Hi, a week back an old Mimaki plotter found it's way to me and I did some testing with Inkscape. 
It's working pretty well with Inkscape, as long as the lines are straight.
When the bezier curves are flattened, there is something strange happening. Every second point, there is an extra point with a distance of one to the previous point. 
This is of course a nightmare for the plotter's internal acceleration planning. The effect of this is that it's getting really slow, as soon as there's a curve. 
At the moment I'm helping myself by exporting an hpgl file which I'm cleaning up using python, but I'm wondering if there is some setting or option I did not see so far.

And last but not least: It's pretty cool that a feature for such a limited use case is implemented at all, tanks for that!

It sounds like the curve is not only divided into small sections, but that these sections are also segmented in single separate objects. Inkscape can unite these into one continuous path by selecting all with the Selector tool - switch to Node-tool and drag a rectangle around everything to select all nodes and hit "Join selected nodes". Could be you need to exclude end nodes from the selection first.

Thanks Polygon!
Actually I found a workaround. There's a flatten beziers function in the Extensions menu that's doing a decent job. 
But cutting curves is still pretty slow. I'm pretty certain this plotter understands some kind of curve commands, just couldn't figure out which. The HPGL2 bezier command isn't working. 
I also got a cutting software for it, but it's not running on modern machines (think it's got a parallel port dongle), but with this software curves are being cut pretty fast. 
Now I could try to contact Mimaki and ask for some information or try to reverse engineer it with port sniffing software. 
But for now it's running fine, that's something I could do in case I might get bored one day.

 

I've often used the Flatten Bezier tool (Under Extensions->Modify Path), however my new Inkscape installation (1.3.2) no longer seems to have the extension, even though the flatten.py file is present in shared/extensions. Has this functionality moved?

"Flatten" is now in the Path-menu:

I tested that function, however it doesn't seem to subdivide rounded beziers into short straight sections which is what the Flatten Bezier extension used to do.

Instead it seems to work kind of like the Path->Difference (but without deleting the top shape).

VortyZA

I tested that function, however it doesn't seem to subdivide rounded beziers into short straight sections which is what the Flatten Bezier extension used to do.

I don´t understand what it shall do. And yes it seems gone - at least it´s not in 1.4beta2.

VortyZA

I've often used the Flatten Bezier tool (Under Extensions->Modify Path), however my new Inkscape installation (1.3.2) no longer seems to have the extension, even though the flatten.py file is present in shared/extensions. Has this functionality moved?

It might have been renamed into Extensions > Modify Path > Appoximate Curves by Straight Lines ?

Nailed it David - thanks.. That's exactly what has happened.

I guess it's been renamed to avoid confusion with the new flatten path menu entry.