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

[Andrew Armenia <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Colin D Bennett <[1]colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
   wrote:

     On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:50:03 -0600
     Mark Rages <[2]markrages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
     > On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Colin D Bennett
     <[3]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

   It's not much of a workaround for anything large-scale, but I once
   exploited the fact that pstoedit (with no special options) generates
   the holes in characters as plain polygons. So it's possible (though
   rather tedious) to manually edit the generated PCB file and turn the
   hole-polygons into holes in their correct polygons. I did this once for
   some logotype, then kept the resulting .pcb file around. I don't
   remember off the top of my head whether I used the "pcb" or "pcbfill"
   driver in pstoedit.
   -Andrew

References

   1. mailto:colin@xxxxxxxxxxx
   2. mailto:markrages@xxxxxxxxx
   3. mailto:colin@xxxxxxxxxxx


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