Articles

This article explores the topic of layers, their name, and how they can be used to control the AxiDraw plotting process.

vpype 1.13 is out! 🎉 The main improvement is Python 3.11 support, but it does come with a few other bells and whistles, so let’s dive in. ...

Deep dive into the internals of my Automatic #plotloop Machine.

doit (a.k.a. PyDoIt) is a fantastic Python-based tool to automate repetitive workflows. It works particularly well alongside vpype to address mundane plotting-related tasks. This article explains in details how to automate an SVG optimisation and conversion workflow. ...

My successful (yet probably vain) attempt at running Textual (a modern TUI framework) on a Raspberry Pi without X11 by using fbpad (a framebuffer terminal emulator for Linux).

vpype 1.12 is out! 🎉 No ground-breaking features, but an improved “quality-of-life”, especially for Apple-silicon Mac owners, and few other goodies. Let’s dive in. ...

Although Google Analytics is very easy to setup on a Read the Docs-based documentation website, it requires a cookie banner to be GDPR-compliant and is otherwise questionable from a privacy-preservation point-of-view. As a result, I much prefer to use and support the excellent EU-based Plausible.io for traffic metrics instead. This article explains how to setup a Read the Docs-based documentation with Plausible.io such that metrics are enabled only on “production” builds — e....

Often, technical documentations include lists or other snippets of text that are strongly related to some of the project’s code. vpype’s documentation is no exception to this. For instance, the Built-in symbols section lists the units available to expressions: These units are related to the following piece of code: # vpype/utils.py UNITS = { "px": 1.0, "in": 96.0, "inch": 96.0, "ft": 12.0 * 96.0, "yd": 36.0 * 96.0, "mi": 1760.0 * 36....

This release further solidifies the block commands which were overhauled in vpype 1.9. It also introduces several changes revolving around the “plotting with paint” use-case, which typically requires the brush to be regularly dipped in a paint well. This can be achieved by inserting “dipping” patterns at regular intervals determined by the cumulative drawing distance. vpype 1.11 makes this process much easier. Thanks a lot to Andee Collard for his useful feedback and providing this article’s banner!...

Following a recent discussion on Twitter, I decided to take yet another deep dive in my Python projects' documentation and fix once and for all the issues I had with it. I first focused on the automatically-generated API reference section and this article details the results of my finding. Specifically, I’m using vsketch’s API reference, which I recently updated, as an example (documentation source. This article addresses the following objectives:...