Drafont is a font system for the OpenSCAD program to have Unicode characters from scalable TrueType fonts.

Example Usage:

To make the Hi! greeting at left, do as follows:

1. Download freeserif_basiclatin.scad and freeserif_cherokee.scad (see below for download links)
2. Type this into Openscad:

use <freeserif_basiclatin.scad>;
use <freeserif_cherokee.scad>;

d=12; // detail level - use 1 or 12
freeserif_H(d)
freeserif_i(d);

translate([-800,-1600,0])
freeserif_13a3(d)
freeserif_13cf(d)
freeserif_13f2(d);

Features

1. Each character is a module. Chain them together for auto-positioning
2. Each character can be referred to by unicode, or a 'shorthand' name
3. At the top of each .scad file is a list of the characters available
4. Two detail levels: 1 and 12
5. You can generate your own .scad font from a Truetype font, with any detail level you want. Download the .py files, edit settings at the end of ddump.py, and run it as follows:

python ddump.py FreeSerif.ttf 0x0041-0x007a > freeserif_basiclatin.scad
python ddump.py FreeSerif.ttf 0x13a0-0x13f4 > freeserif_cherokee.scad

Bugs

1. If you use the same char twice in a word, you have to use two _ (underscore)
2. Some complicated characters won't render properly
3. It is slow
4. CJK characters in FreeSerif not working
5. Some fonts don't work, at all (Sawasdee)

Licenses

Drafont python code & all .stl files are released under the Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution license 3.0.

FreeSerif.ttf and the FreeSerif .scad files are under the GPL 3 license. See gnu.org/software/freefont/license.html

The Nixish .scad files are under the GUST public license:
gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/licenses

Name

This project is named in honor of Thomas Drake, NSA Whistleblower, whom you can read about by clicking here: bit.ly/mrm4q9

Sample .stl

"Anna Akhmatova" is an example of Cyrllic and Latin text in FreeSans.

1234567890 is the font Nixish, which is derived exactly from LMRomansUnsl10

See Also

freetype.org/freetype2/docs/glyphs/glyphs-6.html FreeType manual, David Turner et al
code.google.com/p/freetype-py/ Freetype-py by Nicolas Rougier
fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm Unicode Blocks
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Akhmatova

Fonts:

bit.ly/m9oJWh LMRomanUnsl10 from Polish LaTeX user group GUST
gnu.org/software/freefont/index.html GNU FreeFont

Bezier:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bezier_2_big.gif Bezier Curve, Phil Tregoning, Wikipedia
thingiverse.com/thing:8443 William Adam's pub domain Bezier Curves
thingiverse.com/thing:8931 Conic Bezier Curve, donb

Changelog

0.5 pre-rendering
0.4 enable 'ranges' of unicodes to be dumped. use 'advance' from font
0.3 move openscad code
0.2 fix chunking
0.1 started