kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["vladimir_uryvaev" <vovanius@...>]

--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Lorenzo" <lomarcan@...> wrote:
> The current font is a direct conversion of the Simplex Hershey font (I converted it). Its free to use, there should be the licence in the .h containing it. The one before it (the 'squared one') I don't know...

Where and in what format Hershey font was taken?

> I've built an ISO font (Latin 1 + Cyrillic + Technical Set 1) converting an .shp font found on the net.
> 
> I didn't submit it because:
> 1) The license status is unknown (it was something like super iso8 or something...)

Yes, it is bad.

> 2) Metrics are COMPLETELY different (since the current font is 'squared' while the iso one is approx. 1:2). This is actually the main reason for theconversion :P

Yes, this would do bad thing when font is fitted to grid.

I may adopt ex-USSR GOST fonts, but do not do this because of these two reasons too.

> I also handle the Technical Set 1 extension to access technical greek andthe IEC symbols (like AC, DC, 3state and so on)
> 
> > I have experience on designing stroke (plotter) fonts, so I can make international (at least supporting all european languages) font for KiCad.
> 
> If you want I've built a tool which reads a .shp definition and outputs the hersey strings semiautomatically (i.e. metrics are built into the code as constant, and it's very rough :D). It supports most of the shp constructslike subshapes, but not the vertical movement bypass token. So if you wantto design a font using an shp editor (i.e. autocad with some lisp tool) this tool can be of some help, maybe after some refining... if you want it I'll post the source on the group.

Hmm. I do not have AutoCAD, so this tool will be useless for me. I'll probably use QCad and simple conversion script (or direct mind-to-string encoding sometimes). I also think KiCad symbol editor would be usable. (So why do not use Kicad libraries as font containers in future?)

> Of course the most important thing is designing on the right integer grid, since hershey encoding only supports integer coordinates; to be exact IIRC it supports coordinates between -50 and +50. The scaling offsets and factors are built into the font drawing routine since for now the font isn't replaceable...

As I currently see, current grid size is enough for fine looking font. And there's no problem to change offsets and factors as we have source code.