I’ve been searching the forum and the Internet for two days on how to import formatted and justified text into Lightburn. If anyone has a link to a tutorial that will explain this in detail that would be great.
I did find a couple of posts in here but they were very vague on the actual how to part.
Any pointers would be great.
Thanks
i do a good bit of my design work in Inkscape… but when moving that artwork to lightburn i first convert text to paths… that’s all i ever need to do. I use inkscape because I learned it a few years ago and i am adept with it. I’m slowing getting better with using lightburn as more than just the final step in the process.
Thanks Kevin. I was just on my way back in here to post an update.
I finally figured out the proper process to get the justification into Lightburn.
I guess I mis-understood that I was supposed to be creating a text box with the ‘TEXT TOOL’ instead of the rectangular tool. I also created a template the size of my engrave area and use that as a base to size the text box. Saved it as a AI file and it imports great into Lightburn.
I hope I didn’t hurt the oak tree in the yard when I was banging my head against it today.
Ich speichere den Text als Grafik und dann importiere ich den in Lightburn.
I figured out how to get text out of AI and into Lightburn. I haven’t figured out how to change the font of the text after importing into Lightburn. Is there a tutorial somewhere for that or is that not doable in Lightburn?
Does anyone have a solution for this?
Thanks for any pointers.
How DID you get text out of AI and in to Lightburn?
If the text has been “converted to path” it’s no longer text, it’s just shapes so no you can’t change fonts.
If the text has been bought in as actual text with no “flattening” or" converting to path", then it should still be text and editable as such.
If you create the text in LightBurn, it’s actual text, with font properties assigned, and can be changed easily. If you create the text in an external package, like Illustrator or InkScape, it has to be exported as just shapes, because those apps have way more text options than we do at this point (per character font selection, kerning, etc).
So, you’re only importing the shapes - It’s kind of like the difference between having a finished cake, or having the recipe used to make it.
Hank, OK I exported the ‘curves’ out of AI and into Lightburn. I’m still going to call it text because that’s what it looks like. So there. 
The reason I’m using AI is because I have three paragraphs of text and they need to be justified which I read somewhere in here that can’t be done. I guess I’ll try typing each line to it’s justification point and get this project finished. This is not going to be fun.
Yeah, exported as curves effectively “ruins” it as text. It looks like text but no longer editable as such.
I don’t use AI so I don’t know what they call the process, but in Inkscape it’s called converting to path.
Hopefully some day Lightburn will be able to import real text…
The biggest issue with “importing real text” from AI and others is that AI and PDF typically embed the font they use right in the file, which means I first have to write an entire TTF / OTF file parser and internal font handler, and then add all the support for per-character changes (spacing, size, typeface, etc) that they support, which is a double nightmare, frankly.
SVGs don’t embed the fonts, so we’ll likely do them first, but they have their own challenges because of the way SVGs store their content - it’s a bit of a mess.
It’ll happen, it’s just not simple.
I’m patient. If you could just have it ready by mid August, that would be fine.
I’ll take a look at that tomorrow. Thanks.
I’m doing a one off project with a lot of text but I’ve started typing it in Lightburn. It’s not a normal thing for me so I’ll just suck it up and get it done. I do understand that it takes time to add things to Lightburn. I’m glad I found this software and I won’t be without it. Thanks for the info and suggestions everyone.
If you type a word or two, switch to select mode, select the text, then right-click the text and choose ‘Edit Text Shape’, you’ll get a pop-up window that you can use that’s a little quicker:
You can use all the normal Windows controls for copy / paste in there, cursor movement, etc. If you temporarily turn off the ‘Welded’ setting while you’re editing it will go faster too. You can turn it back on when done editing if you need it.
I didn’t know about that. I do have one line that I wanted to do italic. I’ll have to retype that to do that but that won’t take but a minute. I wish I’d known that yesterday.
Oz, thank you very much for showing me this, it will come in very handy with my projects.
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