3 free software tools to make cards, borders and diplomas

Nothing better than ending the week with a contribution from one of our readers: 3 free software tools out of the ordinary (a builder of borders, one of cards and another of diplomas).

I am Julio Sánchez Berro, from Dos Hermanas (Seville-Spain), my hobby is programming and I wanted to tell you about several programs that I have done together with Antonio Sánchez from the distribution PussycatPicarOs 2013, and that are available to the general public, in case you see it convenient to make a post on your blog.

Tell you that they are free and free software, and that they work on Debian and derivatives of it.

Orlas Maker

The first of them in a program to create graduation or end of educational cycles borders (the ones we see in schools, institutes, nursery schools, universities, etc.).

It helps us to organize "visually" automatically (or manually) the different photos of students and teachers with their data (names and surnames), on the border.

You can enter the data using a form that allows the capture of the photograph by the web cam and / or "dragging and dropping" the images from the file browser (nautilus / dolphin), taking advantage of the file name to take data from the person.

We have several templates available (more than 10), which we can edit and modify or create new ones and add them using the Inkscape program. (http://inkscape.org/?lang=es)

It also allows you to automatically apply different effects to the photographs of teachers and / or students: V-shaped cutouts, ellipses, adding colored frames and images of frames.

The output is generated in .SVG format, which can be edited with Inkscape, to further customize the border.

Card generator

This program is designed for the educational environment, and facilitates the creation of a large number of cards in an automatic way with the self-filling of the supplied data.

The data can be entered using a form (which allows the capture of the photograph by the webcam) and also by "dragging and dropping" the images, taking advantage of the file name for data collection.

It also has several templates, which can be edited or added more, using the Inskape program as an editor.

It generates a file in .PDF format, so that we can print it easily. It also has options for automatic numbering of the cards, printing of a specific card, etc.

Diploma builder

Also intended for the educational environment, it facilitates the creation of diplomas for students. For example, each end of the term or end of the course, a series of diplomas are usually awarded to students (to the best reader, the best classmate, the best behavior, the best calculator, etc ...).

With this program, there are several standard diplomas (which we can modify, create new ones and add them), and with the data of the students, these diplomas are generated by filling in these diplomas.

 When it is needed again, you just have to change the data of the students, and the new diplomas will be automatically filled in.

The output it generates is .PDF and .SVG format files (which can be edited with Inkscape).

More info

The web pages of the applications, where you can find more information (screenshots, video tutorials) and download the installation files (.deb):

• http://creadordeorlas.blogspot.com.es
• http://constructordiploma.blogspot.com.es/
• http://generadorcarnets.blogspot.com.es

The source code of the programs are hosted in code.google.

As technical data, the language I have used to program them has been prawns3, which must be installed in order to run the programs.

For example, to install gambas3 in Ubuntu it would be through ppa (to have the latest stable version):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa: nemh / gambas3 
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 73C62A1B  
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gambas3