, thank you!

I’ve been trying to get them to come to this side of the pond for years. They’re scared :stuck_out_tongue:

Testing a deeper black: does CMYK print as a deeper black than RGB? Please print the first page of each and report back. Thank you

The placemat software is still there, and grows ever better. Please be encouraged to use it.

I’ve decided that the code should exist in a proper repository, to allow submission and discussion of issues, to allow others to contribute to the PostScript, and for better death-proofing. Hence ∃ github.com/jdaw1/placemat.

Two issues ask a question of GitHub experts (Software licence; Documentation: HTML or Markdown or other?). If you can answer, please do.

The move to GitHub is complete. If you have published links to this software, please update them to:
GitHub - jdaw1/placemat: Makes placemats for tastings of Port, of Madeira, whisky, beer, wine, etc.
placemat/placemat.ps at main · jdaw1/placemat · GitHub
http://raw.githubusercontent.com/jdaw1/placemat/main/PostScript/placemat.ps
as appropriate.

Everybody loves a pork pie tasting.


These pork-pie placemats were made by an abuse of the parameters, and there is discussion about whether their production should be regularised. Comment welcome, ideally in issue 153.