Hershey Text Extension for Inkscape

[Windell H. Oskay]

We've just released a new Inkscape extension, called "Hershey Text," which
can render text using one of several classic Hershey "engraving" or
"stroke-based" fonts.

Engraving fonts define the visible character not by filling in the area of
an outline (like regular fonts do) but by the actual path of the pen
around its perimeter. We've discussed ways to generate them several times
on this mailing list.

Here's what you should know about the Hershey Text extension:

1) It's officially released as of today. The details, along with a longer
article about it are all here:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/hershey

2) We will be including this in the next revision of the Eggbot extension
installer, coming soon.

3) It is NOT yet one of the items installed by the Eggbot installers. If
you want to use it right away, you can download it as a ZIP file, and
manually install it in the same location as your other Inkscape
extensions.

4) Once installed, it will show up in the "Render" submenu of the the
Extensions menu. (It's not *really* eggbot specific.)

5) The extension includes three single-stroke fonts that plot rapidly:
sans serif ("roman simplex"), script, and greek.

6) The output generated by the extension consists of separate path objects
for each letter, grouped together.

-- This means that you cannot use the "text" tools in Inkscape to edit
the text, just the path tools.
-- Also, as the symbols are separate, there will be pen lifts between
every two letters, even for script fonts-- unless you go in and manually
join up the paths.

A big thank you to Marty McGuire and Dan Newman for valuable discussions,
testing, and motivation on this project. I'm pretty happy with how it
turned out. As it's useful and "general purpose," we may try to
contribute it as a "standard" extension to be bundled with Inkscape in the
future.

Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist
Evil Mad Science LLC
175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150
Sunnyvale CA 94086
http://evilmadscience.com/

[Chuck McManis]

Very nice, an excellent addition.
--Chuck

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[linuxwrangler]

On Feb 10, 10:16 am, "Windell H. Oskay" <wind...@oskay.net> wrote:
> We've just released a new Inkscape extension, called "Hershey Text,"

Excellent!! They work great.

I just wish I had it a couple days ago when I started making
"Valentines ping-pong balls" for my daughter's 1st grade class. She
wanted a "swoopier" font. She will love the script.

[Tim Docker]

Hi Windell,

This is really cool. I was using it yesterday with good success.

I'm thinking that a size control in the dialog would be useful, as manual scaling of the text can be a bit fiddly and imprecise. Do you think this would be worthwhile? If so, I might have a go at adding it.

Tim

[Windell H. Oskay]

On Feb 13, 2011, at 7:05 AM, Tim Docker wrote:

 This is really cool. I was using it yesterday with good success.

I'm thinking that a size control in the dialog would be useful, as manual scaling of the text can be a bit fiddly and imprecise. Do you think this would be worthwhile? If so, I might have a go at adding it.

It wouldn't be too hard to add that feature, but I'm not sure how useful it would be.  For my own use at least, it's easier to render the text, position it by dragging, and then rescale it by shift-dragging the "resize" handles around the object.  (If you need numeric control of the size, there's an menu item "Object>Transform..." as well.)  

[Tim Docker]

I'm new to inkscape, and object transform does just the numeric control
I needed - thanks!

Tim

[Tim Docker]

On 11/02/2011, at 5:16 AM, Windell H. Oskay wrote:

> We've just released a new Inkscape extension, called "Hershey Text,"
> which
> can render text using one of several classic Hershey "engraving" or
> "stroke-based" fonts.

Attached is an attempt at spiralling hershey text around an egg. Not
perfect, but I like the effect. I need to tweak the timings to reduce
the time the pen is in contact when not moving. Also, I'm unsure why
the crossbar on the lower case 'e' always extends a bit to the left.

Tim

[Dan Newman]

Tim,

1. That's very cute,

2. Did you do any form of path smoothing on the paths after rendering the font?
If you did do smoothing of some form (e.g., Path > Simplify), then was the
overshoot of the e's crossbar visible on your computer display in Inkscape?
If the answer is no the overshoot wasn't visible on the computer display,
then maybe you want to decrease the "Curve smoothing" value on the "Options"
tab of the Eggbot Control extension.

Regards,
Dan

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> <P1030345.jpg>

[Dan Newman]

I looked some at how that "e" is drawn. It's possible to get that
overhang if there is some, even slight, slippage or other loss of
precision in the eggcup/egg interface. That letter is drawn by
starting at that proud end of the e's crossbar, moving to the right,
then arcing around to create the 270 degree arc of the "e". Some
slippage could cause the arc to not swing out far enough to again
meet the start of that cross bar. You could try drawing a circle
of similar size next to one of these e's and see if the ends of
the circle meet correctly. If they do, but the e's crossbar overshoots,
then you can rule slippage out for now.

Dan

[linuxwrangler]

> Attached is an attempt at spiralling hershey text around an egg. Not  
> perfect, but I like the effect.

Neat idea. I combined a spiral Valentine message with the hearts I
recently posted on Thingiverse and printed them onto a ping-pong ball
as an extra goodie for my daughter.

-Steve

[John D]

I downloaded the Hershey fonts folder.
Then I tried to find the Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/
extensions folder on my MacBook Pro OS 10.6.6 but couldn't. The
application is there, Applications/Inkscape.app, but that's it. I DO
see the Eggbot extensions and tried the three files in there with no
luck.
So, my question is, "Is there some back door to the folders behind
each application that I can't see? How do I get to them?"

You can see my "dark" egg with skulls getting it's finishing touches
at www.johnd.com/eggbot

Windell said,
>Here's what you should know about the Hershey Text extension: 3) It is NOT yet one of the items installed by the Eggbot installers.  If you want to use it right away, you can download it as a ZIP file, and manually install it in the same location as your other Inkscape extensions. 4) Once installed, it will show up in the "Render" submenu of the the Extensions menu.  (It's not *really* eggbot specific.)

[Windell H. Oskay]

On Feb 21, 2011, at 9:59 AM, Dan Newman wrote:
>
> I assume you're using the finder window? If so, then right click on the
> Inkscape.app file/folder. With a one-button mouse (like your laptop),
> hold down the CTRL key while pressing the mouse button. You should see
> a pop-up menu on which the second item is "Show Package Contents". Select
> that item and then there will be a new finder pop-up window which shows
> the folder "Contents". Click on it and then drill down (Resources > extensions).

Alternate method:
From the menu bar in Finder, select Go>Go to Folder... to pull up the "go to folder" dialog. In there, paste the location (exactly):
/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/

[Dan Newman]

On 21 Feb 2011 , at 9:47 AM, John D wrote:

> I downloaded the Hershey fonts folder.
> Then I tried to find the Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/
> extensions folder on my MacBook Pro OS 10.6.6 but couldn't. The
> application is there, Applications/Inkscape.app, but that's it. I DO
> see the Eggbot extensions and tried the three files in there with no
> luck.
> So, my question is, "Is there some back door to the folders behind
> each application that I can't see? How do I get to them?"

I assume you're using the finder window? If so, then right click on the

Inkscape.app file/folder. With a one-button mouse (like your laptop),
hold down the CTRL key while pressing the mouse button. You should see
a pop-up menu on which the second item is "Show Package Contents". Select
that item and then there will be a new finder pop-up window which shows
the folder "Contents". Click on it and then drill down (Resources > extensions).

> You can see my "dark" egg with skulls getting it's finishing touches
> at www.johnd.com/eggbot

Looks quite nice with good registration. I assume you're not planning on
giving that one to kids for Easter.

Regards,
Dan