Page 1 of 1

Font converter - non ASCII characters

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 10:23 am
by blackcattech
I'm working on a piece of software that needs to be able to display Chinese text. I was hoping to use the font converter to generate the bitmaps but there seems to be a bug in that it won't accept character numbers outside the normal ASCII range.

Chinese characters use two-byte values as there are several thousand of them.

If you try entering a range outside the normal 32-225 it doesn't even work out the matrix size properly.

Is there any way around this?

Also, is there any way to tell it to just convert one particular type - not sure what the correct term is - but just normal text, or bold or italic, but not all of them? I know it is easy enough to delete what you don't need but it would be nice to not convert them in the first place.

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:16 am
by David Barker
> but there seems to be a bug in that it won't
> accept character numbers outside the normal ASCII range

It's not a bug, it is the way it is written and has a limited character range.

> Also, is there any way to tell it to just convert one particular type

No, you have to delete what you don't want.

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:21 am
by blackcattech
Bug / limitation, different ways to say the same thing. There is a bug in the character size calculation when you enter a non-ASCII range.

Main thing, is there any way around it which will allow me to convert the characters I need?

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:28 am
by David Barker
> Bug / limitation, different ways to say the same thing.

I'm afraid I disagree with you on that point.

> Main thing, is there any way around it which will
> allow me to convert the characters I need?

No

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:14 pm
by Jon Chandler
David Barker wrote:> Bug / limitation, different ways to say the same thing.

I'm afraid I disagree with you on that point.

> Main thing, is there any way around it which will
> allow me to convert the characters I need?

No
Wow. This seems a little harsh to say the least. Maybe even bigoted?

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 2:07 pm
by blackcattech
Sorry, David, you are correct, it is an undocumented limitation.

Can anyone recommend a font converter program that I can use in place of the Swordfish ASCII converter to get at the characters I need?

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 3:25 pm
by David Barker
If this is for a commercial job and you are unable to find a third party product that meets your needs, I would be happy to extend the programs functionality at very reasonable rates.