[Skencil-users] Scripted, command-line drawing example for Skencil 1.0alpha
sdaau
sd at imi.aau.dk
Sun Dec 26 00:34:51 CET 2010
Hi all,
I have just posted a basic example script - demonstrating scripted,
command line, drawing - here:
http://sdaaubckp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sdaaubckp/single-scripts/cmdline_draw_skencil_script.py?view=markup
(you can also find a modified sk2ps in the same directory, that runs
with 1.0alpha)
The kind of use shown there is similar to how one would use 'tikz' in
'LaTeX' - i.e. you code your figure in a text file, and then you run
some software on your figure code and get a vector output (pdf, ps) of
your figure in the end.
The code there just shows placement and styling of textfield, line (with
arrows for head/tail, one of the arrows being a circle), and rectangle -
where the positioning is done based on the transformed properties of
objects (such as the text field width for a given font). And that
demonstrates it could possibly be used for more complex
illustrations/figures.
Btw tikz is awesome, as long as you don't start putting things in groups
that rotate, and then trying to calculate bounding box sizes..
I guess what I often lack is the possibility to make graphic object
classes, like often done in Actionscript [which I also considered - but
in the end, I'd need to convert swf to pdf/ps, and with all the
different versions and VMs, that can turn out to be problematic]
I was *very* surprised not to find any examples of how one goes about
this in Skencil - it is certainly one area people could be interested
in... Luckily, it was not impossible to dig through the Python source,
in order to put a basic example together - although not trival either;
which is why I thought I'd post on the list about it. (don't know if
anyone intended to write documentation about this kind of a workflow -
if not, the developers are welcome to use it as such, or improved, as
distribution examples or on the webpage).
In any case - thanks for the awesome software; and thanks for the
'resurrection'; I certainly am glad for it!
Cheers!
(PS: Btw, couple of bugs for the ubuntu deb:
* after install, skencil didn't want to start, until I changed:
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/skencil/Sketch/Base/gtkutils.py
line 73:
-font_size = int(vals[-1])
+font_size = int(float(vals[-1]))
* In the GUI, I can place text - but cannot type; when started from
command line, stderr reports:
EditSelection.GetObjectMethod: editor
<Sketch.Graphics.selection.EditorWrapper instance at 0x95453ac> is not
compatible with class skencil.Sketch.Graphics.text.CommonTextEditor
... but, as I hinted above, I don't necessarily need the GUI all that
much these days :)
)
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