I'm afraid I don't know how to look this up, which is part of the problem for sure. I did find the correct way to convert text to paths on these boards, and that was a huge help, but now I don't know what to do next.

This file was created with Inkscape 1.4 on Ubuntu 24.10. Inkscape was not newly installed. I have no extra peripherals or macros.

What I'm trying to do:

I have this much. I converted the text to paths, as described here, and that part worked ok. What I want is for everything purple to be engraved, on an Aeon Mira 9 using Lightburn. I want everything that is white to stay level, to not be engraved.

The problem I have is that, on some letters that have closed loops, the inside is part of the same path (like the large O below), and on others it's a separate path (like the small o below).

I have fiddled around with stroke and fill to get the colors where I want. I figure one thing I could do with the small o is to put that path in the same layer as the purple background. But then I don't know what to do about the big O to make sure the middle also engraves. And is there a more efficient way to just say, "Engrave all the purple"?

Thanks in advance.

PS: Not about the tv show Owl House, although once I realized which part I'd selected, I did get a smile out of that.

Can you please check if converting the text object with Path->Union makes a difference instead of Path->Object to Path in your case?

Apologies for the late reply, I've been dealing with medical stuff.

Path -> Union followed by Path -> Break apart gets the same result as Path -> Object to path followed by Path -> Break apart.

I`m not getting why you do Path->Break apart. Do you need a seperation by glyphs then there’s an entry in the Path menu: "Split Path".

I'm not sure you need to worry about the fill colors, Lightburn is likely looking for just the geometry (paths).

If Lightburn is set to operate on the color for each operation (e.g. engrave only purple), I'd check the fill rule setting in Inkscape after converting text to path. http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Attributes-Fill-Stroke.html#Attributes-Fill-Rule

I was using Break apart because the post I was looking at recommended it, and then when I was fiddling with it, Break apart seemed to be doing more? I'm really not very good with this software yet, and this is the first time I've tried to create anything with it. Which is why I'm here.

At any rate, you're quite right, using Path -> Union does what I want without using Break apart. Thank you very much.