| I have been asked how you would handle wide characters/graphics that
are of heavy weight, So this is how I see the problem. Since the graphic
was described as "Wide Character" I am going to believe that you want
to make a font instead of a dingbat, But you are worried about how to handle
the spacing of wide characters, like the w and the m Well, for dingbats you have been told to accept the default values of the first two dialog boxes that come up once you specify that it is a NEW dingbat. Well, as a font, You cannot pass up the first two dialog windows that come up. On the first dialog window, you should change the type from Symbol to ANSI, doing this will make your font recognizable as a font instead of a dingbat. there are many other boxes that you can check off on this window, However I have not done any of this. The second dialog window that comes up is the METRICS it is a small window and here you would enter the number of EM's that you think your characters would require. I am going to guess here, but I used a figure of 1200em's, If you have made any dingbats, you know that the figure is roughly twice this number. With this done, you are now ready to start scanning your characters into Softy. (I say scan, because that is what Softy does, or you could say Softy reads the character if you want) and you pick up where you normally start by adding the space character as your first character in the new font. |
 Here you can see the Metrics dialog
box and that it was set for 1200EM's. Take notice, I took the snapshot
AFTER I had scanned in the glyphs, I just forgot to do it before I
began. I mention this because you can see a second figure in the dialog box,
Softy must calculate the width of your glyphs and set an Average Width.
Now, I can't be sure of this but it does make sense since you have some that
take little space (like the i) and some that take more (like the w). This
would allow Softy to allocate a specified amount of space/memory for you
to complete your set of characters. |
 Well, to all those who are following
this episode of "Lets Learn Softy" we are all familiar with this screen,
Here you make the first entry, The space character (ASCII character 032).
But you can see that I have added a red box to show you that it is set for
1200 EM's. And Now we begin scanning the graphic character into Softy. |
 Since this is to show the effects of
spacing, I have selected several characters from a wide and thick font. What
you see on your left will be the ones I will be working with plus a few more. |
 The following ten graphics will be loaded
side by side without further comment. There was nothing done at this stage,
so this is just for you to see how they were scanned. However, take note
of the figures in the lower right of the different glyphs, you can see that
they change almost from one glyph to the next. |
 
 
 
  |
 Now, this resulted in the fonts displaying
in Font View like the graphic on the left side. Eventhough I never
was outside the parameters I had set (1200EM's) the fonts were compressed
in the space I allocated them. When I finish this piece, I will go back and
correct the spacing to the full 1200EM's and see if it helps but I think
1200 is to large of a number for a font. |
| file: /Techref/member/softy-font/grumpy/spacing.htm, 5KB, , updated: 2003/6/4 12:19, local time: 2025/2/5 19:48,
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