Dev:Source/Text/UnicodeFont3D

History

DVD Menus are simply screaming for Unicode characters.

Objectives

The objective is to create unicode support for Font3D object and UI to support features around it.

Phase I:

• Unicode character support for Font3D
• UI to select characters from Unicode character list
• UI to select Unicode table areas
• Possibility to write Vertical and Horizontal text
• Optimized character loading (Load only those characters which are used in font object)

Phase II:

• Input method support for selected language

Current Status

The code is ported from tuhopuu3 to bf-blender cvs. Though since not sure how to use the patch tracker and if it is even possible to add totally new files with patch to patch tracker, I will put the patch here.

• Font3D_100905.diff: Font3D 10-Sep-2005 Patch
• Font3D_050905.diff: Font3D 05-Sep-2005 Patch
• Font3D_020905.diff: Font3D 02-Sep-2005 Patch
• Font3D_010905.diff: Font3D 01-Sep-2005 Patch
• Font3D_260805.diff: Font3D 26-Aug-2005 Patch

The patch need to be applied with "patch -p0 < Font3D_260805.diff"

Already done

• Phase I: Almost all features should be implemented and working, though the vertical writing is lost in translation, in otherwords couldn't find the code, I shall look more harder.

Problems

• Currently looking for problems :)

Quick Start

• Start Blender
• Create new Text Object
• Select the Font
• Press F9 key
• Load New Font which has Unicode characters, e.g. the arial on below
• Enter the Edit Mode
• Select the Char tab
• Use mouse wheel to scroll down the character matrix and press on any of the characters

Examples

Some example files how to use the Unicode Font3D object.

• The Arial Unicode font, containing approximately 40,000 alphabetical characters, ideographic characters (CJK, Chinese-Japanese-Korean), and symbols as defined in the Unicode 2.1 standard. http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/vietunicode/Aruniupd.exe. (you can unzip this .exe file)

• Basic Timer python script, which prints current timecode to the screen with Star Trek symbol every even frame. Timer.blend

Links

• General information about keyboard layouts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout
• Thai keyboard layout and behaviour. http://www.nectec.or.th/it-standards/keyboard_layout/thai-key.htm

-- Mikasaari - 23 Aug 2005