There is a new experimental version of LaserBoy here:
https://laserboy.org/code/LaserBoy_2022_11_23.zip
I have not yet begun the work of documenting all of the new capabilities of this version. This is for those who want to try it out and possibly make comments about its use and functionality.
The major focus of this release is vector font rendering any characters from the Unicode character set from utf8 encoded ascii text files (with specific instructions).
This version introduces a new file type and sub-directory to go with it called utf8.
There are new LaserBoy ascii text directive that facilitate the management of character sets outside of the standard ascii single byte characters from 33 to 127 aka
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
At first I thought of using a utf8 encoded ascii file as an index into a font frame set. I developed the tools necessary to manage that. Then I realized that ilda frames have 8 (ascii) character names for each frame and that 8 characters is exactly the number required to represent any 32 bit hexadecimal value (Unicode character identification) from 00000000 to ffffffff. So now there is a system to examine a block of utf8 text and distill a character set, import character lists to set the Unicode names of every frame in a font, export the character list from the frames of a font, compare one set of Unicode characters to another and generate all of the extended characters that are composed of the regular ascii base letters and diacritic marks used in all kinds of non-English text based on the Latin Alphabet. When a font is used by a LaserBoy text script, the names of each frame are used to identify each glyph. So the order of the frames is no longer relevant. If the frame names are found to not be correctly set to Unicode values, then the default assumption is to index the frame_set as the first 94 glyphs of standard ascii (like it has for over a decade).
I also added a new dxf import option that works with Inkscape. In Inkscape it is possible to drop a text cursor and place truetype font into a CAD drawing. This text can then be converted into a tool path and saved as dxf. LaserBoy can open that dxf and extract each individual glyph to make a font set.
This version comes with a bunch of new fonts in ./LaserBoy/ild/fonts and two new text files, new.txt and compose.txt.
The application has new menu options.
Please check it out and ask questions!