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Welcome to the
T.C. Fonts Demo Set
from T.C. Fonts for AutoCAD(tm) Library One
"The Affordable Font Libraries"
Copyrighted (c) 1992
Dave Edwards Consulting
All Rights Reserved
T.C. Fonts is a trademark of Dave Edwards Consulting
AutoCAD(tm), SHX are trademarks of AutoDesk Inc.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
This demo set of four fonts is a select portion of a much
larger set of fonts known as "T.C. Fonts for AutoCAD(tm)"
(see below for more information). This set is being
distributed completely free of any registration fees.
The fonts are complete in every respect and are not
restricted in any way. The fonts are in the standard
SHX file format, therefore they will operate as any
other AutoCAD(tm) fonts. These fonts are filled,
presentation fonts and are not blocks that emulate fonts.
You can use them in many ways:
Create cover sheets and title blocks
Help your drawing's readability
Set your drawings apart from the crowd
Give each project its own custom look
Match a client's font
Use AutoCAD(tm) for creating marketing materials
Use AutoCAD(tm) as a simple desktop publishing system
and many, many more!!!
See below for more information on the particular aspects
of using these fonts.
DISTRIBUTION
This demo set is offered as "freeware" or "adware". You
may use and distribute it without any registration fee.
Shareware distributors may charge a standard disk and
processing fee. The "T.C. Fonts Demo Set" is copyrighted
as a complete set and must be distributed in its entirety.
Which means you must transferred this and other documentation
files along with the font files.
FONT NAMES
The following is a list of the fonts included in this demo
set. Also listed is the more general name by which they
are known. These font names are given merely as a reference
and are the trademarks of their respective owners.
MULTPL-O.SHX (outline - similar to Times)
MULTPL-L.SHX (light fill)
MULTPL-H.SHX (heavy fill)
OPUSTN-O.SHX (outline - similar to Optima)
OPUSTN-L.SHX (light fill)
OPUSTN-H.SHX (heavy fill)
UROSTLHO.SHX (outline - similar to Eurostyle Bold Extended)
UROSTLHL.SHX (light fill)
UROSTLHH.SHX (heavy fill)
VELVET-O.SHX (outline - similar to Helvetica)
VELVET-L.SHX (light fill)
VELVET-H.SHX (heavy fill)
The first six characters of the font name is the name of
the T.C. Fonts family. The next character specifies the
style within the family as follows:
"-" for the normal version
"B" for bold
"I" for italic
"D" for bold-italic
"H" for heavy or extended
"C" for compressed
The last character describes the plotting characteristics of the font.
"O" for the outline only version - no fill pattern.
"L" light fill version - can be plotted up to .75" tall
with a .50mm plotter pen
"H" heavy fill version - can be plotted up to 1.5" tall
with a .70mm plotter pen
See below for more on use and design of the fill patterns.
INSTALLING AND GENERAL USE
Once you have extracted the fonts, simply copy them into the
directory that you normally store your fonts. You could also
put them into a separate directory, if you so desire. In
AutoCAD(tm) you will simple use the STYLE command as you
always have to initialize these fonts in your drawing. No other
information about using this fonts is really necessary.
In the next sections, we will describe how to ensure that
fonts are filled and how to use the kerning characters.
FONT OUTLINES
The outlines of these fonts are an attempt to as closely
approximate the original as possible. However, most fonts
are created using Bezier curves. Unfortunately, AutoCAD(tm)
does not allow for a Bezier or spline curve in a font
definition. The curves in T.C. Fonts were created by
digitizing existing font outlines using only 3 point arcs.
There is a limit to the number of bytes a character can
have, so these fonts maintain a balance between creating
as smooth of curves as possible and the number of arcs
used. Often a character would have to be redone, because
once the fill pattern was added, the character had too
many bytes.
FONT FILL PATTERNS
This was the hardest feature to create. We, once again,
tried to maintain a balance between size of the character
and its ease of plotting. The most efficient way to draw
a fill pattern is using, what has been called a "continuous
pen down algorithm." This is where the fill lines are drawn
in order and connected with very small lines so that as much
of the fill as possible can be drawn without ever lifting the
pen from the paper. Unfortunately, there are several drawbacks
to this technique. For users of non-pen plotters, these lines
are completely wasted. For all users, they nearly double the
space taken up by the font in the display list and cause
redraw and regeneration times to increase dramatically. They
also require a great deal of manual effort to create, thus
increasing the length in time to create a font and therefore,
the cost.
