35
10.4 Single stroke fonts & Hershey Text
The ideal type of font to use with a plotter is an
engraving font
or
single stroke font
.
Standard fonts used on computers (truetype, postscript, opentype, etc.) are outline
fonts. In these, the font file describes a filled vector shape. That is to say, the visible part
of a character in an outline font is the area enclosed by the shape. Fonts like these are the
best possible choice for use in laser printers or other high-resolution devices.
By contrast, an engraving font (sometimes called a “stroke” font) is one where each vis-
ible character is defined by the stroke itself, not the area enclosed by it. Fonts like these
are the best possible choice for pen plotters. However, most graphics programs are only
capable of understanding outline fonts, and so these are relatively rare.
Inkscape includes an extension (that we developed) called Hershey Text, which can create
stroke-based text in a few different fonts. The text is created directly as vector paths,
rather than as editable text. The “Script 1-stroke” font is a particularly useful one.
Hershey Text can be found in the menu at: Extensions > Render > Hershey Text.
You can read a full introduction to Hershey Text at:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/go/hershey
Links to many other sources of single stroke fonts can be found at the IJ instruments
Single Line Fonts page (Short URL:
http://bit.ly/1SweD6c
)
