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Re: Hardware Fonts [message #44884] Mon, 25 July 2005 13:21
Michael Wallace is currently offline  Michael Wallace
Messages: 409
Registered: December 2003
Senior Member
> Another possibility is to join me in pleading with RSI to
> give us decent fonts in direct graphics. But I am afraid
> direct graphic enhancements are counter to the current
> direction of the company and have little chance of
> gaining support from the people making these decisions. :-(

I think we all have that plea.

-Mike
Re: Hardware Fonts [message #44885 is a reply to message #44884] Mon, 25 July 2005 13:04 Go to previous message
David Fanning is currently offline  David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
Senior Member
Michael Wallace writes:

> You can use Object Graphics instead of Direct Graphics. The Object
> Graphics system is sort of tricky the first several time you try to use
> it, but you can get some good looking fonts.

Another possibility is to join me in pleading with RSI to
give us decent fonts in direct graphics. But I am afraid
direct graphic enhancements are counter to the current
direction of the company and have little chance of
gaining support from the people making these decisions. :-(

Cheers,

David

--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Re: Hardware Fonts [message #44886 is a reply to message #44885] Mon, 25 July 2005 12:36 Go to previous message
Michael Wallace is currently offline  Michael Wallace
Messages: 409
Registered: December 2003
Senior Member
> Why hardware fonts can't be rotated?

Don't know. Maybe one of the IDL developers knows the technical reasons
why this hasn't been included.

> Why these fonts work in Excel axis and not in IDL?

Because Excel is a totally different program designed by different
people. RSI probably thought that rotating hardware fonts wasn't worth
the effort given that most people either live with the Hershey vector
fonts or use PostScript for their high-res images.

> What's the best way to get high resolution plots?

You can use PostScript instead of an on-screen window. Read up on the
documentation for DEVICE and SET_PLOT. This is probably the easiest
answer to your problem. The remainder of my solutions are "tricky" and
just included for completeness.

You can use Object Graphics instead of Direct Graphics. The Object
Graphics system is sort of tricky the first several time you try to use
it, but you can get some good looking fonts.

You can try the "make-um big trick" as found here:
http://dfanning.com/graphics_tips/zfonts.html

If you want to get super-duper-tricky, you can draw your plot except for
the rotated fonts. In another window, you can draw the particular
string you want. Then crop out everything except for the bounding box
of your string (you can do this just by looking for the edges of the
region that don't have the color of the background pixels). Now, take
this cropped image and rotate it and plop it down on your original image
in the correct location. Notice that you must know where to plop it
down on your image. In the case of a Y Title, that is easier said than
done (position of the title changes based on the length of the axis
labels). Also note that this particular trick doesn't work with
rotations that are not at event 90 degree rotation increments. I
actually haven't tried this particular solution, but I believe it should
work.

-Mike
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