Re: [Plplot-general] Text plotting

[Werner S. <sm...@ia...>]

Hi,
>
> Here is what I found.  For -dev xwin; -dev psc -drvopt text=0; -dev png
> -drvopt text=0; and -dev wxwidgets -drvopt freetype=0 the underscore is
> replaced by a (very) short dash.  All those cases involve our traditional
> Hershey fonts.  From this evidence I believe there is something
> fundamentally wrong with those fonts for the underscore character.
>
> One possibility was that our binary form of Hershey fonts somehow got
> clobbered in the underscore position accidentally in our CVS days, in the
> CVS to svn transition, or during the svn era since.  However, that turns  
> out
> not to be the case. I just (revision 9370) tweaked our build system to
> optionally (by default this is turned OFF) build programmes to generate  
> the
> binary form of our Hershey fonts.  (This was an interesting historical
> exercise.  I consulted the plplot-5.0.0 build directions [from our build
> system from three generations ago!] to help figure out how to build those
> programmes.) See fonts/README for directions on how to use our build  
> system
> to build the programmes to generate our Hershey fonts). When I ran those
> programmes, the results were absolutely identical with data/plstnd5.fnt  
> and
> data/plxtnd5.fnt that were generated more than 8 years ago.
>
> Another possibility is the directions for creating the Hershey underscore
> glyph are just plain wrong. (It could be missing as well, but then I  
> don't
> think you would be seeing the short dash.) I had a look at the code in  
> the
> fonts subdirectory that generates the Hershey fonts, and it is  
> essentially
> undocumented. Therefore, it is going to take some effort to figure out,  
> for
> example, the correspondence between any given glyph (such as underscore),
> and the data (pen positions I assume for drawing the glyph) that is  
> given in
> the source code.  I don't have time for such an effort (especially  
> because
> our Hershey fonts are gradually being replaced by TrueType or Type 1  
> fonts
> for most of our devices). However, if somebody wants to make the effort  
> to
> figure out the Hershey underscore problem, I would be happy to apply the
> fix.

I also have other things now on my todo list, but some time ago I was  
interested what I could find on the internet about the Hershey fonts, and  
I found some links which may be helpful:

* http://www.codeproject.com/KB/GDI/hersheyfont.aspx
* http://emergent.unpythonic.net/software/hershey
* http://www.efg2.com/Lab/OtherProjects/Hershey.htm - this seems to be an  
editor, which allows to edit hershey fonts

HTH,
Werner


-- 
Dr. Werner Smekal
Institut fuer Allgemeine Physik
Technische Universitaet Wien
Wiedner Hauptstr 8-10
A-1040 Wien
Austria
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email: sm...@ia...
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