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<HTML>
<HEAD>
<!-- Created with AOLpress/2.0 -->
<!-- AP: Created on: 6-Dec-2000 -->
<!-- AP: Last modified: 20-Feb-2002 -->
<TITLE>Outline Character View</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1 ALIGN=Center>
Outline Character View
</H1>
<P>
<IMG SRC="charview2.png" WIDTH="544" HEIGHT="656">
<P>
The outline character view is the window in which most editing happens.
<P>
At the top of the window, underneath the menu bar is an information line.
The first item is the location of the mouse pointer (in the internal coordinate
system of the character). If there is a single selected point then the next
item gives its location, and the next three are, respectively, the offsets
from the selected point to the current location, the distance from the selected
point, and the angle from the horizontal (measured counter-clockwise).
<P>
Underneath the information is a ruler showing the current pointer location
as a red line. There's a similar ruler on the left side.
<P>
Underneath that is the character itself. On the left edge of the screen is
a grey line indicating the x=0 line, further right is a black line showing
where the character's width is currently set. There are also grey lines showing
the ascent, descent and baseline.
<P>
Background images and background splines are drawn in grey. Grid lines are
also drawn in grey. Vertical hinting regions are drawn in light blue, Horizontal
hints are drawn in light green. If any hints overlap the boundaries are drawn
in cyan.
<P>
The points of the character are of three types, corner points drawn as filled
squares, curve points drawn as filled circles and tangent points drawn as
filled triangles. If a point is selected then it will be drawn as an outlined
square, circle or triangle and its control points are drawn as little magenta
or dull-cyan xs at the end of a similarly colored line. (in a curved point
the control points will be collinear). (the "Next" control point will be
drawn dull cyan, and the Prev point will be magenta).
<P>
Sometimes it is important to know which points are at the extrema of splines
(postscript likes for there to be points at the extrema of all splines),
if this is important to you set the "Mark Extrema" flag in the View menu.
After that points at extrema will show up as dull purple.
<P>
There are also two independent palettes, one allowing you to control
<A HREF="#Layers">which layers are visible</A>, and one a tool palette from
which you <A HREF="#Tools">may pick editing tools</A>.
<P>
You select an editing tool by clicking on the appropriate button on the tools
palette, or you may depress the right mouse button and select a tool from
a popup menu. There are four different tools bindings available to you (this
may be a complication with no utility). The left mouse button has a tool
bound to it, and this tool will be displayed when the program is idle. If
you hold down the control key, another tool is available, by default this
is a pointer but if you click on the tools palette with the control key down
you can select something else. If you depress the middle mouse button you
get a third tool (by default a magnifying glass), and the control key and
middle button give you the fourth (a ruler).
<P>
If the mouse pointer is close to a point (within a few pixels) when you depress
the mouse, then the effective location of the press will be the location
of the point.
<H2>
<A NAME="Layers">Layers</A>
</H2>
<P>
<IMG SRC="layers.png" WIDTH="104" HEIGHT="185" ALIGN="Left"> There are four
layers in the outline view, three of which are editable. Each layer has a
check box (indicating whether it is visible or not) and a radio button
(indicating whether it is editable-- <A HREF="hinting.html">The Hints layer</A>
is not editable and has no radio button). The Horizontal and Vertical hints
may be controlled seperately.
<P>
The first is the foreground layer, this contains the splines that actually
make up the character that will be placed into the font.
<P>
The second is the background layer, this contains background images and splines.
These do not go into the font, but may be helpful to you in tracing the outline
of your character.
<P>
The third layer is a set of guide lines/splines. These are common to all
characters in the font. A few lines are provided for you (the x=0 line, the
ascent, descent and baseline). Other handy lines might be the x-height of
the font, the cap-height, ascent-height, descender-height, ... When you are
working in any of the other layers, points will snap to splines in this layer
(making it easy to force a consistant x-height for example).
<P>
The next 3 layers control what hints for this character are visible. Hints
may be created with the <CODE>Hints->AutoHint</CODE> command, the presence
of hints will sometimes improve rasterization.
