Custom fonts into characters paths layers?

[Krikor]

Hi,

Is there a plug-in that makes custom fonts into characters paths layers?

I know that among the tools of @skinnyhouse 's Custom Fonts Tool there is the Custom fonts paths to layers v 0.03 plug-in, which does the reverse.

I'm trying to avoid Inkscape and just use Gimp and FontForge when creating fonts.

I want to export the paths as svg, each letter as a single file of the svg type (a.svg, b.svg, etc.), but I didn't want to do it manually.

Thx

[skinnyhouse]

How I wish I had one K. Life would be so much easier...

post #32 from this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2115&hilit=Trace&start=30

Tom used the Trace plugin (is it bundled with Inkscape?) to create centre lines that could be stroked with the path tool.

I found that I spent more time adjusting/correcting the paths than just creating my own from scratch so I gave up on it.

Let us know if you find a solution. I'm waiting for one!

[Krikor]

How I wish I had one K. Life would be so much easier...

post #32 from this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2115&hilit=Trace&start=30

Tom used the Trace plugin (is it bundled with Inkscape?) to create centre lines that could be stroked with the path tool.

I found that I spent more time adjusting/correcting the paths than just creating my own from scratch so I gave up on it.

Let us know if you find a solution. I'm waiting for one!

Skinnyhouse,
Thanks for the answer.
I haven't had a good experience with this Trace plug-in in the not-too-distant past. I definitely didn't get satisfactory results from him.

Inkscape has more reliable functionality in this sense, since with the Trace plug-in many attempts ended with errors and crashes of the plug-in.

But even with Inkscape, the task of "polishing" each path after centralizing the path is really considerable in terms of the time spent in this process.

https://youtu.be/uCsWAPx3y_g - Stroke Font Extensions with Center Line Tracing of Inkscape 1.0

I installed FontForge just two days ago and the learning curve doesn't seem to be very smooth. I hope I'm wrong.

I was thinking about creating paths with Gimp and exporting them to FontForge, but it seems that I will have to leave Gimp out of this operation and adopt inkscape as an option.

Thx!

[skinnyhouse]

Been a while since I used FontForge myself. Sounds like you are going to be very busy for some time to come.

I did manage to get the autotrace plugin to produce some initial satisfactory results with the centre-line trace option. It creates so many control points however that it made it difficult to edit. I find that it is easier to tweak letter paths when there are a minimal number of control points to work with.

MareroQ did some valuable work with Trace over on GimpChat a while back. May be worth a look if you haven't looked at that.

http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17321&view=next

Best of luck.

[tim]

First I don't know anything about FontForge. So excuse my unknowing ...but
Say if you had a.png, b.png .... custom font file.
and a plugin could alpha select each a.png, b.png and turn it into a path and export them as a.svg b.svg ...
Would that work?
The plug-in could be completely blind to what you have as layers, it can just loop through layers and export the alpha to selection as and replace anything.png with anything.svg.
Am I close? or am I completely off from what your'e trying to do?

In anycase, I was curious and finished writing it already just now.
Please see: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2943&p=35660#p35660

[Krikor]

First I don't know anything about FontForge. So excuse my unknowing ...but
Say if you had a.png, b.png .... custom font file.
and a plugin could alpha select each a.png, b.png and turn it into a path and export them as a.svg b.svg ...
Would that work?
The plug-in could be completely blind to what you have as layers, it can just loop through layers and export the alpha to selection as and replace anything.png with anything.svg.
Am I close? or am I completely off from what your'e trying to do?

Tim,
That was my intention! You seem to have understood perfectly.
So my interest in a plug-in with this functionality (Reason for having created this topic).

With the new plug-in created by Ofnuts - ofn-export-paths.py, this task is now even more feasible.

The editing part could be done practically only with Gimp.
But FontForge would be necessary to convert the .svg files to the font format (.otf, .ttf, etc.)

[tim]

I just uploaded plug-in described...check my last reply update.
Please try that out and see if it helps you.

[tim]

Hope it helps skinnyhouse too with whatever crazy font-related thing(s) skinnyhouse is pursuing

[Krikor]

I believe that I will spend a few days entertained with this activity.
I have already downloaded and installed the plug-in. On the first attempt there was an error, but ok.
I will go over the error message in the plugin topic.

Thanks Tim!

[Krikor]

Been a while since I used FontForge myself. Sounds like you are going to be very busy for some time to come.

I did manage to get the autotrace plugin to produce some initial satisfactory results with the centre-line trace option. It creates so many control points however that it made it difficult to edit. I find that it is easier to tweak letter paths when there are a minimal number of control points to work with.

MareroQ did some valuable work with Trace over on GimpChat a while back. May be worth a look if you haven't looked at that.

http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17321&view=next

Best of luck.

Skinnyhouse,
I am in full agreement with you, I should be busy for a long time with this activity.
About the post referring to the Trace plug-in, I believe I have already read it, and I believe that I should have perhaps downloaded my version from there. But I am not sure and tomorrow I will do an investigation in this regard.

Thanks for the tip!