Re: [Gimp-user] Workaround for Styled Text?

2006-06-27 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 08:31 -0700, Sarah wrote:

 In the absence of a clever workaround, I'll probably just write a
 chunk of Java code that can generate an image containing some text
 with simple styles in it, simply because I already have a chunk of
 code from another project that can do this, including alpha channel
 support, and it probably wouldn't take long to cobble something
 together.

Why don't you add the missing functionality to GIMP so that everyone can
benefit from it instead of cobbling something together? If you need a
helping hand with Pango and the text tool code, I can offer you one.


Sven


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Re: [Gimp-user] Workaround for Styled Text?

2006-06-23 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 14:28 -0700, Sarah wrote:

 Is there an existing gimp feature I've missed that makes this easier
 to cope with?

Use the right tool for the job. Which would be a vector drawing
application, such as Inkscape.


Sven


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Re: [Gimp-user] Workaround for Styled Text?

2006-06-23 Thread Sarah
Ok, let me try again.

Suppose I want to put a bit of text into a GIMP document. I click on
the text tool, then click on my document. I get a little window I can
type my text into:

 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
 
I can choose a font, a size, a color, and some other attributes. Great!

Now suppose I want to type:

 The *quick* brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
 
Same as before, but this time, I want the word quick in bold. My
first thought: look for an icon with a little B on it in the text
editing box. There isn't one. Okay, try ctrl-b? Alt-b? Nope, no such
luck. Check the documentation... hmm, the text tool *is* documented
(yay!), but there's no mention of using two or more styles in the same
piece of text. Check the bug, database...

 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122706
 
Hmm, rotten luck... apparently it's not supported right now. Ok, I'll have to find a workaround.

Well, the simple solution, use multiple chunks of text. The as one
layer, quick as a layer using a bold font, and brown fox jumps over
the lazy dog as another layer. Ok, great, that gives me what I want...

... oh, wait. I want to change quick to flatulent. Easy, just
change the layer... oh, but now the words don't line up, because the
word flatulent is wider than the word quick... Ok, tweak the layers
a little bit to make the words line up... that's better.

Ok, all is well, the text is there... and now suppose we go on to
create a large image, with a hundred layers (!), six of which contain
little stories about our poor fox and his various difficulties.

Now we want to add another little chunk of text:

 The *flatulent* brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,
 and into a fire,
 causing quite a large explosion.
 
 --- Goethe, Treatise on Typewriter Testing, 1831 [1]
  
 [1] Disclaimer: Goethe did not actually write this.

Hmm, ok, we can do this, except we want the word
flatulent in bold, Treatise on Typewriter Testing needs to be in
italic, and we'd really prefer [1] to be a superscript... ok, let's
see, how many layers will that be... ok... click, click, click lots
of layers. Whew, ok, but at least it's done.

... oh, wait. We want to change Goethe to Mark Twain, and we want to
turn our *flatulent* brown fox into a *flatulent* fuscia ferret... and
there are six different chunks of text mentioning the fox in different
ways, each containing many layers, and we have to change them all...

Sigh... guess I'm not going home early today, huh? This workaround doesn't scale very well, does it?

Hmm, maybe I can use something else.

The first thing I tried was Inkscape... but I quickly discovered that
it's text manipulation tools are about the same... sure I can do all
sorts of fancy things with the text, turn it into a path and wrap it
around a tree and whatnot, but I can't seem to put multiple styles of
text into a single chunk. Workflow-wise, the problems are pretty much
the same.

Another workaround would be to type the text into OpenOffice, or into
an HTML document, and then take a screenshot, and open the screenshot,
select the text, and paste it into a new layer in my document, but now,
when I need to make changes, I have to repeat the whole process... very
labor intensive. This workaround doesn't scale either.

Now, you could make the argument that what I *really* should do is use
a different program, like Scribus, that's designed for page layout...
the problem is, I'm *not* trying to do page layout, I'm trying to put
just a couple of little chunks of text into a small, screen resolution
bitmap image, and I only need bold, italic, and *maybe* subscript and
superscript. I shouldn't need to use a sledgehammer to swat this fly...
besides, I don't want to use another program, I want to use GIMP! It
already does 99% of what I need, and I hate to have to change tools for
that last 1%.

What I really want is to have the feature requested in bug 122706 to
magically be implemented... but since the first request was back in
2003, I'm guessing that I shouldn't hold my breath.

My second choice would be some amazingly clever workaround that can not
only generate multiple styles of text, but make it no more than
moderately painful to change many small chunks of text multiple times.
Maybe some command-line utility that can render an rtf or html document
into an x-by-y pixel bitmap image...or maybe TeX? And then maybe some
script-fu or python-fu to automate the updates?
  
In the absence of a clever workaround, I'll probably just write a chunk
of Java code that can generate an image containing some text with
simple styles in it, simply because I already have a chunk of code from
another project that can do this, including alpha channel support, and
it probably wouldn't take long to cobble something together.

But if there's a better way to do it, I'd love to hear!

Thanks for your time!

Sarah
  



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[Gimp-user] Workaround for Styled Text?

2006-06-22 Thread Sarah
Hi,

I noticed that the the text tool cannot create multi-styled text... and
apparently several bugs and/or enhancement requests have been filed
asking for this feature.

Is there an existing gimp feature I've missed that makes this easier to
cope with? Or is there a recommended workaround? Is there, for
instance, an easy way to put styled text into a text file and then
convert it into an x by y image or layer with a script? And a way to
change the text and re-render without too much manual labor?

The ideas I've had:

- Make an html document and take a screenshot - yuck, and labor intensive if many frequent text changes are needed.

- Code something myself - not horribly painful, but a simpler solution might be nice! :-)

Any better suggestions?

I'm using The Gimp 2.2.11 that came with Ubuntu 6.06.

Thanks,

Sarah

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Re: [Gimp-user] Workaround for Styled Text?

2006-06-22 Thread Carol Spears
On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 02:28:10PM -0700, Sarah wrote:
 
 I noticed that the the text tool cannot create multi-styled text... and
 apparently several bugs and/or enhancement requests have been filed asking
 for this feature.
 

when you ask for multi-styled text, what is it that you want?

GIMP does as much as a web browser does if you are talking about styled
text in the same way that html styles it.  if there is an italic font
available, the browser will use it and so will gimp.  neither the
browser or gimp will make an italic font if one does not exist on the
computer.

if you want fake styled fonts.  like where the software slants them or
makes them bold (and not how the font artist made the font) then the
freetype plug-in should work for you.

http://freetype.gimp.org although, i have not checked to see if that was
still there.

if you meant something else, please explain this.

carol

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