Assigning a signature to a key?

[Alex]

Hi!
First of all, lovely program!

My question is this: Is it possible to scan ones own hand written signature and assign it to a key or key combination (for examplt Alt-Shift 1234)
...so by typing in the key kombination one could "sign" ones own letters and documents etc...

Kind Regards / Alex

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

It is not difficult to do, but there are several things to consider.

• Which font will you add the signature to? If you usually use Times New Roman to write letters, it makes sense to add it to that font.
• How big is your normal signature? If it is much bigger than the normal capital letters, you may have to change the point size to make it look right. You can enlarge the signature within Font Creator, but if it exceeds the bounding box of the font, it will get clipped, or will affect line spacing.
• You need to choose a character that can be typed easily in all applications in which you might use your signature. I assigned it to trademark (Alter 0153), but replacing existing characters is not very professional.

Because of these problems, which make it hard to use in practice, I prefer to insert my signature as a graphic - it is much more flexible.

[William]

One possibility which you might perhaps think worth considering is to place your signature character in a font on its own.

It might be best not to assign it to a lowercase letter in case a wordprocessor package tries to replace the lowercase letter with the corresponding uppercase letter.

If a stand-alone font were produced then it might be a good idea to assign the signature to a capital T character so that when looking at the font with an ordinary fontviewer the sentence "The quick brown fox ..." displays the signature at various sizes, yet that is just a minor aspect.

This approach would not be suitable for a file where every character must be from the same font, yet might be very suitable if changing font is easy to do in the package which is to be used for producing the document.

William Overington

[Dick Pape]

I have created a font in which I've compiled "a hundred" samples of my initials from various fonts. It's easy to have it available as just "another" font on the list. Also, I don't have to have the signature in every font I may use.

It's interesting to see how a different font will create a different feeling. "DP" can appear anywhere from childlike, to cold steel, to eroded, to gothic, to bauhaus, to calligraphic, to scribbled, to old fashioned, to futuristic, and so on. It has been fun to put them together.

It gives me handwritten emoticons to substitute for boring signatures. They look great on my monitor and when I print them.

Problem is sending these to some one else (as in email). Unless they have the same font on their machine the characters will get substituted. Seems that a picture/graphic is the only way... unfortunately.

Dick

[Alex]

Hi All,

I'm glad its possible to create key assigned signature.
Thanks for all your input on this subject
Kind Regards / Alex

[William]

> Problem is sending these to some one else (as in email). Unless they have the same font on their machine the characters will get substituted. Seems that a picture/graphic is the only way... unfortunately.

Well, for direct email based on plain text or an HTML page, it is indeed a problem.

Yet if one makes a pdf document, such as by using Serif PagePlus 9, (the http://www.serif.co.uk webspace has details of the Serif PagePlus 9 program) then the character from the font can be embedded in the pdf document. Such a pdf document can then be added to an email as an attachment. The pdf document can be displayed and printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. The person receiving the pdf with the embedded character and displaying it does not need to have the font installed on his or her computer.

Having seen this thread I tried making a test font of my name and tried it out by including it in a test pdf document similar to the graphics and fonts pdf documents, such as, for example, stepping.PDF, which are available from the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/library.htm

I used 120 point in a terracotta colour in the present test.

In some situations a graphic may be the only way, yet a character from a font within a pdf is a quality option when it can be used.

William