Chronicle Text font

Gallery
1

Supplementary note of 2 December 2009

I have been reading this post and realize that it is in need of updating.

I had the idea of the font being shareware at that time but gave up that idea not long afterwards. The font is now a free download.

End of supplementary note of 2 December 2009

I have just published the Chronicle Text font onto the web.

The font is as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXT.TTF

The file with the shareware licensing information is as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/chrontxt.txt

Both files are available linked from the following web page.

The links are at the bottom of the page.

The font file in the library was produced this afternoon using Font Creator Program 4.5 using as input a font file produced using the Softy program at various times since Friday 21 November 2003.

Readers who choose to have a look at the font might like to know that it contains various spacing characters in the Unicode range U+2000 to U+200B, of which hexadecimal values the decimal values are 8192 to 8203. The idea is that one can simulate manual typesetting of a medieval printshop using Microsoft WordPad using Alt 8194 to Alt 8203. One can try manually justifying text.

There are a few precomposed ligatures in the font. I am hoping to add some more.

Readers who have Serif ImpactPlus may like to try producing a three-dimensional model of some metal type using this font. That may also be possible in some other three-dimensional modelling packages but I have not tried them.

William Overington

25 September 2004

2

A new version of the Chronicle Text font, namely version 0.18 has been available on the web since 3.52 pm British Summer Time (1452 GMT) this afternoon.

This version adds no glyphs. This afternoon I started a new font, Chronicle Text 018 in CHRON018.TTF, in Font Creator 5.0 and used the glyphs from the old version, copied one by one using the clipboard, as the artwork for the new font. I adjusted the metrics.

I then produced Chronicle Text version 0.18 in CHRONTXT.TTF from CHRON018.TTF. This involves, after using “save as” to produce the CHRONTXT.TTF file, deleting all of the unused glyphs in CHRONTXT.TTF, then using Format | Settings | Ranges and calculating both ranges, then validating the font. The font is then tested using Microsoft Word 97.

CHRON018.TTF still has ready-mapped spaces for adding other characters. So any future development would start by copying CHRON018.TTF to a new file CHRON019.TTF and using the font name Chronicle Text 019 during development. This means that I do not alter existing finished work, just in case later additions need to be rethought or abandoned.

The font is available from the following web page.

William

3

Chronicle Text version 0.19 is now available.

This version adds glyphs for some accented characters.

Readers perhaps may like to have a look at the following web page too.

The page is indexed from the following web page.

I tried the font out using the following text.

Ŝi aĉetis kaj manĝos naŭ pomojn!

This means “She has bought and will eat nine apples!”. It is a sentence which I devised so as to include a number of Esperanto accents.

Here is the selection of accented characters and ligatures in the font, together with a few other characters.

ÀÁÂÄÆÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÒÓÔÖÙÚÛÜÝÞàáâäæèéêëìíîïðòóôöùúûüýþÿĈĉĜĝĤĥĴĵŒœŜŝŬŭŴŵŶŷŸſẀẁẂẃẄẅỲỳſt

The last eight in the list are seven Private Use Area codes and one of the alphabetic presentation forms.

In previewing this posting I have copied the line of characters onto the clipboard and pasted them into Microsoft WordPad and then displayed them in Chronicle Text at 48 point.

Readers who choose to have a look at the font might like to know that it contains various spacing characters in the Unicode range U+2000 to U+200B, of which hexadecimal values the decimal values are 8192 to 8203. The idea is that one can simulate manual typesetting of a medieval printshop using Microsoft WordPad using Alt 8194 to Alt 8203. One can try manually justifying text.

So, the font is ready for some fun with simulating the setting of Esperanto as if in a medieval printshop.

William

4

Earlier today I uploaded CHRONTXT.TTF Chronicle Text version 0.21 to the web.

This version adds a number of additional characters, including all of those for Latvian.

The font now supports Old English, Esperanto, Welsh and Latvian as well as a number of other European languages.

The font also has copies of the glyphs of those characters from beyond U+00FF yet below Greek in Unicode placed within the Private Use Area. This is to support producing images using Serif DrawPlus 7.09 upon the Windows 98 platform running here.

The Private Use Area also now contains a few more characters which are not in regular Unicode, such as M macron.

There was no version 0.20 produced. This is because I used CHRON020.TTF as the working font one day and then used CHRON021.TTF when I continued this morning, thus not altering the working copy made one day upon another day.

William

5

Chronicle Text version 0.22 is now available.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXT.TTF

This version adds some more ligature glyphs to the Private Use Area. Many of those, though not all, are for my idea for a science fiction story.

William

6

Chronicle Text version 0.23 is now available on the web.

This version adds some more ligatures to the Private Use Area, in particular some hypothetical ligatures for simulating the hypothetical ligatures of the Gutenberg and ligatures thread in the Specification forum.

