Release of ezdxf v1.1.0

[mozman]

New Requirements

• This version requires Python 3.8 or newer.
• The numpy and fontTools packages are hard dependencies.

WARNING: The font support has changed drastically in this version. If you directly use the ezdxf.tools.fonts module, your code will break. We apologize for the inconvenience. To use the previous version, pin the ezdxf version to v1.0.3 in your requirements.txt file!

Font Rendering by FontTools

Font rendering using matplotlib has been replaced by fontTools. It is now faster and more accurate. However, the convenient multi-platform support provided by matplotlib must now be handled by ezdxf, and it may not work as smoothly as with matplotlib.

The available fonts on a system are cached in the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/ezdxf directory, which defaults to ~/.cache/ezdxf. Please note that this cache will not be updated automatically if you add or remove fonts.

To update the font cache, use the following command:

ezdxf --fonts

For more information on this topic, please refer to this link.

Shape Font Support

We've added new support for measuring and rendering .shx, .shp, and .lff fonts.

Shape fonts are the basic stroke fonts commonly found in CAD applications. None of these fonts are included in ezdxf due to licensing restrictions or the restrictive licensing of the .lff fonts used in LibreCAD.

As there is no universal way to find these fonts, you will need to create a config file and add the font directories where these fonts are located to the support_dirs entry.

For more information on config files, please read this link.

On Linux, you can add symbolic links to these directories in the ~/.fonts directory.

Don't forget to update the font cache when adding new font directories!

New Backends for the Drawing Add-on

We've introduced new backends to the drawing add-on, allowing you to export DXF content as SVG, PDF, PNG, PLT/HPGL2, and simplified DXF files.

The new SVG backend is a native implementation and does not require the matplotlib package. It creates smaller files and supports the new page layout features introduced in this version.

The new PDF and PNG backends require the PyMuPdf package, offering faster rendering and support for the new page layout features compared to the matplotlib package.

The PLT/HPGL2 backend creates plot files for raster plotters. It's a native implementation and does not require additional packages. CAUTION: The output of this backend is only tested with a plot file viewer and not on real hardware!

The DXF backend creates a flattened DXF file with only these DXF primitives: POINT, LINE, LWPOLYLINE, SPLINE, HATCH.

We've added a new tutorial for using these new backends and the new page layout features.

New Hpgl2 Add-on

The hpgl2 add-on provides tools to process and convert HPGL/2 plot files. You can use the hpgl command in the launcher to view and convert plot files via a PyQt GUI:

ezdxf hpgl

For more information, please refer to the docs.

New ezdxf.xref Module

We've introduced a new ezdxf.xref module to improve the handling of external references and the import of resources. This module serves as a replacement for the Importer add-on but has a completely different API.

For more information, please read the docs and the new tutorial.

If you have any comments, ideas, or suggestions, please feel free to post them in the discussion forum on GitHub.

See you sometime, take care, stay healthy!

Version 1.1.0 - 2023-09-09

• WARNING: The font support changed drastically in this version, if you use the
  ezdxf.tools.fonts module your code will break, sorry! Pin the ezdxf version to
  v1.0.3 in your requirements.txt file to use the previous version!
• NEW: numpy is a hard dependency, requires Python version >= 3.8
• NEW: fontTools is a hard dependency
• NEW: ezdxf.xref new core module to manage XREFs and load resources from DXF files
• NEW: ezdxf.addons.hpgl2 add-on to convert HPGL/2 plot files to DXF, SVG, PDF, PNG
• NEW: ezdxf hpgl command to view and/or convert HPGL/2 plot files to various formats: DXF, SVG, PDF, PNG
• NEW: native SVG, HPGL/2 and DXF backends for the drawing add-on, these backends
  do not need additional libraries to work
• NEW: PyMuPdf backend for the drawing add-on, support for PDF, PNG, PPM and PBM export
• NEW: ColorPolicy and BackgroundPolicy configuration settings for the drawing
  add-on to change/override foreground- and background color by the frontend
• NEW: TextPolicy configuration settings for the drawing add-on, render text as
  solid filling, outline path, replace text by (filled) rectangles or ignore text at all
• NEW: support for measuring and rendering of .shx, .shp and .lff fonts, the basic
  stroke fonts included in CAD applications
• NEW: added setter to BlockLayout.base_point property
• NEW: ezdxf.entities.acad_table_to_block() function, converts a ACAD_TABLE entity
  to an INSERT entity
• NEW: ACADProxyEntity.explode() method, to explode ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY into proxy
  graphic entities
• CHANGED: moved font related modules into a new subpackage ezdxf.fonts
  including a big refactoring
• CHANGED: FontFace class - weight attribute is an int value (0-1000), stretch is
  renamed to width and is now also an int value (1-9)
• REMOVED: replaced matplotlib font support module by fontTools
• REMOVED: configuration option use_matplotlib - is not needed anymore
• REMOVED: configuration option font_cache_directory - is not needed anymore
• CHANGED: text rendering for the drawing add-on and text measurement is done by the
  fontTools package
• CHANGED: moved text rendering from backend classes to the Frontend class
• CHANGED: moved clipping support from backend classes to the Frontend class
• CHANGED: BackendInterface and all derived backends support only 2D shapes
• REMOVED: Matplotlib/Qt path converters from ezdxf.path.converter
• REMOVED: Pillow backend and the pillow command
• REMOVED: geomdl test dependency
• BUGFIX: invalid bulge to Bezier curve conversion for bulge values >= 1
• BUGFIX: #855
  scale MTEXT/MLEADER inline commands "absolute text height" at transformation
• BUGFIX: #898
  use dimclrd color for dimension arrow blocks
• BUGFIX: #906
  linetype and fill flag parsing for proxy graphics
• BUGFIX: #907
  fix ATTRIB and ATTDEF handling of version- and lock_position tags which share the
  same group code 280 in the same subclass