Okay.

It's similar to Photofont Start by fontlab but I'm confused on how to use it, plus having to keep downloading fonts to use seems like a pain and a space gobbler since there are no folders to keep the fonts in or no way to install new fonts. The confusion for me lies in the layers. I can't add layers manually for this script to work.. unlike photofont Start when you can add layers to it.

You only have to download each .xcf font file once and store it any folder of your choice. You can just create a folder called custom_font_files or whatever name you choose on your computer. And anytime you want to use one of these .xcf font files. You can't install them because they're just .xcf files... Gimp files don't install, you open them like any other image.

Once you run the script and generates the graphics of your message in a new image, it's like any other image, you can add whatever you want to it.

You can make your own fonts if you want.
These are ready made fonts that have already be created, with a design in mind.
All the work has been done. Just get the xcf files and open them with Gimp, or create them on your own.
Once the text string is created, the image is fully editable in Gimp.

I tried using this script, and I still get errors when using it.... I used the premade fonts... I still get errors. How do I use the other script, Custom Cut Font as well? That script was also giving me errors. They vary from font to font. One error I got while using Rod's steampunked font was 'layer png not found trying upper case'

What was the text message that you tried to create when you used Rod's steampunked font?
Custom Cut Font script only works with gimpchatbanner font ...because that .xcf defines element layers to cut font from so other .xcf do not work with Custom Cut Font script unless you want to add element layers yourself. It's meant to cut out shapes from black or colored font shapes using the element layers as.. if you just open gimpchatbanner xcf font file and look around you should know what i mean.

this is version 6 of the script
...does not report warning when finding a newline "\n" character.

For the custom font script, the errors I got while using Rod's steampunked font were 'layer's png not found trying uppercase' & 'layer png not found trying space png. Those two errors can happen with or without uppercase. I also get errors using most of the fonts.

But it creates the message fine right, they're not errors, i put those output in to warn/notify the user what haven't been defined so they can define them. If it generates the text message fine you should just ignore those warnings.

What's the fix for some of the letter having larger space in between then the others?
Should those letter have a different/larger cropping?

not sure right now other than manual cropping each layer so that they don't have too much transparent space on left and right.

i see if i can write a script to crop left and right transparent pixels so that it does it automatically.

are you running it on your font file? I am not able to reproduce this error. Actually I was able to reproduce it but it gave me a small w.png... so I renamed "W.png" to "W.png" ...maybe it has something weird in there i don't know but i was able to get Wwallace when i tried it.

UPDATE: I control Z to find out what it was ..and your layer name is actually named "W.png " with a space at the end..that's why

I tried it but it didn't work because for example the letter lowercase i had vines that made the letter wider than the i itself so it's spaced out...
only think i can think of is make all the letters layers wider so that it's consistent with the i like and then use a negative letter spacing

okay so how do we solve the letter i problem. since it is thin?
this is a possible solution (experimentation).
check this image out


now we draw a path (just a simple line across the i, keep it generally centered but that defines the width of the letter i like this) and name the vectors/path "i.png".


Now the script will look for that paths of the same name and use that as width of character instead of what the layer's width is. so we'll get something like this


again this is only experimentation but i'll make this a new version as well it seems to work well for when the letter i isn't even in the center like these as long as the path tells it where the letter i is.


with this using path to define where letter i is you'll always end up with something like this

With possible extra path defined for the character, we can tell it where the actual letter i is, and still be able to have vines (or whatever wider than the width of the letter i).

The script grabs the first point of the path and the last point of the path, then gets the x-coordinate of those points and uses the smaller x-coordinate as left side and uses the larger x-coordinate as right side. It then assumes that the point in the middle these 2 points the center-x position of the character.

I think this is a great additional feature to this script

Oh nice textures on the stone.

With the latest version of the script you can have vines going all wacky outside of the letter's width area, and just draw a path (a simple line to tell it where the letter is horizontally). Read previous post for more details. I was away to space your letter i pretty nice.
Here i just defined straight line paths to define the letters that make up Wallace except for the capital W because it's already taking up the width of the layer. and used letter spacing 8