Slick Forums

Me again (heh),

Before I explain what I am trying to achieve, take a quick look at my very basic 'work in progress' UI blueprint. Basically I'm slowly designing what I would like to achieve in photoshop, and then testing the mechanics of the design each time I add something new.



Ignoring the fact it is very bland, unfinished, and basic, earlier I had a play around with fonts. Firstly in code, then later with your font converter tool. At the start I tried just porting across a bold version of verdana at size 9 and only managed to get a blurry mess (argh!), with some tweaking I almost had it across. I then tried messing around with the settings to get a neat 1px border around it as demonstrated in the screenshot... and failed miserably.

Is it possible using the tools already available to get a font across with a similar border affect as demonstrated in my screenshot? I just can't get it that sharp, and can't really get the border effect at all.

If this is a stupid question I apologise, I did play around for about two hours before coming on here to ask *another* question >.<;

Thank you for your time,
Liam

Hmm - never tried that - I will take a look at that soon (maybe weekend).

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

That would be bloody awesome.

The TWL Theme Editor can now add an outline to fonts when you use the "FREETYPE2" font renderer and enable "Create outline around glyphs".

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

Ace!

Tested and working really well. I wonder if I might push my luck a little bit and ask if we can override the padding? The letters are quite spaced (see screenshot).



Also perhaps, as a final request, would it be possible to set the colour of the outline in the editor? That would be the icing on the cake so to speak ^^

Thank you very much for this modification, my GUI will benefit hugely from it

Liam

Edit: Thinking about it, for the borders to look tidy like they do in my mockup, the font borders overlay each other. Obviously this isn't possible in the font file itself, so perhaps an xml parameter in the font definition would be the best way to go?

The outline is an (expensive) post processing effect. You can't do that "live" easily.
The advance should already be tweak-able in the font generator.

Colors for the outline can be added - but they will be affects by the same tinting as the rest of the font.

Would could be done is to create 2 fonts - one in the outline color (eg font color == outline color) and a 2nd one without outline - then give the outline one an advance of -2 and render them on top of each other.

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

Ok, the colors can now be customized (for the glyphs and the outline) and the default advance is now only +1 vs non outline.

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

This is brilliant, thank you very much for these changes they are exactly what I was looking for! Time for me to start putting them to use ^.^;

After mucking around with it for quite a while I decided the AA border applied by photoshop is sharper, so I went and manually edited the bordered font file in photoshop, replacing the letters and such with their sharper photoshop equivilants... an hour later (heh)...



Reasonably sharp bordered fonts. Fantastic ^_^

I'm currently working through the xml minefield of your chat example, its all good stuff. Again, thankyou for your help with this, the bordered fonts make the UI (see original screenshot).

Liam

You could have just asked for an option to turn of AA rendering in FREETYPE2

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

*commits suicide*

Please may I have an option to turn off AA rendering in FREETYPE2 xD

In case you survived - option to disable AA is added

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

Thanks a lot ^.^

I know its unrelated to the topic, but I'm having some trouble getting a TextArea and EditField to show using a DialogLayout within a tab.

Should I make a new topic and post code examples? I feel like I'm kinda spamming your forum here heh ._.

Yes, make a new post - and include any output which might appear on System.err

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TWL - The Themable Widget Library

Hello. Would it be possible to have an option in TWL Theme Editor to change the font outline thickness? Thanks.