[Solved] Blackboard bold characters

[Arctic Fox]

Does anyone know how to draw blackboard bold (double struck) characters onto an image?

I know that Cambria Math and MT Extra include such characters, but as far as I know these fonts are licenced by Microsoft and Design Science respectively.

There are some unicode characters, too, which represent blackboard bold characters, but they only seem to work with a very few fonts like Tahoma and Segoe UI.

Any help and hints are very appreciated.
Thanks in advance

[netmaestro]

Windows' Castellar font seems pretty close, I'll see what else I can find.

[Arctic Fox]

Thanks a lot, netmaestro!
But isn't the Castellar font licenced by Microsoft, too?

Edit
But of course, every font on Windows is licenced by Microsoft

[Vera]

Hi Arctic Fox,

I never heard of blackboard bold before so I followed your link and searched a while.

As for you special question I found one page recommending fonts for special uses (incl. blackboard): http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/blackboard.html

I followed one hint and found a page where this font still is available: GoudyHandtooled BT Regular
This link comes from here, where it indicates that it is a free font.

hope this can help you somehow

regards ~ Vera

[Arctic Fox]

Hi Vera!
Thanks a lot for the link - I will have a look at this

[Perkin]

If you can't find a font and depending on how you're using it,
you may be able to draw the text of a normal font twice,
second time with x offset.

[Arctic Fox]

Thanks for the tip
(drawing Q in this way is problematic, though )

[Perkin]

A work around for letter Q :-
Pretend your dyslexic an spell with 'kw' - 'Kwasimodo kwietly kwits Kwarantine.'

Or

Don't use any word with a 'Q' in.

[Arctic Fox]

Kwite interesting workaround you've got there

[RASHAD]

Hi Fox

I am not sure about your aim
I think that you are creating a software for mathematical purposes

1- so if you are looking for mathematical notations font (Free) that will be hard to get

2- If you have the symbols even if it is bitmap (bmp,png,tif...) you can use one of the next prog.
to create your own font and load it during execution and that will solve a big problem for you
I mean the unicode characters beyond 256
beside these prog. will trace the bitmap to vector type and assign it to an ascii no.as you like

2-1 Font Creator
2-2 Font Grapher
2-3 FontLab which is the best

and may be you can add effects like BlackBoard

3- Next is a tip that can come close to BlackBoard style
I hope I can give you a hand

Code: Select all

LoadFont(1, "Broadway",16)
;LoadFont(1, "Symbol",20)

Procedure TextOutline(text$,x,y) 
  StartDrawing(WindowOutput(0))
  DrawingFont(FontID(1))     
    DrawingMode(#PB_2DDrawing_Transparent)
    For i = 1 To Len(text$)
      FrontColor($0102FE)
      tex$ = Mid(Text$,i,1)
      DrawText(x-1,y,tex$)
      DrawText(x+1,y,tex$)
      DrawText(x,y-1,tex$)
      DrawText(x,y+1,tex$)
      FrontColor($E0FFFF) 
      DrawText(x,y,tex$)
      x = x + TextWidth(Tex$) + 2
    Next 
  StopDrawing() 
EndProcedure

If OpenWindow(0, 100, 200, 195, 260, "Test Outline Text", #PB_Window_SystemMenu)
  TextOutline("Quality",20,20) 
  ;TextOutline("qrstuvwxy",20,20)
  Repeat 
    EventID.l = WaitWindowEvent() 
    If EventID = #PB_Event_CloseWindow 
      Quit = 1 
    EndIf 
  Until Quit = 1 
EndIf 
End 

[Arctic Fox]

Thanks a bunch, RASHAD!

I will have a look at the font applications you recommend - it seems to be the best solution.
And thanks for your example - I am going to play with that one to see if I can achieve a good result

I think that you are creating a software for mathematical purposes

Yep, you are right (are you spying me? )
I am creating a kind of typesetting system like TeX which I will post here on the forum in near future (hopefully ).


Thank you all for your help - I appreciate it

[Vera]

Addendum

I like to hint you to another free (GNU) font I came across containing cyrillic, greek and mathematical characters (including blackboard bold).

We aim to provide a useful set of free outline (i.e. OpenType) fonts covering as much as possible of the Unicode character set. The set consists of three typefaces: one monospaced and two proportional (one with uniform and one with modulated stroke).

Not only that they offer these fonts but they also share the developer editions usable with the editor FontForge.
All downloads can be found here: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/

greetings ~ Vera

[Arctic Fox]

Hi Vera!
Thanks a lot for your link - it is very interesting! I will certainly have a look