JSesh – How to Add new Variants to Signs

The Jsesh Website, in the Tutorial Section, contains  two wonderful videos that teach you how to use Inkscape to design new signs or to modify existing ones.
They are well done and really useful, you can find them here:

• Glyph creation 1: Creating a new glyph with Inkscape
• Glyph creation 2: combining existing signs into a new one

What you’ll find here is a little summary that, once you watched the videos, can help you to remember the steps without the need to watch the videos again.

How-To

Preliminary

Verify that you had received from Serge Rosmorduc (JSesh Author) your unique ‘User ID’ number and annotate it. If you don’t have one write him and ask for it.

Create a directory where to store all new signs and configure it in JSesh Preferences (Edit->Preferences->Font Preferences->Hieroglyphic Folder).

In your JSesh installation path try to locate the file jseshGlyphs-5.4.jar (the name could be different depend on installed version), you can find it in: <jsesh_installation_folder>/libJSesh.
Copy the file in another directory and expand it as it was a zip file.
Now you have a sub-directory with SVG files of all JSesh signs, available for you to design your new ones.

Steps

1. Start Inkscape
2. Set document dimensions to 1800x1800 px (File->Document Properties->Page->Custom Size). This will be your cadrat size.
3. Start drawing from scratch, or open some existing SVG files and then copy and paste in this new document. Some JSesh library SVG may have a small size like 18×18 px, don’t care about it, resize to your cadrat size and use them.
   Use a width of 60px (or 70px) for your lines.
   Smaller width could be used only for detail lines.
   When you are satisfied with your sign and it’s ready, move to the next step.
4. Convert all your paths to “Filled Path”, for every line in your drawing:
   • select it
   • select “edit paths by nodes” 
   • select “convert object’s stroke to paths”
5. Join all lines to a single one, select all parts of your drawing and join them using the menu: Path->Union
6. Save your drawing using File->Save as.
   Locate your sign directory created in preliminary steps and save the file with a username using the following syntax:
   US<your_user_number><Gardiner_code>VAR<variant code>
   <variant code> is usually an uppercase letter
   for example, if your User Number is 123 and you are drawing a variant of Gardiner Sign G36, the name will be: US123G36VARA
   if you draw a second variant for sign G36 the name will be:
   US123G36VARB

That’s all, start JSesh and you’ll have all your new signs available in the hieroglyphic editor.