<P>
The last three entries control whether the horizontal or vertical metrics
for the character are visible. When editing Latin (Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew,
Arabic, etc.) glyphs only horizontal metrics are generally present. When
editing Chinese, Japanese, Korean fonts both horizontal and vertical metrics
are needed. By default vertical metrics are not available, if you want them
go to <A HREF="fontinfo.html#vertical">Element->FontInfo</A>.
<H2>
<A NAME="Tools">Tools</A>
</H2>
<P>
<IMG SRC="tools.png" WIDTH="57" HEIGHT="260" ALIGN="Left"> There are 14 different
editing tools of which two (rectangle/ellipse and polygon/star) come in two
forms.
<P>
At the bottom of the palette is a list of the current bindings of the mouse
buttons. Here mouse button 1 is bound to the pointer tool, mouse button 1
with the control key pressed is also bound to pointer, mouse button 2 is
bound to magnify, and mouse button 2 with control is bound to ruler.
<H3>
The pointer tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool is used for selecting points, images and referenced characters.
It can also move these and scale images and referenced characters.
<P>
Only things that are in the layer that is currently editable may be selected
or moved or scaled.
<P>
A simple click on an unselected point selects it and deselects everything
else. A shift click on a point toggles whether that point is selected or
not. A double click selects all points on the path containing that point.
Clicking on the background will deselect everything. Clicking on the background
and dragging out a rectangle will select everything within the rectangle.
Clicking on a line or spline will select the two end points of that line
or spline. Clicking on the dark part of an image (when in the background
layer) will select the image. Clicking on the outline of a referenced character
will select that reference (if a reference character happens to have the
same outline and bounding box, then holding down the meta key will allow
you to move it once it is selected, without the meta key you will resize
it).
<P>
If a point has no visible control points, then they are at the same location
as the point itself. If you want to select one of the control points then
first select the point (to make the control points active) then hold down
the meta key and depress on the point. This should allow you to drag one
of the control points (if you get the wrong point the first time drag it
out of the way, repeat the process to get the other control and then put
the first one back). Sadly some window managers (gnome-sawtooth for one)
will steal meta-clicks. If this happens you will need to use Element->Get
Info to set the control points.
<P>
Once something is selected you may drag it around. If you select something
and then drag the mouse then it and everything else selected will be moved.
If you drag an open path and one of the end points happens to fall on the
end point of another open path, then the two will be merged into one. If
you drag a control point then it will be moved.
<P>
If you selected a spline, then dragging it will drag the location on the
spline where you pressed the mouse.
<P>
If you hold the shift key down when you drag then the motion will be constrained
to be either horizontal, vertical, or at a 45° angle. (When moving control
points the combination of shift and meta (alt) will mean that the control
point is constrained to be the same angle from the base point as it was before
you started moving it).
<P>
If your font has an ItalicAngle set, and the ItalicConstrain preference item
is set, then motion that would normally be constrained to the vertical is
constrained to be along the ItalicAngle.
<P>
If you move the mouse to the bounding box of a selected image or reference
character and drag it then you will scale that object.
<P>
If you move the mouse to the width line, then dragging it will change the
width of the current character. If there are any bitmaps of this character
then their widths will also be updated. If there are any other characters
which depend on this character (ie. include this character as a reference)
and their width was the same as the character's, then their widths will also
be updated (so if you change the width of A, then the width of À,
Á, Â, Ã, Ä and Å might also be changed).
<P>
It is also possible to use the arrow keys to move selected items around.
Each arrow will move the selection one em-unit (this can be changed in
preferences to be any number of em-units) in the obvious direction. The selection
may include the width (right bearing) line (or vertical with line). If the
last thing you selected was a control point then that point will be moved.
If you hold down the shift key at the same time the up and down arrows will
move parallel to the italic angle (be careful of this: this leads to non-integral
values).
<P>
If you hold down the control or meta (alt) key while working with the arrows
then the view will be scrolled rather than moving the selection.
