| ID: | 4392 |
| From: | ge...@igor2.repo.hu |
| Date: | Tue, 22 Sep 2020 12:59:05 +0200 (CEST) |
| Subject: | [pcb-rnd] new: ttf import |
| replies: | 4393 from ka...@aspodata.se |
Hi all, I had this on the TODO for long, plus the latest feature request polling yielded it too, and Erich contributed the cubic curve approximation code... so now we have ttf import. It lives in the import_ttf plugin, which gets compiled if you have libfreetype installed. Since gtk depends on freetype (through other spaceship libraries), most pcb-rnd users are normaly have it installed already. 1. What it does NOT do No unicode in our text or font - pcb-rnd is still a simple, ASCII software, so any character in any text object is 8 bits wide, there's no exception, no trickery. No native ttf rendering - we import and convert glyphs from ttf fonts into native pcb-rnd font. The first time you see any glyph appear on your screen, it's already pcb-rnd font. 2. What it does do Pcb-rnd supports multiple fonts for many years by now. You can keep our simple, stroked default font and import various ttf fonts as extra pcb-rnd fonts. Then for each text object you can tell pcb-rnd which font to use for rendering. You can do partial ttf imports and you can tell where to import within the code page. That is, you can create a font with a random mapping. A trivial example is that you can import the usual 7 bit ASCII (English alphanumerics and punctuations) and then use the upper 128 slots for importing the (c) sign, a few greek letters, omega, mu, etc. We can import any outline defined font format that libfreetype supports, so not only ttf, but some type 1 and opentype fonts. The only requirements are that libfreetype need to support the format and the font needs to be in a vector graphics, outline defined format Note: in theory ttf can be non-outline defined (in which case we can't use it). As usual, we have both CLI and GUI support. CLI documentation: http://www.repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/user/09_appendix/action_details.html#loadttfglyphs The GUI is has the same syntax and parameters, it's just a wrapper around the CLI. The GUI is accessible from the File/Import menu, in case you have the plugin compiled. All operations are done on the currently selected font (use the fontsel action to change the selection). You can choose to import with lines tracing the outline (make sure you set text thickness to something thin, like 1 mil, in the text object!) or import as polygons. This choice doesn't affect the usabulity of the resulting pcb-rnd font: you can put anything on silk, copper, mask, paste or in fact any layer you like. You can use the built-in font editor after the import (the fontedit action). That way you can fine tune and save the converted font. 3. Disclaimer We do convert the font on import. When you decide to use a font, you have to know fonts are coming with licenses. You need to check whether the license of the font allows conversion to other format before you import the font. Same consideration goes if you decide to share the converted font: you need to check if the original font license allows you to distribute modified (converted) variants. Best regards, Igor2
Reply subtree:
4392 [pcb-rnd] new: ttf import from ge...@igor2.repo.hu
4393 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: ttf import from ka...@aspodata.se
4394 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: ttf import from ge...@igor2.repo.hu
4395 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: ttf import from ka...@aspodata.se