I'm not sure this is a bug as it involves a print driver, but I didn't know where else would be appropriate, so...

I'm using InkScape to control my laser engraver (from Universal Systems), graphics are fine but text is problematic. The design looks fine within InkScape, but when sent to the laser the text is scrunched together, as if kerning was set to some large negative value. If I select all text and click Edit->Make A Bitmap Copy, the text prints correctly (well, for the most part... occasionally some of the final letters on a line get partially copied and extend the line's length).

Although the print driver works fine with CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator, I'm not naive enough to completely write it off as being innocent. That said, I'd like to get everyone's opinion on what the possible cause could be...

Thanks!

No idea what the problem could be. But your best work around is probably to convert the text objects to a path, instead of a bitmap.

I think I encountered something similar when dealing with eps and ps files, importing them into svg in Inkscape and opening that svg in Scribus made the letters overlap.

I converted text to paths and it was ok. This was done with Inkscape 0.46, ps and pdf export has been improved since then but I haven't tested it.

micro, I believe I tried that with the same results. I'll try again...


pr, the designs are created completely within InkScape, no importation other than some bitmaps to complete the design. I'm not even exporting to another program, I am printing directly from within InkScape. Oh, I'm using the latest, 0.46.

I'm aware of that, I mentioned ps because it's very much connected with printing

If you want you can install the development version of Inkscape and test yourself, you can have both Inkscape versions installed at the same time.

micro,

It's not an ideal solution, but I think you got me back in the game for the time being. I decided to try again... I selected all of my text, then Path->Object To Path. Now it appears in the print driver screen without error. Would you mind explaining what this does to the text to allow it to work, as well as explaining why the standard text format wasn't working in its native format?

If it helps any, I noticed that if I combined a number of text objects into one object (Object->Group), the Object To Path step fails to work, and the text still comes out scrunched together. I must keep each text object separate to get a useful print.

Thanks!

Guest wrote:Would you mind explaining what this does to the text to allow it to work, as well as explaining why the standard text format wasn't working in its native format?

When text is 'text' in Inkscape, the shapes you see are defined by the font installed on your computer--i.e. if you gave that SVG to someone who didn't have that font, the text would look different. When convert text to a path, the text becomes a shape, like any other shape and is independent of the font. The down side to this is that the text can no longer be edited because it's just shape. I can't explain why the text as text does not work but because it's linked to a font and fonts are dependent on the system, it's something that can frequently cause problems.

Good to know, and I figured it was something like that. I wish I could narrow it down to one program or the other, but since it is up to the print driver to take the image and (essentially) make a bitmap of it, I'm leaning towards the driver being the cause. I will speak with ULS on the issue on see what they say.

Thanks again!

Bringing this one back to the top as I have more information...

The laser driver has preset resolutions to engrave at... 75, 150, 250, 333, 500, and 1000dpi. As long as I select 500 or 1000dpi, the text appears normal. If I select 333, the characters overlap slightly, and the overlap increases as resolution decreases to the point of being completely unintelligible at 75 dpi.

I have asked the laser company to check into this issue, but I was hoping someone could offer a bit of insight into what links are made between a typical print driver and InkScape. I believe with a better view of what happens to the text and where, I can determine with more certainty which program is the true culprit, the ULS print driver or InkScape.

Since converting text to paths resolves the issue, it's definitely something to do with how text is represented and/or how it is transferred to the driver. Is everything sent to the driver as a raster image, or does it remain in some vector form (I imagine the latter)? Is there a more appropriate forum to ask this level of detail question in?