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Template Improvements

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:05 pm
by Erwin Denissen
I've received feedback from beta testers, that I want to share.
Beta Tester wrote:The template is good, but the . and , are pretty tiny. My eyes are good but some people might have a hard time telling which is
which.
They should be able to see a completed template *if* they open the user manual. Would it help, if a completed template can be printed as well?

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:17 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
I know you've tried using Verdana, but I didn't understand why you didn't find it better than Arial. Bitstream Vera Sans Bold is also bolder than Arial Bold.

Template

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:31 pm
by Dave Crosby
Would it help, if a completed template can be printed as well?
I like the idea of a Partially (punctuation, possibly numbers) completed template for lazy people like me. Then I only have to do my abc's.

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:55 pm
by Dick Pape
I see that Committee's in session again ... Let's use Comic Sans it's more like hand writing.

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:15 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
Nothing wrong with Comic Sans, but it doesn't solve the problem. A larger font size for punctuation only might.

I think there is room to write:

colon semicolon period and comma.

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:19 pm
by Erwin Denissen
When I use Verdana I have to use font size 8 to make it fit into the caption. Arial with font size 9 has slightly larger characters.

I like the a from Comic Sans MS, as that's how I write the letter myself.

However, the . , : and ; look far better with Verdana...

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:53 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
The difference is in the default line-spacing at 9pt

Arial 10.320 pts
BT Vera Sans 10.464 pts
Verdana 10.944 pts

Try setting a fixed line-spacing of 10 points, then you should be able to use Verdana Bold 9 point. That works on my PagePlus template. You can also reduce the row margins to zero.

Comic Sans looks more suitable, but it doesn't work well at 9 pt.

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:18 pm
by metalfoot
I'm going to play the part of Mr. Noobie Betatester here.

Do I have to draw 5 -?- symbols for my font to work well? What am I supposed to do with those slots?

And does my whole character have to fit within the guideline hash marks, or can the lower parts of descending letters drop below the 4th mark in the grid? I have an empty template here but I'm not sure how to fill it!

(off to test my noobie betatester hypotheses)

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:54 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
The five - ? - grid squares haven't been allocated to characters yet.

The short, horizontal lines are a visual guide only for Ascender, CapHeight, xHeight, Baseline, and Descender.
Metrics.png
Metrics.png (5.48 KiB) Viewed 20125 times
You can draw anywhere within the grid squares. Anything touching the grid lines, will be cropped.

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 5:27 pm
by metalfoot
I knew that, but there's nothing in the docs saying that. As I said, I'm being Mr. Noobie Betatester here and I tried a sample font "not knowing" that to see how the program handled it. It was an interesting experiment.

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:22 pm
by Erwin Denissen
metalfoot,

Good questions.

Bhikkhu Pesala,

Thanks for your excellent answers. I'll try to update the "Quick Start" tutorial early next week.