/coldtype

cross-platform display typography in python

Primary LanguagePythonApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

⚠️🌋 Disclaimer: this library is alpha-quality; the API is subject to change 🌋⚠️


Coldtype

Hello and welcome to coldtype, an odd little library for programmatic typography, written for use on Goodhertz projects and text animations.

For installation and tutorials, check out coldtype.goodhertz.com

Here’s a quick example:

from coldtype import *

@renderable((1580, 350))
def render(r):
    c1 = hsl(0.65, 0.7)
    c2 = hsl(0.53, 0.6)

    return PS([
        (P(r.inset(10))
            .outline(10)
            .f(Gradient.H(r, c2.lighter(0.3), c1.lighter(0.3)))),
        (StSt("COLDTYPE",
            Font.ColdtypeObviously(), 250,
            wdth=1, tu=-170, r=1, rotate=15)
            .align(r)
            .f(Gradient.H(r, c1, c2))
            .understroke(s=1, sw=5))
            .translate(0, 5)])

Running that code results in this image popping up on your screen in a dedicated window:

An example

Documentation

Check out coldtype.goodhertz.com for instructions on installing and getting started with coldtype.

More Examples

The best way to get familiar with Coldtype is to look at and try modifying some example code, like the animating gif below. To try out this example and many more, check out the examples/animation directory in this repo.

Contributing

To get a development environment for Coldtype:

python3.9 -m venv venv --prompt=coldtype
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .[viewer]

Contributing to the Coldtype/Blender integration

If you're looking to work on the Blender integration, you'll want to do an "editable" (-e) install of Coldtype using the Python that comes embedded/bundled with the Blender executable. As of Blender 2.93, Blender bundles a Python 3.9, found at this location (on a Mac): /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.93/python/bin/python3.9

On my computer, I've added an alias to my .bash_profile, like this:

alias b3d='/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender'
alias b3d_python='/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.93/python/bin/python3.9'

Once you have that alias, you can run something like:

b3d_python -m pip install -e ~/path/to/coldtype

(where ~/path/to/coldtype is whatever the relative or absolute path is to your local copy of the Coldtype repo)

Installing Coldtype that way in Blender means you can tweak the Coldtype repo code and not re-install Coldtype-into-Blender every time (though you will have to restart Blender to pick up those new changes to Coldtype).