I barely understand this stuff. I know that everything is a file. In Inkscape, the files are very accessible directly to edit, unlike the proprietary programs that hide that stuff from you. What we are doing is simply making a numeric description of colors and putting it in the form of a file that Inkscape can read. The GFUI must have some part of its programming that reorders the different colored objects according to a certain scheme. That allows the catalog files to order their cuts automatically for best effect.
I did this on Windows 10. You might run into permission problems poking around in the install directory. You’ll have to allow it as administrator.
This is the simplest format to make. Use a Notepad to make the file and save as plain text with the extension .gpl.
It is even more complex for us mac users, had to dig into the package contents, and copy one of the existing files and paste the new information into that file.
Making a .txt file on my mac, well I do not have an app that will do that, even the text edit app wanted to make it a .rtf file, Inkscape doesn’t like that.
For you Mac users, right click on the Inkscape app icon in finder and choose show package contents, on my machine the file is located in
/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/palettes (place the file here)
I cannot link the gpl file to the board, so if any other Mac user wants the file send me an email and I will send it to you.
Is the mac text editor a developer tool? I did a search for it on my computer and do not have it.
All I have TextEdit and it will not save plain text files.
I will try the TextWrangler, thanks.
TextEdit will in fact save plain text files. You just have to make sure there is no formatting in the document. Go to Format… and choose Make Plain Text, then Save will allow you to save as .txt.
Here’s where I think it goes on a Mac (sorry Windows users, I don’t have a machine to test but I’m sure smart folks out there will figure out where to put it); I’m using Illustrator CS5 on Mac OS 10.10.5 so your procedure might be different:
Save the file to your hard drive.
In the Finder, hold down the Option key while choosing the Go menu. Choose Library (it doesn’t show up if you are not holding down the Option key).
Navigate to Library > Application Support > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS5 > en_US > Swatches
Drag the Glowforge.ai file into the above Swatches folder.
Restart Illustrator. If you go to Window > Swatch Libraries > User Defined, you should see the Glowforge swatch library in there.
EDIT: To use this palette, download the zip file and extracted the contents. Copy the glowforge.xml file to My Documents\My Palettes (this file should already exist even though you don’t have any custom palettes). Then, in CorelDRAW, open the Color Palette Manager (Window --> Dockers --> Color Palette Manager), open the My Palettes section, and double clicked on the Glowforge palette.
When I created the palette, it defaulted to saving in a folder called “My Palettes” within My Documents. I’d try putting it there. Create the folder if it doesn’t exist. Then, in CorelDRAW, open the color palette manager (Window --> Dockers --> Color Palette Manager). From within the Color Palette Manager, choose the icon across the top for Open a Palette and then navigate to where you saved this file. If that doesn’t work, let me know. I need to move this palette from my desktop computer where I created it onto my notebook computer later today. I’ll try to follow these steps. If they don’t work, I’ll update this.
Actually, it’s slightly easier than I described. I just loaded it on my notebook. I downloaded the zip file and extracted the contents. I copied the glowforge.xml file to My Documents\My Palettes (this file existed even though I didn’t previously have any custom palettes). I then looked in the My Palettes section of the Color Palette Manager and double clicked on the Glowforge palette.
no need for a text editor.
copy the text provided by @marmak3261 in the first post. select and press command-C usually
open a terminal window
at the prompt type:
cat > /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/palettes/GFPalette.gpl
press return if you did not
press command-V to paste or select paste from the edit menu
press control-D to close the file
you can close the terminal window now
I would reccomend doing this while inkscape is closed.
you can use any name you want ending .gpl if you don’t like GFPalette.gpl.
The > is of course very important in the cat command if you are having trouble since it tell the bash shell to write to the file named after.
If you have a permission problem you can try the sudo in front of the cat command. it will prompt you for your password and then should be able to write where you normally cannot even places you probably shouldn’t.
I unfortunately cannot reboot at the moment to finish the XQuartz install to test this beyond getting a text file out there. so if anyone else cares to verify that this is successful and I didn’t miss anything I suspect others would be appreciative.
Also for Inkscape users: As the tool tip states on the palette ribbon, clicking on the palette sets the fill color by default. You need to press Shift+click on the swatch to set the stroke.
These instructions will work for Linux as well. The one change will be the part after “cat >”. For my version of Ubuntu, “cat > ~/.config/inkscape/pallettes/GFPallette.gpl” should work.
Open Inkscape and press “shift + ctrl + p” and see where “user config:” points to and add “/pallettes/GFPallette.gpl” after that. BTW, “The ~ (tilde character) shorthand command refers to that particular user’s home directory.” -source: Wikipedia
Or, use any of the kajillion Linux editors that can save plain text files.
Yes, this is a very helpful and important concept for everyone. It works on engraving, cutting and scoring. So each object in your design with a different color gets imported into the GFUI as its own separate operation. So a red filled square and a blue filled square will be different operations that you set for different engraving settings. A red outlined square and a blue outlined square with appear as different operations for cutting. I’ve noted that some folks are still grappling with this concept.
