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The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: clemon79 on January 27, 2006, 05:35:14 PM

Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: clemon79 on January 27, 2006, 05:35:14 PM: My current Visual Basic project is a buzzer/scoreboard/timer system. Following a breakthrough this morning, I am in the process of putting together the timer, and for now I want to use an eggcrate font with it. So I boogied over to Ryan Bugaj's Display Field Guide (at http://pages.cthome.net/ryan_bugaj/fieldguide.html (http://\"http://pages.cthome.net/ryan_bugaj/fieldguide.html\"), so PLEASE don't send me there) and grabbed the font pack, which includes Jay Lewis's excellent work.

The challenge I am encountering is this: The whole font is a monospace font, which is probably by design, but the drawback to that, for my application, is that the clock looks funny, because the decimal point between the ones and tenths digit is spacing the numbers too far apart.

What I would prefer is an eggcrate font that includes monospaced digits, but kerned such that the decimal point is nice and snug with the ones and tenths digits.

(For bonus points, it would help if the lowercase letters were defined as well, as Jay's font only defines the uppercase ones. They'd be the same actual characters, of course, but it would help. )

Does anyone know where I might find such an animal?
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: JayDLewis on January 27, 2006, 07:03:19 PM: [quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jan 27 2006, 05:35 PM\']The challenge I am encountering is this: The whole font is a monospace font, which is probably by design,

(snip...)

(For bonus points, it would help if the lowercase letters were defined as well, as Jay's font only defines the uppercase ones. They'd be the same actual characters, of course, but it would help. )
[snapback]108855[/snapback]
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Yes, the monospace is by design. When I orginally made it, I wanted to entirely base it on the real thing. Since each character is generated in a 5x7 grid, I thought any characters should fit within that space. But, yes, it does look a little funny (although it's how it would be in real life).

As to upper/lowercase...well, I direct you to the Department of Redundancy Department. heh.

Could you not draw your own decimal point? For projects of my own, using that font, I would manually make my own (albeit fixed) decimal. Not a perfect solution...
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: clemon79 on January 27, 2006, 07:17:53 PM: [quote name=\'JayDLewis\' date=\'Jan 27 2006, 04:03 PM\']Yes, the monospace is by design. When I orginally made it, I wanted to entirely base it on the real thing. Since each character is generated in a 5x7 grid, I thought any characters should fit within that space. But, yes, it does look a little funny (although it's how it would be in real life).
[/quote]
Right. I'm not knocking your work, I'm sure that was your intent. It would merely be more useful to me the way I specified it. I'm not looking for verite, I'm looking for function.
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As to upper/lowercase...well, I direct you to the Department of Redundancy Department. heh.
Redundant? Yes. Infinely more useful? Also yes. (For example, right now, the default label on the control I'm using with the font reads "C____", with four blocks instead of the lowercase letters, because they don't exist.)

It's an aesthetic issue, yes, but one that I see creating absolutely no harm elsewhere and only providing benefit.
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Could you not draw your own decimal point? For projects of my own, using that font, I would manually make my own (albeit fixed) decimal. Not a perfect solution...
Could. However, 1) I don't know how to do that (I'm still a friggin' n00b when it comes to VB), and 2) it just sounds like the maintanance of the whole thing would be way more of a pain than it's worth, especially if a font exists that does what I need it to. Right now I can just write the clock to a single text label, and I see no reason not to keep it that way. With an drawn-in decimal I would have to do all kinds of other crap.
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: parliboy on January 27, 2006, 09:44:54 PM: While I appreciate that placing the decimal the first time is a pain in the butt, it may be easier for you in the end. To that end, you can create a text box with the decimal and have it placed on top of the object that holds your timer.

From there, your on-screen timer shows how many tenths of a second are left, instead of how many seconds (int(time*10)) and the decimal is there as a placeholder.
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: Particleman on January 27, 2006, 10:47:50 PM: Chris,

I can make you a font if you can't figure out how to make the existing font work in VB. I created the Ferranti-Packard, flip-dot 5x7 matrix font for my Feud software, which is pretty similar to what you're doing. I can make tweaks until it works for your software. Just IM or e-mail me and I can get started.
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: JayDLewis on January 28, 2006, 11:31:02 AM: [quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jan 27 2006, 07:17 PM\']Right. I'm not knocking your work, I'm sure that was your intent. It would merely be more useful to me the way I specified it. I'm not looking for verite, I'm looking for function.[/quote]
Nono, I didn't take it as a knock. Just wanted to acknolwedge that yes it was by design and the reasoning behind it.

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Redundant? Yes. Infinely more useful? Also yes.
Yeah, but is it that hard to type in all caps?

If I still had the software, I would consider making an adjustment or three. However, that program was lost years ago.
Title: Non-monospaced Eggcrate font?
Post by: clemon79 on January 28, 2006, 03:26:34 PM: [quote name=\'JayDLewis\' date=\'Jan 28 2006, 08:31 AM\']Yeah, but is it that hard to type in all caps?
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It's not that it's hard, it's that it's inelegant. Repeating the same alphabet set with the lowercase characters does nothing but add flexibility to the font.

(I see the opposite argument, too. "I typed a lowercase character, why isn't it uppercase?!?!??!" So you couldn't please everybody, which means you get to please one of two audiences: 1) people who would appreciate being able to type in mixed case with the understanding that the font is still going to be all upcase, either because it works better with how they type or because it makes their source code look better, or 2) chuckleheads who can't figure out that sometimes a font doesn't include lowercase letters. Personally, I like to reward intelligence.)

At any rate, Todd has indicated that he thinks he can spruce it up, I'll shoot him an email and see what he can do.