Here is a display of the ligatures (though not the ligatures for my science fiction story) now in the Private Use Area, separated by spaces, which I have just produced using the Insert Symbol facility of Word 97.

                                                           

They will probably show as black rectangles in the forum page, yet they can be copied and pasted into WordPad and then the font set to Chronicle Text and the size to 24 point or larger and the display should be good.

William

7

Chronicle Text version 0.26 is now available.

This is the next published version after version 0.23.

This published version adds forty glyphs, being thirty-two designs and eight repeats in the Private Use Area to assist with making graphics using Serif DrawPlus 7.09 on a Windows 98 platform.

Here is a display of the code points of the newly added glyphs.

ƿ Ǣ ǣ Ƿ Ǽ ǽ Ȝ ȝ                                

They will probably mostly show as black rectangles in the forum page, yet they can be copied and pasted into WordPad and then the font set to Chronicle Text and the size to 24 point or larger and the display should be good.

Readers trying that experiment might like then to try reformatting using the Quest text font. This has most of the characters, though not the Private Use Area copies and not the four characters where an e is used instead of an umlaut.

After that, readers who are interested might like to try reformatting the glyphs from the previous posting using Quest text.

This version of Chronicle Text also has a change to the design of the lowercase y.

Readers wishing to have a go at producing a document giving a little of the flavour of an early printed book, perhaps using WordPad or whatever is available for use at their locations, might like to have a look at the four pictures in Quest text. They were not designed to be as if early woodcuts yet for a few experiments they are not unreasonable substitutes. They are available at U+E701 to U+E704 which are Alt 59137, Alt 59138, Alt 59139 and Alt 59140. The originals, drawn in Microsoft Paint, were white on red at about 340 point, however, black on white looks reasonable and the size is not critical. I find it useful to get them onto the screen at 72 point then to use Format | Font to make them larger.

I have just tried an example, but find that the white space below the picture is too large for a good display in WordPad. However, copying and pasting into Paint of the various parts makes a better display. I started Paint twice, in one instantiation pasting the picture and in the other pasting the lettering, using the Print Screen key to produce the copy. I then copied the lettering from the second instantiation of Paint (not using Print Screen for that, using just the ordinary Paint copying using the mouse to select the area of the picture to be copied) and pasted it below the picture in the first instantiation of Paint.

There appears to be lots of fun in using Chronicle Text in this manner.

William

8

I have just uploaded to the web a font named Chronicle Text Outline.

This font is a variation on the Chronicle Text font. The intention is that Chronicle Text Outline is used for two-colour displays in conjunction with Chronicle Text.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXO.TTF

I produced the font using a semi-automated process, first using the Glyph Transformer facility of Font Creator 5.0 on all glyphs and then using direct adjustment of those glyphs which produced an error at validation.

After some experiments where I found that Thin by n font units followed by Hollow by 2n font units has a net effect of not altering the original contour yet adding another contour, I commenced by using a Thin transform of 42 horizontal and 32 vertical and then a Hollow transform of 84 horizontal and 64 vertical on a copy of Chronicle Text. This reported 29 validation errors.

I then gradually altered the glyphs where there were validation errors. This was a task yet not as much as it at first seemed that it could be because, for example, one glyph with a validation error was k and another was k with a comma accent below it, so by correcting the glyph for k copies of the contours could then be used to correct the glyph for k with a comma accent below it: similarly for K and K with a comma accent below it. A few items were copied directly from Chronicle Text.

There are two pdf documents showing Chronicle Text and Chronicle Text Outline in use together.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/outline.PDF

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/outline2.PDF

All three files are linked from the following web page.

William

9

I have now added a third pdf document showing the use of the Chronicle Text and Chronicle Text Outline fonts being used together.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/outline3.PDF

Please note that whereas outline.PDF and outline2.PDF were produced using Serif PagePlus 9.04, outline3.PDF was produced using Microsoft Word 97, Serif DrawPlus 7.09 and Serif PagePlus 9.04. The ligature glyphs co and ppe in outline3.PDF from the Unicode Private Use Area of the fonts are included in outline3.PDF as curves graphics produced in DrawPlus 7.09 after copying and pasting from Microsoft Word 97.

William

10

As a result of reading a thread in the Tutorials and Solutions forum, entitled “New Fonts From Old” I have applied the idea presented there by Bhikkhu Pesala and produced a new font from my already existing Chronicle Text font.

The New Fonts From Old thread is available as follows.

The new font is Chronicle Text Lozenge and it contains the same character collection as Chronicle Text and Chronicle Text Outline.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXL.TTF

It is Chronicle Text Lozenge version 0.26.

Comments appreciated please.

