OPEN SESSION: The Moleskinerie Open Thread Discussion
Welcome to OPEN SESSION: The Moleskinerie Open Thread Discussion.
Moleskinerie invites you, our visitors to share your thoughts on a special topic.
Today it is "THE MSK FORMAT - WHAT DO YOU THINK?"
MSK is a printable version for Moleskine of digital content like contacts, events or original associations of images and text. You can use the Wizard to create your own page, Introduced last summer, we'd like to know your thoughts about this application and how to make it better.
To try MSK, go here.
VIEW ALL OPEN SESSIONS HERE.
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Update:
There seems to be a problem with the comment box at the moment. We are trying to fix it soonest. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Thanks to John Tryon H. for bringing the issue to our attention.
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This is the perfect companion to my Moleskine. I've wanted a way to merge digital media into my Moleskine journals, to add photos with entries or perhaps a scan of genealogical information. I like the customization and hope more templates are in the works for even more options. I will be using it regularly- it made an already good Moleskine, better!
Posted by: Dave Baltzell | October 30, 2009 at 05:11 PM
I have tried the MSK wizard several times with generally poor results. First I grew frustrated with the rather severe restriction on the size of a grapic which can be inserted, then with the sizing of the text. I understand the former to some extent, although it seems exceedingly low, but the font sizing, which is Size 1, Size 2, etc., gives little clue to the size the font will actually appear on the page. Why not just say 10 point, 12 point, etc.?
Having done a few web pages myself, it would seem that the designer of the MSK Wizard is more familiar with HTML than with printing, and the object of MSK is to print, therefore using print conventions rather than web conventions would seem to be the more useful route.
On my last attempt, I finally gave up and used Microsoft Word to create a page similar to the MSK output. In Word I can place an image of any size and use any font/font size desired.
Posted by: John Hubbard | October 30, 2009 at 05:20 PM
I've been working with the MSK for some time now and applying it's application to my blog for readers to use. I think it's interesting that they now offer pages from various versions of Moleskine to paste inside a users own. I use the music template quite often.
Posted by: Alexander | October 30, 2009 at 06:43 PM
The templates are well done and work great for special situations, but the Wizard continues to confound me. I just tried to creat a page that included an image from my computer. The image is less than 50K and only 115 pixels wide, which seem to be the limits that MSK will accept. Without the image, the Wizard generates a nice pdf of my page, but with the image, I get this unintelligible error message:
Warning: getimagesize(http://test.moleskine.com/msk/uploaded-img/oukfui7tmjihjmo3el9tmq1644-The Big Spring very very small.jpg) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/httpd/html/moleskine/msk/mpdf1_3/mpdf.php on line 5792
mPDF error: Missing or incorrect image file: http://test.moleskine.com/msk/uploaded-img/oukfui7tmjihjmo3el9tmq1644-The Big Spring very very small.jpg
I did finally manage to get one page produced with an image on it, but it should not be this difficult to use. Am I doing something wrong or is it a MSK problem?
Posted by: John Hubbard | October 30, 2009 at 09:34 PM
OK, I've posted two rather negative comments about the MSK Wizard, so I thought I'd try to figure out why it works some times and not others. The error message (see my earlier post) was not very helpful, but indicated a problem with the image file. I tried a couple of things and found that the problem is that the file name of the image file must not contain any spaces. This is a usual convention for web pages, but not for most other uses. So, if you want to add an image to your MSK Wizard-generated page, be sure to rename it first to contain no "space" or "blank" characters.
To the MSK Wizard folks: please add this file name restriction to the instructions on the MSK Wizard page and save folks a lot of frustration - or just fix the problem in your code - your choice.
Posted by: John Hubbard | October 31, 2009 at 03:22 PM
Fourth post and some of you are probably getting tired of me by now. I'd like to assure you that I am a reasonably happy and easy to get along with guy. But, when someone provides a tool to make their own product more popular, as Moleskine has with MSK, that tool needs to work really well.
I said in my previous post that I had succeeded in creating a page containing an image with the MSK Wizard. That is true. But, when I printed it and cut along the green border, guess what, it is a little too large. Well, just trim it down a little, you might say. Unfortunately, since there is no margin control in the MSK Wizard, the printing goes almost to the edges of the page, so trimming is problematic. So, another note to the MSK Wizard folks: look at the size of your output file and consider adjusting it. Also, give us some margin control.
Posted by: John Hubbard | October 31, 2009 at 04:04 PM
For me it has not yet worked ok. I would love the templates for the contacts but cannot get it to work properly for me.
Posted by: Marcus | November 01, 2009 at 01:44 PM
"the file name of the image file must not contain any spaces"
I can't believe months of frustration can be attributed to blank spaces! Thanks to John Hubbard for your comments and solution. I've been using my own template but MSK is a convenient option.
MSK Wizard PLEASE fix the code to recognize otherwise valid file names. I would like to continue using MSK but not if I have to change every photo file name before uploading them.
Posted by: FGMcCarthy | November 03, 2009 at 06:07 PM
OK, I was wrong in my fourth post, partly at least. The MSK Wizard produces a properly sized page, something in my computer/printing process enlarged it. BUT, we still need some margin controls. When I write by hand in my journal, I leave pretty big margins, and the MSK Wizard leaves almost no margin. I tried using the table function, but that does not seem to work at all, otherwise a table might give us a sort of margin control.
Posted by: John Hubbard | November 04, 2009 at 09:44 PM
I'm really underwhelmed by the whole MSK deal to be honest. Not just in the execution which seems really quirky and cumbersome with some brief testing, but with the entire concept. I just can't see how it might be useful at all to have computerized content formatted to Moleskine sized pages that still have to be individual cut and pasted, and can't see how MSK offers much benefit over Word etc. It's one thing for a day planner or such that has a binder system, but here...
It just feels like an application in search of a purpose to me. And like some of the other posters I actually *like* Moleskines and am usually a reasonable fellow.
Posted by: Rrryan | November 13, 2009 at 08:36 AM
i have been doing that for AGES....now it's automagic!
Posted by: jgodsey | November 15, 2009 at 10:49 AM
I really kinda like the MSK Wizard idea, but for the most part it does not work very well, at least I can't get it to. The application of font and text size is erratic at best, there is no margin control, the table function (which I hoped might substitute for margin control) just gives a message "error on page" when I try it, and most pictures don't insert due to a file name problem or perhaps other reasons. In addition, when the PDF is created, the page is jammed in the corner of the paper and my printer won't print all the way to the edge, so I lose some of the printing.
Has anyone found ways to make these functions work? Is anyone from the MSK development team looking at these comments?
Posted by: John Hubbard | November 15, 2009 at 10:03 PM