Vector Drawing Program (Take Two)

I beleive Inkscape can do all that. I'll check the grid, though. All in all, it's pretty good. And free. And open-source.

[EDIT]
The sceenies on the page show someone using a grid, so it's possible. Now I'm checking the snap-to...

Hi,

I use Adobe Illustrator, which will meet all those requirements. You may be able to download a trial version, or get an Academic licence version cheaply. It doesn't have to the latest version, I have version 7 (the manual mentions 486s!) and find it really useful.

1) Specify grid size in real-world units (I need a 0.1 inch grid) [CHECK]
2) Create text objects using any font on my system in any available size of any color with any other properties the font supports (bold, italic, etc). [CHECK]
3) Align text objects to the grid using the baseline of the text for the y coordinate and any of {left, center, right} for the x coordinate. [THINK SO]
4) Draw rectangles and lines that snap to the grid. [CHECK]
5) Print exactly what the program draws on the screen. [CHECK]

Cheers Stephen

Inkscape doesn't seem to have snap to, or if it is there I can't find it. What you can do is manually edit the XML to get your points to line up, but that seems to be a suboptimal method. Though if I'm wrong, please tell me how it works, I could really use it. :)

I think I got Inkskape to snap to grid, but it wouldn't snap text on the baseline. IIRC it snapped text to the nearest corner or something (and the baseline of text is not the bottom of it's bounding rectangle - it's the line under text that doesn't have any underhangs. Letters like 'g' and 'y' go below the baseline)

I should have made it more clear, but #4 I haven't seen in ANY programs so far. I haven't used adobe illustrator, but I've tried corel and macromedia vector drawing programs and I couldn't figure out how to snap text on it's baseline in either. Anyways, I'd prefer a free or inexpensive program because that would mean I could use it at home, which is much preferable to working in public computer labs because I could work on stuff whenever I want without having to make a 45 min drive =-)

I can't find it either, though in one of the tutorials, it says to set things to snap to the grid. I'm still looking.

Quote:

Original post by Extrarius I think I got Inkskape to snap to grid ...

how?

Quote:

Original post by ricekrispyw [...]how?

I mean when I used it after it was suggested in the other thread a while back, not just now. If I did, I don't remeber how, but I could be mistaken.

Adobe Illustrator CS 2 Academic seems to be $100 - quite a bit more than I'm willing to pay, but my school probably has a version I can use in the labs (though as above, that is much less preferable than a free/cheap solution). I can't seem to find an inexpensive old version anywhere, and anyways I'd have to be sure it supports proper(aka what I want =-) text snapping.

I agree. And it looks like Inkscape can do everything Illustrator can (at least with regards to these specs).

Anandtech Thread with more information - a person mentions how to snap to grid in InkScape and a (not working for me) way to align them the way I want.
CorelDraw is also mentioned, which apparently can align the way I want but not via snapping to grid which makes it entirely inconvenient to use.

If I can't find anything else, I guess it might have to do, but its less than optimal for many, many, many reasons =-(

It's really hard to believe I'm the first person that wanted to align text by it's baseline and that the really, really expensive programs haven't added the feature just to have more features.

what are you are actually looking for is not specfically vector drawing program but page layout like Adobe inDesign or Freehand, but Illustrator and Inkscape will do it.

I only have macromedia studio on my laptop right now, so i cant tell you about exact steps for inDesign or Illustrator but what you want to look for is something like attaching text to a path. Usually its used for curved text or text that fills a polygon, but it can be used just as effectively for text on a straight line.

In freehand you make a line that you want the text to follow that will become its baseline. (change the fill/stroke to invisible then select both the text and the path and go Text->Attach to Path. Then that path will become its base line, then align the line to whatever you want.

I'm pretty sure you can do this with Inkscape using almost the same thing using Text-Put on Path.

basically, make some lines, snap them to your grid, make the text, then align/attach/put the text on the path. problem solved.

Well, Inkscape is open-source, so you could add the functionality yourself. If you really wanted to spend some serious time learning Inkscape's guts.

BTW: I can't get the Aligning to work in Inkscape, either.

kryat: As stated in the other thread, in inkscake the align to path doesn't do anything for me. The onyl program I've seen where it works was CorelDraw, but I'm NOT going to draw a line for each of the hundred text fields I want on this form. I guess I will try editing inkscape, though I imagine such a task will be far from trivial. Maybe it'd be easy to just edit the text bounding box so it stops at the baseline.

I was going through the Inkscape .42 code and it seems that they do have the feature to align baselines of text objects to each other, but not align the baseline of a given text object to the grid. Don't ask me why they didn't go that extra step, but at least most of the code you'll need is already there.

i seriously think your version of inkscape is screwed up, or you dont have the snap settings correct, because i just tried it with my version and i can get text to snap to top, baseline, and actual bottom. i've got 0.42

once i set the grid snapping up right, it was all fine and dandy. (i had it in pixels instead of inches and it was flipping out). I set the grid to 0.1" and the snap to 0.05", and turned on Show Grid, Snap Bounding Boxes to Grid, and Snap Points to Grid, and it was like majik!

Quote:

Original post by SiCrane I was going through the Inkscape .42 code and it seems that they do have the feature to align baselines of text objects to each other, but not align the baseline of a given text object to the grid. Don't ask me why they didn't go that extra step, but at least most of the code you'll need is already there.

It seems that most programs do it this way for some reason, including CorelDraw. It doesn't really make sense to me either, but I guess I can look at the source code when I get VS.Net reinstalled (just reformatted and somehow my windows folder got 850 MB smaller).


kryat: Have you tried it with a font size smaller than the grid? I'm using size 8 Arial (which should be 8/72 = 0.11 inches, but isn't) with the exact settings you just mentioned (and the same version of inkscape) and it will only snap to the top and bottom of the text.

If I select font size 24 instead, it LOOKS like it's snapping to baseline, but actually it's snapping to the top line and the baseline just happens to be nearly a multiple of 0.1 inches from the top.

i made a quick video of it. grid at .1" grid snap at .05" zoomed at 350% or so

Inkscape Text Snapping (if you tried a second ago, it wasnt done uploading. it works now)

Interesting video. I wish my InkScape would do that, but I have a clean system (reformatted last night), the latest stable version (not a nightly build), and when I have grid size 0.1in, snap to 0.05in, all 3 checkboxes checked, and a text box with "BbGgQq" Arial size 8, it will only snap to top and bottom no matter how much I zoom in.

If you really want, I can make a movie (if you'll suggest a freeware program to do so), but that shouldn't be neccessary.

Edit: I figured out the problem. Apparently, it won't snap like that if you draw a box with the text tool (instead it will snap as I mentioend above). What a moronic idea - I could understand if it snapped to the box you drew, but it snaps to the bounding box of the text instead which prevented it from clicking in my head. I guess that means I'll be working in InkScape at huge zoom (really I should just be able to tell inkscape how to snap things either individually or generally, but so far it's better than the expensive programs).

ahh i see what you mean, that is really moronic.

depending on your current employment status and your definition of "inexpensive", Adobe Illustrator w/ Education License is only $100. That's like two new release games.

Quote:

Original post by capn_midnight depending on your current employment status and your definition of "inexpensive", Adobe Illustrator w/ Education License is only $100. That's like two new release games.

Yeah, but how easy is it to align text by it's baseline in illustrator? It would have to be perfect to be worth $100 when InkScape has an annoying version of the features I want (though, I guess I could just go in and eliminate the snap to top and bottom in the source... hrm).