I’ve created a graphics toolkit for batch-rendering list bitmaps for the Electra One. This relies on AppleScript (on a Mac), Adobe Illustrator and ImageMagick.
ImageMagick batch converts the exported files from Illustrator into XBM files in the command line. To install it with Homebrew, enter this into Terminal:
brew install imagemagick
Once that’s installed, open “48x18_template.ai” in Illustrator. This contains a matrix of 48x18 artboards for drawing your designs in. You should uncheck “Anti-aliased Artwork” in the preferences and turn on ‘Pixel Preview’ in the View menu, as this will show you how the paths will look in monotone (which XBMs are) before they are converted.
The final list names will be based on the artboard names.
Before running the AppleScript, hide the paths on the artboards (including the black rectangles) you don’t want to export.
The result will be a JSON file with a block of code you can paste into an EPR file. I’ve had the best success with creating all the graphics first for a preset, and then building the rest in the web app (instead of creating the preset and adding the bitmaps later).
One could run the steps on a Windows machine using the ‘standalone’ scripts in illustrator in the ‘Resources’ folder and running the ImageMagick shell script in folder of the exported images.
mogrify -format xbm *.psd[0]
The AppleScript simply runs all the apps in the right sequence for you on a Mac.