Add support for stroke-based ("engraving") fonts
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Inkscape |
Fix Released
|
Wishlist
|
Windell Oskay |
Bug Description
Wishlist item.
Inkscape does not presently support single-stroke or other stroke-based fonts, also known as engraving fonts. Engraving fonts are ones where the visible portion of any given character is the *stroke*, not the *fill*.
Engraving fonts are commonly used when producing text-containing files that will eventually be fed to fabrication tools, when either of the following two conditions is true:
1. The fabrication time depends on the total path length (e.g., pen plotter, vinyl cutter, milling machine)
2. The fabrication tool resolution is non-negligible, so that the stroke width is an important part of the character shape
Here are some examples cases (and, just ones that I have personally come across!) where lack of engraving fonts support is an inconvenience in Inkscape:
1. Preparing a file to be printed on a vector-mode laser engraver
2. Preparing a file to be fed to an embroidery machine
3. Preparing a file to be fed to a paper or vinyl cutter
4. Preparing a file to be milled by a CNC router
5. Preparing a file to be engraved by a rotary engraving tool
6. Preparing a file to be drawn by a pen plotter
7. Preparing graphics a printed circuit board with minimum trace width requirements
8. Preparing toolpaths for creating text with an extrusion-based 2D or 3D fabricator
To solve this issue, I have written an Inkscape extension (Attached, a 70 kB ZIP file) that allows the user to render simple text strings, using one of several Hershey-designed (public domain) engraving fonts. I humbly suggest that it should be considered for possible future inclusion with Inkscape.
Additional discussion and documentation about the extension has been posted here: http://
Related branches
- Martin Owens: Approve (full review)
-
Diff: 289 lines (+256/-0)4 files modifiedshare/extensions/Makefile.am (+3/-0)
share/extensions/hershey.inx (+86/-0)
share/extensions/hershey.py (+109/-0)
share/extensions/hersheydata.py (+58/-0)
tags: |
added: extensions-plugins fonts removed: cnc cutter engraving plotter |
Changed in inkscape: | |
importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
Changed in inkscape: | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
Changed in inkscape: | |
milestone: | none → 0.49 |
summary: |
- No support for stroke-based ("engraving") fonts + Add support for stroke-based ("engraving") fonts |
Changed in inkscape: | |
status: | Confirmed → Fix Committed |
Changed in inkscape: | |
assignee: | nobody → Windell Oskay (windell) |
Changed in inkscape: | |
status: | Fix Committed → Fix Released |
I didn't know about this kind of fonts until now, so after reading that blog post I tried the "gothic" font from here: http:// featurecam. com/general/ support/ engrave_ fonts.asp
And the font doesn't show up in Inkscape, it does in Indesign, Word and Notepad++. I can't test it in GIMP because it crahes when trying to use the text tool (probably unrelated). Is that the same behaviour you're getting?