OT: Font with fractions

On or around Tue, 29 Jun 2004 20:03:22 GMT, SteveG enlightened us thusly:

do you just want 'em for printing purposes? anything else will not work elsewhere unless you make it into a PDF and embed the font, say.

meanwhile... I tend just to assemble 'em from superscript and subscript letters.

Hi Austin, I'm writing a technical manual which has loads of Imperial measurements expressed in fractions. This will, eventually, be converted into a pdf file for proof reading and a pps file for professional printing.

I've tried using sub & super script but it doesn't give the desired look. I'm trying to achieve something like this -

9

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, SteveG expelled:

Adobe do a Helv Fractions font that should be what you want - google for it.

What software are you using to create it?

Without knowing more about your software I'd make a guess as using a text box. The top number is underlined, the bottom one isn't and both are centre-justified within the text box. The text box should then be placeable just like any other document element.

Alternatively, if you're only using a few fractions or the same one many times, create a GIF/TIFF and use that instead.

There may even be an 'insert formula' facility. In Microsoft Word you should be able INSERT -> OBJECT -> Microsoft Equation

On or around Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:24:08 GMT, SteveG enlightened us thusly:

I've a font editor, I could have a go... which font are you intending to use?

most fractions tend to be slanty, though...¼, ½, ¾ are in standard fonts and mostly come out slanty - I think it's mainly to do with getting in to a standard l-height and not having 'em using the bit below the line, yet making larger actual numbers. If you look at old books with vertically-contructed fractions, they tend to use the space that the g-type characters use as well, making the fraction taller than the normal l-height. If you don't do that, you'd have trouble reading them in smaller sizes.

It'd be possible to make the font with extra glyphs, and map them to various of the accented characters, say. You'd lose the other characters, mind - Windows things only tend to have 255 characters readily accessible, unless you can persuade it to look at all the unicode ones. I think a modified font is the way I'd go, were I doing such a thing, and presuming it could be embedded successfully.

Just a suggestion - the equation editor in MS Word or Open Office. JD

Are there more complex sums in it, or just fractions ? - I always use MathCad for maths intensive work - it looks very pretty and the maths is "live" too. All the correct integral signs, decent graphs, the works.

Steve

This is a known DTP problem, and you may need page-layout software, rather than a Word Processor. I don't think it has to be graphical, even... But have you looked in your software for anything like an equation editor?

For the PDF equation, you may have to produce an intermediate file in Postscript. In my limited experience that can work around some direct- to-PDF glitches.

Thanks for that ... I'll have a look see :-)

Regards Steve G

SG: Quark Express - not my choice ... the client's ;-(

SG: If that exists in QE I haven't found it yet, but I'm learning the software as I go along.

Cheers for the help ;-)

Regards Steve G

SG: I've just downloaded a font editor but not tried it yet. I'll have to make time tonight.

SG: Hmmmm, hadn't actually thought about that. It might be an arguement I can use with my client to get away from the upright format.

SG: You lost me :-)

Regards Steve G

There aren't any sums involved just the use of fractions when specifying sizes. I've tried to convince the client to decimalise the fractions (i.e. 1.250 instead of 1 1/4) but he won't agree.

Don't you just love clients that think they know best?

Regards Steve G

SG: As reported above I'm using Quark Express - very graphical!

SG: I think that's worth a try.

Regards Steve G

Not using MS anything on this job :-))

Regards Steve G

Just a word of thanks to everyone that's suggested solutions, it's much appreciated :-))

Regards Steve G

That's why I suggested using Open Office - far be it from me to reccommend MS anything! But a lot of people do. JD

On or around Wed, 30 Jun 2004 17:24:01 GMT, SteveG enlightened us thusly:

several points in one, really:

1) if you use na unusual font, and send the resultant document somewhere else, it'll not display/print properly unless the somewhere else has the same font installed; 2) if you look using a font editor at (e.g.) a recent release of Times New Roman, you'll find there are thousands of characters. Windows software, however, typically only uses 8 bit values and thus has 255 characters readily available. If you used some other software which could do unicode characters, say, then you could probably access the other stuff. Mind, I've not looked to see if there're fractions in it; 3) you can overcome 1) by creating a PDF file of your output, and embedding the font in the file. This should allow of the file being viewed and printed as you intended on any machine capable of viewing and printing PDF files.

didn't you say that the intended output was PDF?

if you have no joy, get back to me and I'll have a go at a font-with-fractions.

If you want a copy of the font editor I use, let me know - it's shareware.