Autocad fonts VS Windows Fonts

[samifox]

Hi

Im using AutoCAD LT 2006 over a PC with Win XP.

 

im Hebrew writer, so we all Israelis have hard time with products(not only :wink:), as most of you might know.

 

i have some .shx files for Hebrew, but non of them really provides 100% of the solution.

 

in the other hand, when im using windows standard fonts i am getting perfect solution. which lead me the my next question.

 

is there any problem using win's standard fonts instead of the Auto Cad's shx? i've heard that autocad get difficults rendering and ploting fonts other than shx? why autocad uses its own fonts, why not win fonts by default thus?

 

Thanks

Shay

[ReMark]

AutoCAD is a Microsoft Windows compliant program therefore it can use the TrueType fonts that ship with Windows and any others that you download. I would recommend putting any new TrueType fonts (TTF) in the Windows font folder and not in the AutoCAD font folder. All fonts should plot with no problem. I'm not familiar with any problems regarding TTF fonts and rendering.

 

Since AutoCAD provides its own SHX fonts why would AutoDesk default to TTF fonts? It wouldn't make any sense. Yet, AutoDesk has given the user the opportunity to use either or both in a drawing so I wouldn't be too quick to complain about it. It's a non-issue for most users.

[nestly]

Perhaps the OP is referring to the AutoCAD issue where TT fonts that are not located at 0 elevation on the XY plane can not be anti-aliased (smoothed). ie TT texts are a poor choice for 3D environments, such as building numbers or street signs.

[samifox]

 

Since AutoCAD provides its own SHX fonts why would AutoDesk default to TTF fonts? It wouldn't make any sense. Yet, AutoDesk has given the user the opportunity to use either or both in a drawing so I wouldn't be too quick to complain about it. It's a non-issue for most users.

 

why autodesk bother to develop shx files? lets say that the location is not an issue, but why different files types?

 

and for what "nastly" said. im using LT so no 3d involved.

 

Thanks

Shay

[eldon]

why autodesk bother to develop shx files?

 

Because they needed a font before there were True Type Fonts.

 

The shx fonts were designed with a single line, so that they could be plotted with a pen plotter. Pen plotters did not like TTF, and spent ages plotting one character because of filling in the solid shape

[ReMark]

SHX fonts can have more than one line. Romans, romanc and romant have one, two and three lines, respectively, that form the letters.

[eldon]

SHX fonts can have more than one line. Romans, romanc and romant have one, two and three lines, respectively, that form the letters.

 

Very true - not much gets past ReMark.

 

But the fonts were still designed for individual penstrokes, whether there were one, two, three or even more lines. Some 'solid' fonts were designed with adjacent penstrokes.

[ReMark]

Yes the fonts were designed to use individual penstrokes. They had to fool us some how right?

[samifox]

hello friends!

 

i did some reading in my own country and i talk to some proffesionals, they said since hebrew is right to left language, and lots of plotters cant understand hebrew, using TTF can make problems when plotting. shx is the safest font type to use when it comes to non-latin languages.

 

for you information

 

Thanks

Shay

[ReMark]

I wasn't aware that plotters understand languages like Hebrew, English, Arabic, etc. Isn't it just vectors? Hebrew can't be any more complicated than a complex 3D design. So what you and these professionals are saying is that plotters can't plot Hebrew? Really?

[samifox]

yes they do but the hebrew can be plotted as a left to right language which means backward hebrew.

[ReMark]

The plotter prints out Hebrew backwards? And what about electrostatic printers? What happens there?

[nestly]

Yeah, tend not to buy the right-to-left thing. Text is not letters and numbers to a printer, it's just a cloud of points, and a printer doesn't care if those points are printed from left-to-right, or right-to-left or bottom-to-top. Think about landscape printing, or diagonal text, where English characters are not printed left-to-right either. Same goes for "mirrored" text. It doesn't matter that it's "backward" it still prints the way you see it on the screen.

[ReMark]

I agree with this guy ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^. It could be inside-out and up-side-down. What does the plotter care?

[dbroada]

this again may go back to the early days of vector pen plotters where some had fonts loaded but printers have raster image processors so don't care. I seem to remember some early pdf plots needed certain fonts to be present.

 

In otehr words, I agree with the above guys, you shouldn't have ant problems these days.