Hey Stuart
I think I worded that last email incorrectly. I am not presently snooping commands yet, I don't own a cutter. I am not sure which one will be the best to buy either but I figure I will just ask for suggestions on which one will be best for Inkscape and then I will check my wallet's opinion.
Inkscapes DXF export does not produce a fully featured DXF, I think most CAD programs cannot open it, it is a minimalist DXF just for the robocutter community.
Thanks for the links-Patrick
stuart wrote:
Patrick wrote: ...<cut>...
I could buy a cutter in July or August and I should be able to finish reverse engineering the command protocol sometime in the fall.
Are you talking about a Graphtec plotter like the Craft ROBO or any of its derivations?
I know there are different formats used to send information to the cutters, would it be good to work on a more robust DXF export option too? I don't know the first thing out GSD, does does someone want to work on this ?
I had thought inkscape read & saved DXF already.
Regarding GSD - there are people talking about this. I think the current efforts are outside of inkscape and involve translating to and from GSD. But I don't know if anyone has working code.
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/BlueprintCutterControl
On the other hand - I don't even bother w/GSD files. I just pipe inkscape's postscript output to a modified python script which does the translation. If that's a postscript to GSD translation, it is a fairly simple process. However, I understand it was mostly base on reverse engineering. That is, we know what to send the Graphtec cutters given a post script command (like pen down or cut to here). Or, in other words, I don't think we have the slightest idea what's inside a GSD file.
The down side to this is that the process is not integrated into inkscape. I have spent a lot of time explaining the installation process only to have people give up when it finally occurs to them they need to install python and glade and some other packages (oh, and the above solution is really only for Linux).
I am unfamiliar with Inkscape internals, if I provided the commands could someone integrate this into Inkscape? Or do we even want to do this? Is there a better way?
Thanks-Patrick
I am trying to clear this up for my self as well. If you want to be wow'ed Ted posted a link to a graphic representation of some inkscape inner workings:
http://inkscape.modevia.com/doxygen/html/classInkscape_1_1Extension_1_1Print...
I doubt the inkscape project wants to directly integrate a particular cutter into it's code. It's more likely a plug in approach might be considered (to keep the two software components apart).
How are you getting the commands? Are you sniffing the USB? If you are, I'd like to know about the commands associated with the optical pick up. I think that is a unique feature of these small cutters. Or can large cutters look for registration markings as well?
...thanks