Single stroke / monoline text in Inkscape for laser engraving

Question

I'm trying to prepare a design in Inkscape to be sent to a laser cutter that should engrave some small text, with just with a single line.

Using the text tool and converting to a path gives me an outline of the text, which is not what I want.

How can I create text that uses a stroke instead of an area?

Answer 1

Choose Extensions > Render > Hershey Text...

There are a number of fonts to choose from. Here are a couple of samples.

Need Inkscape 0.91 or greater.