Re: A Font for Pictographs

--- On Sat, 12/13/08, Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...> wrote:

> From: Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...>
>
> I tried copying your examples to my test page. When I
> replaced the hyphens
> with spaces or pluses, it looked OK. Apparently, IE does
> something nefarious
> with hyphens.
>
I'm re-designing the font, also trying to make it work with IE. The problem I've
discovered is that IE wants to advance every character by 150 font units even
when the character is not supposed to have any advance at all. Cutting and
pasting some samples into different applications I've found that it works just
fine in every application I've tried, including MS Word, and even Excel. So far
IE is the only application I've found that messes it up. I'll keep
experimenting.

> >> 1. In addition to space - + and _, the following
> characters
> >> advance:  ~ ( ) O } A J Z C B ? z /
> >> I'm pretty sure that some aren't supposed
> to.
For the sake of consistency, I've removed the cursor advance from ALL characters.
It now requires a hyphen to advance to the next column.
...

> > The zero key is just the shortcut way to draw a
> diamond, so that character
> > definitions would not get too long.
>
> I figured that was the reason. I was thinking more of C c J
> j, which can be
> duplicated with only two keystrokes each.
>
> I don't have any other comments yet, except to say that
> I'd probably assign
> some of the keys differently if I were doing it, for
> example avoiding < > " & as
> basic keystrokes.
I'm also changing around the key assignments for the very reasons you mention.
I've organized the strokes into more logical groupings. For example, the five
horizontal bars, one at each possible height above the baseline, are now
assigned to lower case a,b,c,d,e. I've also added all the possible circle
quadrants, also in all possible vertical locations.

By making all the strokes justified left in the character block I've been able to
eliminate half of the original key assignments, freeing up a lot of characters
for other uses. Now to draw two parallel vertical lines you draw the first
vertical, justified left, then a hyphen to advance 300 units, then the SAME
keystroke draws the second vertical line 300 units to the right. No need for a
separate keystroke for a vertical bar offset right by 300 units.

I haven't tried it in a PDF file yet. I'll try that after I get done with all
the updates I'm making.

I will have the reworked, and hopefully streamlined version up on my website
after I get all the other changes done later today.


--gary

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