On Sunday 12 May 2002 10:53 pm, David Eduardo Gomez Noguera wrote:

hello.
I have been reading a bit on gimp and how to use perl to work with it. I want to know if anyone has done a script that uses the ink pen tool with gimp?

I was searching, and there are brushes, but from the documentation, seems like the ink tool is not a brush (specially because its shape is defined dynamically). so, is it possible to script it? maybe by defining a path with pressure/speed/direction info int it?

thank you. I dont have a tablet, but would like do make some images with japanese on them, and the ink tool looks perfect, except that all i hae is my mouse.

If you want to script a character or ideogram by describing it then a tool such as metapost may be useful. This is not a part of Gimp but a stand-alone product that is associated with the TeX typesetting system.

Here is a typical description: z0=(0,0);
z1=(60,40);
z2=(40,90);
z3=(10,70);
z4=(30,50));
draw z0..z1..z2..z3..z4;
---------------------------------
The result is a comma shaped curve with the tail at z0 and the end of the curve at z4 pointing to the right.. Just plot the points on graph paper and connect the dots with a smooth curve and you will get the idea.

The system allows you to to describe round, rectangular and elliptical pens such as:

pickup pencircle scaled .2in yscaled .08 rotated 30;

(An elliptical pen with the wide dimension .2in, the narrow dimension .08in, and then rotated 30 degrees from the horizontal.)

There are many other features.

The results are in dvi format (easily convertible to PostScript) which then could be manipulated in ImageMagick and/or Gimp.

HTH

John Culleton