We have chosen a much simpler approach. The characters in
the T.C. Fonts libraries are filled with lines that run at
90 degrees. They are drawn so that the character is filled
with the pen proceeding in just a simple "up and down" motion.
The fill lines are not connected to each other with very small
lines. On pen plotters, the pen will lift as it goes to draw
the next line. This causes the plot times on pen plotters to
be greater than those fonts optimized just for them. But,
your redraw and regeneration speed should be much faster.
It is our contention that any decrease in redraw times far
outweighs any increase in plot time.
The different types of each font are presented for the
various uses you might have. The "Light Fill" versions
can be plotted up to .75" tall using a .50mm pen and
still remain completely filled. The "Heavy Fill" versions
can be plotted up to 1.5" tall using a .70mm pen. Naturally,
you could create font sizes that are larger than this, if
you use a wider pen. Also, changing the "width factor" of
a font's style will also determine how well they will fill.
The fill lines have also been drawn so that they don't
quite meet the outside boundary of the character. This
has been done to prevent pen "runover". The widths of
lines created with plotter pens tend to be a little bigger
at the ends and beginnings of lines. If the fill pattern
was to meet at the precise boundary of the character, a
little "bump" of ink could be created and effect the
smoothness of the font.
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Since these fonts do take up system resources, it is
up to the users discretion as to how much they are used.
You could certainly set entire volumes of text using
these fonts, but there would be a substantial price
to be paid in your system's performance. Please expect
the quality of these fonts to cause you system to redraw
and plot slower.
There are several techniques you could use to help speed up
the process. You could turn off or "freeze" the layer that
these fonts are on. You could a standard "stroke" font
while the drawing was created and substitute the custom
font later. Overall, these fonts can be managed well just
as anything else about your CAD system, to cause your
drawings to look that much better.
KERNING CHARACTERS
AutoCAD(tm) uses proportionally spaced fonts. This means
that each letter can take up a different width on the
screen and plotter. However, this does not always produce
the best appearing output. If you type the words "DAVE EDWARDS"
in an AutoCAD(tm) font, you will notice that the "A" is
too far from the "V" in DAVE and the "W" in EDWARDS.
Desktop publishing fonts use a "kerning table" to overcome
this problem. Kerning is simply the space between letters.
A kerning table provides the distance between letters in
certain character pairs.
No such kerning table is available in an AutoCAD(tm)
font. To overcome this shortcoming, a very simple technique
has been employed (this is not our invention and has been
used by other font manufacturers for several years). We
have included in each font a character that has a negative
width. By inserting this character between two other characters,
they are brought closer together. In the T.C. Fonts this
character is the "`", sometimes called the "accent" or
"backwards apostrophe". It is found on the standard PC
keyboard to the left of the number 1 on the top row of
keys. When placing text in AutoCAD(tm), you will see a
blank box that shows the position of the next character.
By pressing this key, the box will shift to the left. You
can insert these characters as you place the text string or
they can be inserted later.
To make "DAVE EDWARDS" look better, you try using a text
string with the characters:
D'A'''VE ED'W'''''ARDS
The width of this "kerning character" has been defined
as 1/25th of the width of the letter "M" or 1/25 of an
"em" space. You can go a little crazy using these characters;
just use them when you have to. They can be deleted from
a text string as you would any other text.
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Technical support for this demo set is provided through
Dave Edwards Consulting. We can be reached at:
Dave Edwards Consulting
PO Box 210173
Montgomery, AL 36121
(205) 277-2048 (voice)
(205) 265-1814 (fax)
CIS#: 71361,3542
*****************************COMING JULY 1st!!!******************************
T.C. Fonts for AutoCAD(tm)
Library One
"The Affordable Fonts"
100 Filled Fonts for $100
Each font is created with smooth curves
Each font comes in three different versions:
Outline
Light Fill
Heavy Fill
Most major font styles are included.
Plus many script and specialty fonts!
GET ON OUR MAILING LIST TODAY!
********************************CUSTOM FONTS**********************************
We are now offering the creation of custom fonts to AutoCAD(tm) users.
If you have a font you need created...
PLEASE GIVE US A CALL!!
********************************CUSTOM LOGOS**********************************
We are also offering a service by which any existing logo
can be created in AutoCAD(tm) format.
Call use for more information about this service!
******************************FUTURE LIBRARIES********************************
In the future we will be releasing libraries of 100 fonts for $100.
Be looking for future library announcements.
If there is a font you would like to see added to a library...
PLEASE LET USE KNOW!!!