gEDA-user: Inkscape text->pstoedit->pcb and importing PostScript/PDF/EPS vector graphics with holes

[Colin D Bennett <colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:50:03 -0600
Mark Rages <markrages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Colin D Bennett <colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > How hard would it be to make use of the freetype library to handle
> > all vector-based fonts?  I imagine the font outlines could be
> > converted to line elements fairly easily... ?
> 
> pcb's fonts are special:  they are a single line wide.  When you need
> the smallest letters that a given silk process can print legibly, you
> want those single-line fonts.

OK, that is understandable.  I can see that it would be extremely
difficult to get an automated conversion of general fonts to
single-line-wide fonts.  Perhaps still possible, for simple sans-serif
fonts by varying the line width dynamically?  Anyway, it sound
difficult enough that it won't be done.

> For larger fonts, freetype would be great, and save us the
> machinations of creating the text in inkscape or something and
> importing it with pstoedit.

I really wanted to create a logo/description label in Inkscape and put
it on a board I recently made, but after trying for an hour or two to
get pstoedit to import text elements properly (holes in letters like 'B'
or 'o' were getting filled in when exported to the 'pcb' file format),
I gave up.  I tried the '-ssp' option to pstoedit but it crashed every
time an assertion failure.  Have you had better luck with converting
text or graphics to pcb format?

My results:

- Converting text without -ssp option:  pstoedit doesn't crash, but
  letters have their holes filled in

- Converting text with -ssp option: pstoedit crashes

I have successfully converted a simple open triangle drawn with a 30 mil
stroke from Inkscape->pstoedit->pcb, but even the simplest text causes
pstoedit to crash.  Here's an example that crashes for me.  The file
Text.ps simply contains an uppercase letter 'A' in Liberation Sans
font.  I also checked the 'export text as paths' option for the file
Text_notext.ps but pstoedit still crashed.  I'm using pstoedit 3.50 on
Ubuntu 10.04/amd64 and have also tested on pstoedit 3.45 under Ubuntu
9.10/i386, with the same result.

  cdb@svelte:~$ pstoedit -f pcb Text.ps -ssp Text.pcb
  pstoedit: version 3.50 / DLL interface 108 (build Jan 25 2010 -
  release build - g++ 4.4.3) : Copyright (C) 1993 - 2009 Wolfgang Glunz
  pstoedit: drvbase.h:789: const Point& drawingelement<nr,
  curtype>::getPoint(unsigned int) const [with unsigned int nr = 0u,
  Dtype curtype = (Dtype)2u]: Assertion `(i+1) < (nr+1)' failed.
  Aborted
  cdb@svelte:~$ pstoedit -f pcb Text_notext.ps -ssp Text_notext.pcb
  pstoedit: version 3.50 / DLL interface 108 (build Jan 25 2010 -
  release build - g++ 4.4.3) : Copyright (C) 1993 - 2009 Wolfgang Glunz
  pstoedit: drvbase.h:789: const Point& drawingelement<nr,
  curtype>::getPoint(unsigned int) const [with unsigned int nr = 0u,
  Dtype curtype = (Dtype)2u]: Assertion `(i+1) < (nr+1)' failed.
  Aborted

I haven't had a chance to file a bug for pstoedit or dig any deeper,
but I wondered if anyone has encountered this problem before, and if
there is a workaround.

Regards,
Colin


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