CompuServe Thread

#%% help

4 messages in this thread
#21684From: Dennis W. BanaszakNov 23, 1991 11:10 PM
Pierre, I'll bet that this is high on the wishlist. Even if an individual has a fractional font, to distribute his drawings he must include the font .SHX file. This is intolerable. How do you like your fractions; with a horizontal or diagonal slash, what ratio of regular text height to fraction text height would be acceptable? Dennis
#21892From: Pierre GASZTOWTTNov 25, 1991 12:56 PM
Dear Dennis: As an application developer, I have no preference. However, if AutoCAD included a fractional font, it would create a standard calling sequence. Users could then create their own fonts with whatever vectors they like: the calling sequence would remain identical, and my application would work better. Do you think this has long been high on the priority list <g>? Let me make a confession: when I started development, nothing was customizable, and I was not sympathetic to what I considered draftsmen little fusses. Now that the application is customizable, I recognize details matter when it comes to producing good looking drawings. (The application is AutoFLOOR, a composite beam design program which takes a good look at a floor framing plan, designs all the beams and girders, and posts all the design results to the drawing. The beam cambers include fractions.) Pierre
#21994From: Dennis W. BanaszakNov 25, 1991 10:41 PM
Pierre, Have you proposed this on paper? I know it has to be on the list but they tend to be quite formal about these things. If you could outline how you'd like to see it implemented it might start some wheels turning! Dennis
#22123From: Gale GormanNov 26, 1991 6:07 PM
Pierre, I'm a steel detailer and when I first started with AutoCAD my first priority was to write a font with fractions. The easiest way to accomplish this was to just add to the Simplex font file. The next step was a Lisp routine to convert my decimal input in a text string to the desired fraction. Finally came my dimensioning routine that tied them all together. It would probably have been simpler if AutoCAD would have included all of this *provided* it was totally customizable. Even with the mind boggling array of options that are available in the native DIM routine, many users, including myself, just found the output unacceptable. Gale