title: The Invitation Shuffle
author: tony
content: |

    <p>It's getting to the stage where we really have to ramp up
    the preparations.  Less than three months to go.  Cindy is
    working on the center square of the <em>chuppah</em> and I'm
    trying to get the details in place about the invitations.  Since
    I know approximately <em>bupkis</em> about sewing, I'll defer
    to Cindy if she wants to post about it.  What I do know, however,
    are invitations.  Sort of.</p>

    <p>Last night we visited our neighborhood national chain
    greeting card and stationery store to browse their giant binders
    of wedding invitations.  One of my first remarks was about
    needing teams of oxen to move the binders.  There was much
    staring at design concepts, and very little staring at invitation
    prices.  We just know we'll be paying through the nose for them,
    probably doubly so if we go down the route I really want.  But
    we pay through the nose for everything that has the word "wedding"
    attached, I bet.</p>

    <p>After staring at those binders, we went next door to a large
    national chain bookstore (does it really matter which?) and
    tried to do more research on invitation wording.  The books
    there didn't help much, though there was plenty of time to
    recline against the wall of test preparation manuals.</p>

    <p>I was led to a conclusion that seems to be popping up
    repeatedly as we try to decide on appearances and themes and
    all that: <strong>Less Is More.</strong></p>

    <p>Sure, we could use big flowery words on our invitations, and
    perhaps print them in glitter ink on vellum which unfolds in
    seventeen directions to reveal an impressionistic yet abstract
    portrait of an idealized and ethnicity-free bride and groom,
    identified only by which one wears a tuxedo and which one a
    dress.  (Hint: I'm not wearing a dress to my own wedding.)  The
    invitations would cost an arm and a leg, and maybe a kidney and
    a lung, but they'd be fabulous and generate a lot of excitement.
    Then we couldn't afford a real ceremony or honeymoon, and
    certainly not any alcohol at the reception.  I mean, fancy
    invitations are one thing, but really, a booze-free wedding?
    What is this, a Church of Christ wedding in east Texas?</p>

    <p>So to reiterate, less is more.  Which implies the word
    <strong>elegant,</strong> at least in its mathematical or
    engineering sense.  Fully functional as per the specification,
    while containing virtually no excess, overrun, or meaningless
    filler.  As simple as possible, but no simpler.</p>

    <p>The leading candidate for the English text on the invitation
    contains the phrase "invite you to dance at their wedding."
    There will be little else beyond our names, and the usual
    boilerplate about dates and times, reception to follow, yadda
    yadda.</p>

    <p>But since this is not a Church of Christ wedding in east
    Texas -- nay, in fact, it is meant to be a Jewish wedding --
    there will be a panel of Hebrew text.  It may not translate the
    English side literally, but it will be there.  There are two
    problems with that:</p>

    <ol>
        <li><p>I don't know Hebrew.</p></li>
        <li><p>Printers expect the Hebrew panel to be camera-ready.</p>
    </ol>

    <p>The first problem is easy to solve.  If the rabbi can't do
    it for us, I bet he knows someone who can.  (Our rabbi is an
    awesome rabbi.)  But that leaves the printer part.</p>

    <p>To paraphrase one of the screens they use on Mythbusters,
    <strong>WARNING! Technical Content!</strong></p>

    <p>All the examples I've seen of wedding invitations with Hebrew
    text have a lot of text on them.  Since I'm looking for something
    a bit more minimal, I figure I'd design it myself.  And while
    I'm at it, I'd design the English panel too.  And since I don't
    know the exact dimensions of the card and don't own expensive
    software from Adobe, I figure I'd use <a
    href="http://www.inkscape.org/">Inkscape</a> to produce some
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/">Scalable Vector
    Graphics</a> documents.  Export to PostScript at 2400 DPI and
    I'm ready to go, right?</p>

    <p>Oh, wait.  Fonts.  Text.  Hebrew text.  Typing Hebrew text.</p>

    <p><a href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</a> to the rescue.  Tell
    it that I want to switch between US/English and Israel/Hebrew
    keyboards.  Experimentally determine where all the letters in
    the alef-bet are, and type some text.  Now we're ready.  I'll
    just make sure it renders in another SVG viewer, such as <a
    href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/central/">Mozilla Firefox</a>
    and hold on a second, what are those boxes?  Oh, those are
    supposed to be my Hebrew letters.</p>

    <p>Find a TrueType font which has Hebrew letters up in the
    proper <a href="http://www.unicode.org/">Unicode</a> page.  Use
    <a href="http://www.google.com/">a popular Internet search
    engine</a> to find free fonts which accomplish this.  Hope that
    it puts the right characters in when I type them in my mock-ups
    because I still don't have real text because I haven't talked
    to the rabbi because I work more hours than I should during the
    day because one of my coworkers is on vacation and my boss likes
    to drop projects on me late on Fridays which require long,
    uninterrupted blocks of time unlike what I get in the middle
    of your average workday.</p>

    <p>Maybe I should just buy pre-packaged.</p>