William

11

Having produced the Chronicle Text Lozenge font I thought that it would perhaps look nice if in some applications of the font the lozenges could take their own colour, rather than taking the colour of the background. However, I realized that as some of the counterclockwise lozenges go outside a clockwise contour of the original Chronicle Text font that Chronicle Text would not provide a suitable underlay font.

Thus I have produced CHRONTXS.TTF Chronicle Text Sublozenge from a copy of CHRONTXL.TTF Chronicle Text Lozenge by removing the counterclockwise lozenges from displayable glyphs. For many characters the glyph in Chronicle Text Sublozenge is the same as in Chronicle Text, yet for a few, such as s and z, the glyph is different.

The font is now available on the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXS.TTF

The following pdf uses Chronicle Text Lozenge.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/lozenge.PDF

The following pdf uses Chronicle Text Lozenge and Chronicle Text Sublozenge together.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/lozenge2.PDF

Both pdfs were produced using Serif PagePlus 9.04, a desktop publishing package. The pdf using Chronicle Text Lozenge and Chronicle Text Sublozenge together has the same text twice, with one copy on top of the other. The underlying copy is in Chronicle Text Sublozenge and has each of its letters coloured in a bright colour. When the copy in Chronicle Text Lozenge, all letters of which are in black, is positioned on top of it, only the colour within the lozenge shows through.

Comments appreciated please.

William

12

I saw a television programme which showed a medieval manuscript where the rows of letters were separated by horizontal lines. Letters such as p crossed over the line below it.

I thought it would be interesting to try to build this effect into a font. The result is Chronicle Text Document version 0.26, being derived from a copy of Chronicle Text version 0.26.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXD.TTF

The font can produce strange results if used in Microsoft Word with the justification option set, yet used in Microsoft WordPad (I tried 12 point, 18 point, 24 point, 36 point) good effects can be produced.

I also got good results using Chronicle Text Document at 12 point in Microsoft Paint. This has possibilities for producing the look of medieval documents with illuminated capitals and designs around the edges.

In order to assist in producing good displays the font has the # character encoded as a 256 font unit wide underlined space. Thus one can add one or more # characters to the last word of each line of text so that the between-the-rows lines in a page are made to be all of the same length.

William

13

In the first post of this thread I wrote as follows.

Readers who choose to have a look at the font might like to know that it contains various spacing characters in the Unicode range U+2000 to U+200B, of which hexadecimal values the decimal values are 8192 to 8203. The idea is that one can simulate manual typesetting of a medieval printshop using Microsoft WordPad using Alt 8194 to Alt 8203. One can try manually justifying text.

I have now produced Chronicle Text Composing which was produced starting with a copy of Chronicle Text and then visible glyphs were produced for the various spacing characters in the Unicode range U+2000 to U+200B, without altering their respective widths.

The idea is that one can try manually justifying text in a simulation of the manner of manually justifying handset metal type by using WordPad using Alt 8194 to Alt 8203 using the Chronicle Text Composing font, the spaces showing as symbols. When the desired justification is achieved, the font used for display can be changed to Chronicle Text or to one of the other fonts in the Chronicle Text collection of fonts and the spaces will then be shown as plain spaces.

The following spacing items are suggested for this simulation, here listed in order of decreasing width, the first five listed being those mostly, almost always, used.

U+2003 Alt 8195 EM SPACE
U+2002 Alt 8194 EN SPACE
U+2004 Alt 8196 THREE-PER-EM SPACE known as a thick
U+2005 Alt 8197 FOUR-PER-EM SPACE known as a mid
U+2009 Alt 8201 THIN SPACE known as a thin and here implemented as a five-per-em space

U+2006 Alt 8198 SIX-PER-EM SPACE
U+200A Alt 8202 HAIR SPACE
U+200B Alt 8203 ZERO WIDTH SPACE though here implemented as 88 font units wide.

A size of 18 point is good for the simulation: the letters are then reasonably large and a reasonable number of words can be on the line so that the spacing between the words does not become huge while trying to achieve justification as can happen when long words are used in a large point size.

One could start by setting with a thick between each word and proceeding until a word goes over the end of the line. That decides which words are on the line, so then alter the spacing between the words to distribute the spare space at the end of the line so that justification is achieved.

One can test the precision of the setting by using Print Screen to make a copy of the page and then pasting it into the Microsoft Paint program and viewing at 8x resolution where one can observe the pixels.

Hopefully this font and the above simulation will provide lots of interest and fun: it can be produced using WordPad and Paint and the font.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXC.TTF

William

14

Some readers might perhaps find the following pdf of interest.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/typecase_Chronicle_Text_golden_ligatures.pdf

In particular, readers wishing to use Chronicle Text with an application such as WordPad which does not have an Insert Symbol facility might find that copy and past from the pdf to WordPad is useful.

Indeed, readers wishing to simulate hand-typesetting of metal type might enjoy obtaining glyphs for ligatures one at a time from the typecase.

William Overington

20 August 2008