<H3>
The magnifying tool
</H3>
<P>
Clicking with the magnifying tool will magnify the view and center it around
the point you clicked on. Holding down the Alt (Meta) key and clicking will
minify the view, again centered around the point at which you clicked. Again
some window managers will steal meta-clicks, so you may have to use the View
menu to minify (It's called Zoom Out)
<H3>
Tools for adding curved, corner and tangent points.
</H3>
<P>
These three tools behave similarly, differing only in what kind of point
is added to the view.
<P>
If a single point is selected, and if that point is at the end of a path
then depressing the mouse button will create a new point where the mouse
was depressed and draw a spline from the selected point to new point. If
this new location happens to be the end of a path then the two paths will
be joined (or if it is the end of the current path then the path will be
closed).
<P>
Otherwise if the mouse is depressed while being on a spline then a point
will be added to that spline.
<P>
Otherwise a new point is created not on any path at the location of the press.
<P>
Once the point has been created then it becomes selected and all others are
deselected. You may drag the point around, and if the point is on an open
path and you drag it to the end point of another open path then the two paths
will be joined.
<H3>
The pen tool
</H3>
<P>
In many ways this is similar to the tools above, the only differences are
that the points created are curved points, they are initially created with
the control points on the point and as you drag you drag out the control
points rather than moving the point itself around.
<H3>
The knife tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool is used to cut splines. As you drag it across the view every spline
you intersect will be cut-- that is at the location where your drag intersects
the spline two new points will be created and the old spline will be split
in two connecting to the two new end points. These endpoints are not joined,
so the spline is now open (or if it were previously open, it is now cut in
two).
<H3>
The ruler tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool tells you the x-y offsets, distance and angle from the point where
you depressed the mouse to the mouse's current location.
<H3>
The scale tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool allows you to scale the selection by eye rather than by a set amount
(if there is no selection then everything in the current layer will be scaled).
The location of the press will be the origin of the transformation, the further
you move the point up and to the right the more it will be scaled in that
dimension. If you want the scaling to be uniform or only in one dimension
then hold down the shift key.
<H3>
The flip tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool allows you to flip the selection either horizontally or vertically.
Again the point at which you press the mouse is the origin of the transformation.
<H3>
The rotate tool
</H3>
<P>
This tools allows you to rotate the selection freely.
<H3>
The skew tool
</H3>
<P>
This tool allows you to skew the selection.
<H3>
The rectangle/ellipse tool
</H3>
<P>
By default this produces a rectangle, but if you double click on the button
in the tools palette you can make it produce an ellipse or a rectangle with
rounded corners.
<P>
The rectangle will be drawn between the point where you depressed the mouse
on the view and the point where you released it.
<H3>
The polygon/star tool
</H3>
<P>
By default this draws a regular polygon, but by double clicking on the button
in the tools palette you can make it draw a star, or select the number of
verteces in your polygon.
<P>
The polygon is drawn as though it were inscribed in the circle whose center
is the point where you depressed the mouse and whose radius is the distance
between the press point and the release point. One of the polygon's verteces
will be at the release point.
<P>
A star is drawn similarly. It will be a star generated from a regular polygon.
As the number of verteces of the polygon gets larger the star will look more
and more like a circle, for this reason the dialog box that allows you to
pick the number of verteces will also allow you to pick how far the star's
points should extend beyond the circle in which the polygon is inscribed
(this will make a non-regular star, but it might look nicer).
<H2>
<A NAME="Vertical">Vertical View</A>
</H2>
<P>
<IMG SRC="charview-vert.png" WIDTH="544" HEIGHT="563" ALIGN="Right"> In this
view the vertical metrics of the character are shown. You can change the
vertical advance just as you changed the character's width (by selecting
the pointer tool and draging the vertical advance line up or
down).<BR Clear=Right>
<P ALIGN=Center>
-- <A HREF="fontview.html">Prev</A> -- <A HREF="overview.html">TOC</A> --
<A HREF="bitmapview.html">Next</A> --
</BODY></HTML>
|
