[Thread Prev][Thread Next][Index]

Re: [ferret_users] Unicode in Ferret



Hi,
Ryo is right about the current Ferret fonts. They're called "Hershey fonts" and are a set of files that Ferret reads, with instructions for how to draw the different letters and symbols. Ferret draws each element on the page, whether it's a contour line, axis or tic mark, or a piece of text. It means that the text in a Ferret image is not a separate element that can be edited with a graphics program.

This whole topic is on our long-term list of graphics improvements that we'll be studying for Ferret. The implementation of PyFerret opens the door to the possibility of bringing in true fonts. In the meantime, the look of all the lines including the fonts, is much improved in PyFerret because of the anti-aliasing that's done by PyFerret.

A number of our users have been experimenting with PyFerret with good results:

http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/documentation/pyferret
http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/documentation/pyferret/graphics/

Ansley

On 1/14/2013 12:42 PM, Ryo Furue wrote:
Hi Marco,

It still would be a nice feature if Unicode characters could be
inserted for labels.
I'm not a Ferret developer, but I can see that that would
be a huge change.  Currently Ferret doesn't use the operating
system's font mechanism.  It uses its own font set and
character coding system.

For example, try zooming into a plot generated by Ferret and
you'll realize that an alphabetic letter like "a" is actually
a collection of curved lines.  These collections of lines
representing letters (what we normally call "font")
are included in the Ferret distribution, not taken
from the operating system.

Also, each letter is assigned a number, such as 65 for
letter "A" and 97 for letter "a".  (I'm not sure this
is actually what Ferret uses. This is simply ASCII.)
To include Unicode, you'd have to extend this coding
system.

To accomplish this, you'd have either to extend the internal
font mechanism or to switch to the font system of the OS.

For the moment, the best solution is to use an application,
such as Inkscape and Illustrator, to edit a Ferret-generated
PostScript to include characters not covered by Ferret.

Cheers,
Ryo



[Thread Prev][Thread Next][Index]
Contact Us
Dept of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / PMEL / Ferret

Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Accessibility Statement