I'm a 50 year embedded software veteran (so no newby) but I'm new to cutters and Inkcut.
I'd like to get a cutter to make paint masks, but I don't know where to start and I want to be sure I can get something usable before I invest the $500 in a cutter.
I'll start with where I'm at.
- currently at Fedora 35
- I tried interpolating the instructions at www.codelv.com/projects/inkcut/docs/installing/
but that didn't get far because the package names are not available for Fedora, or may be named differently,
- so I assumed that the relevant software may already be installed so I blindly did the:
pip3 install inkcut
That installed and it seems to run, but how do I know it will work with, and drive a printer?
What do I need to test next?
I don't know what printer to get (recommendations are welcome), but one on my list that I'm led to believe may have the least compatibility/getting-to-work-issues is:
uscutter.com/USCutter-SC2-Series-Vinyl-Cutter/
That made me look at Inkcut's Device->Setup.
It asks what driver to use...
For this cutter would I just select 'Inkcut Generic Driver' ?
Or should I write to a file?
But what protocol needs to be selected for that printer?
and then could I just cat the file to the serial port?
(I'd be using a USB to serial DB9 dongle.)
I'm sure there are other questions I should be asking, but at this point I don't know what I need to know.
Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me.
Fulko
P.S. I tried installing/copying the Inkscape extension (as per the installation instructions reference above) and Inkcut is now listed, but I get the following errors when I have the extension 'open current document':
/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut_open.py:27: DeprecationWarning: inkex.localize was moved to inkex.localization.localize.
inkex.localize()
/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut.py:28: DeprecationWarning: The distutils package is deprecated and slated for removal in Python 3.12. Use setuptools or check PEP 632 for potential alternatives
from distutils.spawn import find_executable
/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut_open.py:66: DeprecationWarning: Effect.affect is now Effect.run(). The output argument has changed.
effect.affect()
/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut_open.py:53: DeprecationWarning: self.args[-1] is now self.options.input_file.
document = convert_objects_to_paths(self.args[-1], self.document)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut_open.py", line 66, in <module>
effect.affect()
File "/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/inkex/deprecated.py", line 183, in affect
return self.run(args=args)
File "/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/inkex/base.py", line 131, in run
self.save_raw(self.effect())
File "/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut_open.py", line 53, in effect
document = convert_objects_to_paths(self.args[-1], self.document)
File "/home/fhew/.config/inkscape/extensions/inkcut/inkscape/inkcut.py", line 38, in convert_objects_to_paths
tempfile = inkex.os.path.splitext(file)[0] + "-prepare.svg"
AttributeError: module 'inkex' has no attribute 'os'