Is is necessary to maintain the exact layout of those vintage pcbs? I'm sure they look really cool, but if you just want the board to work you don't need maintain the curveyness of those old boards.
Yes, unfortunately they do have to look right, as well as work right.....And, I appreciate how ludicrous that will sound to many.
But, I always compare it to vintage motors, people restoring old cars don't just want the part to work, they want it to look period correct too.
(These are all for vintage audio equipment.......and audiophile/analog gear heads are the first to admit they are a strange bunch, add restoration into the mix and you got these strange predicaments! )
I have thought about maybe using DesignSpark, as the Arc tool looks vastly superior to what you can do in Eagle. Just not sure where im going to find the time to learn a whole new program
Potrace and Gimp? Not sure if Gimp outputs Gerber code.
As I can trace the board in vector no problem, but I don't really want to deal with bitmap/Raster graphics at all due to how much the trace will degrade.....will look into inkscape exporting formats.