Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - PFont text special symbols

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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Programs › PFont text special symbols

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PFont text special symbols (Read 561 times)

ramin

PFont text special symbols
Dec 14^th, 2008, 12:41pm

hi i want to write pictures with special symbols almost every font type has after the normal letters end... something like boxes, hearts, arrows,... but i don't know how to print them with text. my first testing-attempt was just to count and int up and converting it into char to se what i get, and after the normal letters and a few symbols some int values don't create a char, and then nothing will be displayed. is there a way to get to display all smybols, which windows lists in the symboltable for the fonts.
please let me know,
ramin

Stephen

Re: PFont text special symbols
Reply #1 - Dec 14^th, 2008, 3:37pm

Hi,

Can you mention the font and post your code (or a snippet)?

Regards,

Stephen

PS. I exported a font (Times) with all symbols ticked and this code worked for me. To get the special symbols, I just opened Word and used the insert special symbols menu option.
I then pasted them into the Processing IDE. Sadly, although the Processing IDE was fine with them, it translates to the &#9787 codes you see below on the forum. Not sure if there is a way to post the code to you some other way?

size(800, 600);
smooth();

PFont font = loadFont("TimesNewRomanPSMT-48.vlw");
textFont(font, 48);
textAlign(LEFT);

background(255);
fill(0);

text("Here is some normal text", 80, 60);
// Here there be problems posting to forum
text("Here is some strange text\n\n☺☻☼♀♂♠♣♥♦♪&#
9835;", 80, 240);

Stephen

Re: PFont text special symbols
Reply #2 - Dec 14^th, 2008, 4:28pm

Hi,

this messy code shows lots of symbols, you can page through them, though it's buggy and has lots of naughty hardcoding.

Regards,

Stephen

// Code starts
int letterCode = 33;
int page = 1;

void setup()
{
size(800, 800);
smooth();
PFont font = loadFont("TimesNewRomanPSMT-48.vlw");
textFont(font, 24);
textAlign(LEFT);
noLoop();
}

void draw()
{
background(255);
fill(0);
textSize(24);
for(int r = 20; r < width - 20; r+=30)
for(int c = 20; c < height - 100; c+=30)
text(String.valueOf((char)letterCode++), c, r);
textSize(24);
fill(255, 0, 0);
text("Page " + page + " Press a UP/DOWN to see more pages... codes from " + (letterCode - 598) + " to " + letterCode, 0, height-6);
}

void keyPressed()
{
if(keyCode == UP)
{
page++;
redraw();
}
else if(keyCode == DOWN)
{
letterCode -= 1196;
page--;
redraw();
}
}

PhiLho

Re: PFont text special symbols
Reply #3 - Dec 14^th, 2008, 4:32pm

Pasting Unicode characters directly in Java code isn't a very good idea (can be messed up by bad editors... or Web pages!).
A safer way is to use Java Unicode Escape Sequences, \u followed by 4 hexa digits corresponding to the Unicode code point.

Here is your selection in this portable form:

text("Here is some strange text\n\n\u263A\u263B\u263C\u2640\u2642\u2660\u2663\u2665\u2666\u266A\u266B", 80, 240);

I recommend BabelMap (Unicode Character Map) to explore Unicode pages and get these codes. There are online equivalences, like http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/en/general-info/unicode.html

Note that not all fonts have all Unicode characters. They would be too big. Fortunately, once you have exported a font with Processing, you can see immediately if it has the characters you need. BabelMap can help for that too.

Stephen YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 31	Re: PFont text special symbols Reply #4 - Dec 14^th, 2008, 4:38pm Hi PhilLo, Yes, I agree with the pasting, I was only testing it would work at all in the IDE, and it did on my machine. I tried the \u, but then I thought I'd try and show all the characters in the font with the loop in the code above. Thanks for the reply. Regards, Stephen

ramin

Re: PFont text special symbols
Reply #5 - Dec 14^th, 2008, 8:46pm

kk!
thanks guys.

i tried it like this
Code:



PFont font;
void setup() {
  size(800,800);
String[] fontList = PFont.list();
//println(fontList);
font = createFont("Times New Roman",24);
textFont(font);
background(0);
fill(255);
//  text("\u05D0",20,20);

for(int x=0; x < 36; x++)
for(int y=0; y < 40; y++)
 text((char) (x+y*36),x*20,y*20);
}

you can see that there start beeing these rectangles for misssing symbols.
so i got the textpart like this
Code:


 String letter = "\\"+"u"+Integer.toHexString((int)random(65532));
 text(letter,x*20,y*20);

still i dont get no symbols with this, but something like
\u4db5
also there seems to be holes. there are not symbols between 0021 and FFFC (=65532)

PhiLho

Re: PFont text special symbols
Reply #6 - Dec 15^th, 2008, 2:23pm

Sorry for confusing you. The \uxxxx notation is handled by the compiler, it isn't a dynamic thing, only to hard-code some characters.
Actually, I just tested your code, and it works quite well. I would just guard against negative or null page number...
I guess your issue is that you did a default export of the font: if you check "All characters" check box before exporting, you should see much more characters. But as I said, not all Unicode code points, it depends on the font. Note that I tried to export all chars from Arial Unicode MS, and got an OutOfMemory error (it is a very big font)...

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