plotter-text

Generate dynamic single-stroke text in Processing. Save to SVG for clean pen plotter input.

Getting Started

📺 Video Walkthrough

Requirements

• Processing 4
• The ControlP5 library is required to run the Font Editor sketch.

Installation

1. Add the PlotterText class to your project

Copy the PlotterText.pde file from the dist folder into the folder for your Processing sketch.

2. Add the font files

Copy the entire astroTown font folder into your sketch's data folder.

If you want to create your own font, you'll need an SVG file for each character and a data.json file to specify font coordinates. Use the Font Editor in the examples folder to edit character positions and kerning pairs.

Example Sketch

1. Create an instance of the PlotterText class with the path to your font.
2. Use drawText() or drawTextCentered() to render text to the screen.

PlotterText pt;

void setup() {
	size(300, 200);
	pt = new PlotterText("fonts/astroTown/", 20);
}

void draw() {
	background(255);
	pt.drawText("Hello world!", 10, 10);
}

Usage

Instantiation

PlotterText new PlotterText( String fontPath, [ float size ] )

Create an instance of the PlotterText class.
fontPath specifies the location of your font's folder (relative to your sketch's data folder). size is the desired display size in pixels.

Drawing Text

void drawText( String text, [ float x, float y ] )

Draw text to the screen.
x and y specify the position of the top left of the text.

void drawTextCentered( String text, [[ float x, float y ], float w ])

Draw text to the screen, horizontally centered. x and y specify the position of the top center of the text. w specifies the width at which the text wraps to a new line.

Font Properties

float letterSpacing

The amount of additional space to add between each letter.
Expressed as a percentage of the character size.

float lineHeight

The amount of vertical space given to each line in multiline text.
Expressed as a percentage of the character size.

float spaceWidth

The width of a space character.
Expressed as a percentage of the character size.

void setSize( float size )

Set the display height of your font. Change this in between calls to drawText to create text of different sizes.

Utility

float getStringWidth( String text )

Calculate the width of a string using your font at its current size without drawing to the screen.

Modify and Save

Additional methods are available to modify font data and save it to disk.
Check PlotterText.pde for details.

Saving to SVG

The SVG library makes it possible to write SVG files directly from Processing. Any PlotterText drawn to the screen while saving will be added to the exported SVG.

Example sketch:

import processing.svg.*;

PlotterText pt;

void setup() {
	size(400, 400);
	pt = new PlotterText("fonts/astroTown", 12);
	noLoop();
}

void draw() {
	beginRecord(SVG, "filename.svg");

	// draw some text
	pt.drawText("Hello world", 10, 10);

	// other vector drawing
	line(0, 0, width/2, height);

	endRecord();
}

For more examples, see the SVG Export page on the Processing site.

Build from Source

The build script for this project (build.sh) simply copies the classes from src into a single file in the dist folder.

cd [plotter-text]
./build.sh

Support

This is a personal project and is mostly unsupported, but I'm happy to hear feedback or answer questions.

License

This project is licensed under the Unlicense - see the LICENSE file for details.

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