Could a future version of Scanahand support colour fonts?
Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 10:32 am
Some readers may know already that Microsoft is extending OpenType so as to support colour fonts.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4478
I have been thinking about whether it would be possible for a future version of Scanahand to produce such OpenType colour fonts.
The approach that I am trying to use for what amounts to a thought experiment is that the output would be a high-quality OpenType colour font, producing the input would be straightforward for the person producing the artwork and for the person using the Scanahand software, (who may or may not be the same person in any particular situation).
Suppose as an example that the font to be produced is to have blue letters with green holly leaves, red holly berries and yellow spirals.
Those are the palette colours for the font.
Please note that four colours is here an example, one of the characters in the Microsoft Segoe UI Emoji example font, the Confetti ball, has eleven colours in the colour version, thus having twelve glyphs in the font for the Confetti ball.
However, Scanahand would not like yellow in a scan. So the artwork could be drawn in blue, green, red and black.
So how could one inform Scanahand of the input colours and the output colours?
Suppose that, for example, there were a version of the Basic and Extended Characters template that were for four colours.
For this discussion, please consider a landscape box the size of the box surrounding the printed letter A on the template to be called a notebox.
Suppose that in the "Extended Characters template 4 colours" template there were two rows each of four noteboxes, perhaps in the main header area by moving the existing text up a small distance.
The artist draws a horizontal line within each of the eight noteboxes. The upper row is the colours to be used in the artwork; the lower row is for the colours to be used in the font.
The artist uses four fibre tip pens for the upper row. For the lower row the artist uses whatever fibre tip pens or felt tip pens or coloured inks he or she chooses
The idea is that from those noteboxes, Scanahand could gather the colour information needed.
Scanahand would then need to process each glyph of the artwork to produce five glyphs for the font, namely a default glyph and four colour glyphs, one for each colour.
This raises an issue that need not necessarily be a problem, but it is worth considering.
The issue is of what the default glyph might be.
Suppose that in the artwork the items in different colours do not overlap: then there may well not be a problem.
However, suppose that in the artwork the items in different colours do overlap, then there might be a problem, depending upon the design.
So does the Template Editor need to have an option to specify two cells for each character, one for a default glyph and one for a colour glyph?
Such an option would make templates bigger when the option were used, yet would provide maximum flexibility.
I mentioned earlier that in the Microsoft Segoe UI Emoji example font, the Confetti ball has eleven colours in the colour version.
So it seems to me a good idea that Scanahand would be able to produce an eleven-colour colour glyph if that were possible due to possible problems of colour separation.
Anyway, just some thoughts while we wait for the specification for colour fonts to become published.
I appreciate that a version of Scanahand that could do this would be amazingly fabulous, yet I am hoping that if High-Logic chooses to implement colour font capability in FontCreator that much of the software written for FontCreator could also be used in producing such a version of Scanahand.
William Overington
4 July 2013
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4478
I have been thinking about whether it would be possible for a future version of Scanahand to produce such OpenType colour fonts.
The approach that I am trying to use for what amounts to a thought experiment is that the output would be a high-quality OpenType colour font, producing the input would be straightforward for the person producing the artwork and for the person using the Scanahand software, (who may or may not be the same person in any particular situation).
Suppose as an example that the font to be produced is to have blue letters with green holly leaves, red holly berries and yellow spirals.
Those are the palette colours for the font.
Please note that four colours is here an example, one of the characters in the Microsoft Segoe UI Emoji example font, the Confetti ball, has eleven colours in the colour version, thus having twelve glyphs in the font for the Confetti ball.
However, Scanahand would not like yellow in a scan. So the artwork could be drawn in blue, green, red and black.
So how could one inform Scanahand of the input colours and the output colours?
Suppose that, for example, there were a version of the Basic and Extended Characters template that were for four colours.
For this discussion, please consider a landscape box the size of the box surrounding the printed letter A on the template to be called a notebox.
Suppose that in the "Extended Characters template 4 colours" template there were two rows each of four noteboxes, perhaps in the main header area by moving the existing text up a small distance.
The artist draws a horizontal line within each of the eight noteboxes. The upper row is the colours to be used in the artwork; the lower row is for the colours to be used in the font.
The artist uses four fibre tip pens for the upper row. For the lower row the artist uses whatever fibre tip pens or felt tip pens or coloured inks he or she chooses
The idea is that from those noteboxes, Scanahand could gather the colour information needed.
Scanahand would then need to process each glyph of the artwork to produce five glyphs for the font, namely a default glyph and four colour glyphs, one for each colour.
This raises an issue that need not necessarily be a problem, but it is worth considering.
The issue is of what the default glyph might be.
Suppose that in the artwork the items in different colours do not overlap: then there may well not be a problem.
However, suppose that in the artwork the items in different colours do overlap, then there might be a problem, depending upon the design.
So does the Template Editor need to have an option to specify two cells for each character, one for a default glyph and one for a colour glyph?
Such an option would make templates bigger when the option were used, yet would provide maximum flexibility.
I mentioned earlier that in the Microsoft Segoe UI Emoji example font, the Confetti ball has eleven colours in the colour version.
So it seems to me a good idea that Scanahand would be able to produce an eleven-colour colour glyph if that were possible due to possible problems of colour separation.
Anyway, just some thoughts while we wait for the specification for colour fonts to become published.
I appreciate that a version of Scanahand that could do this would be amazingly fabulous, yet I am hoping that if High-Logic chooses to implement colour font capability in FontCreator that much of the software written for FontCreator could also be used in producing such a version of Scanahand.
William Overington
4 July 2013