Convert text string to custom letters from blocks
We used to have a program called LetterEase, many years ago [talking DOS days], that used dedicated specialized .shx fonts, had Block versions of all the characters in them, and could do that kind of thing [among other interesting things like kerning, using invisible spacing-adjustment special characters and a comparison of adjacent characters]. I don't know whether it's still out there, I don't have it any more after many software and hardware upgrades, and if I did, it likely wouldn't be compatible with newer operating systems, etc.
I assume what you're asking is to Insert a Block in place of each character in a text string, and in the same place and size and orientation where that character falls in the text -- is that right? If it should be possible to figure out a way to do that, what are the Block names like, and where are their insertion points relative to their drawn elements? Maybe a first character replacing Left-justified Text could use the Text object's insertion point, but beyond that [especially when it comes to Mtext], finding insertion points is probably the big challenge.
The image appeared for me when I posted.
If you can work out how to make True type fonts then it will all happen automatically. There was a package with hundreds of symbols each symbol was a single character representing a sign and it respected the text spacing. There was 8 different styles, So typing abcdefg.. would produce this as its TTF can use in word and excel as well.
Which is what you want !
@rhgrafix wrote:
You understand what I'm needing ....
Then as a start, and to start to answer certain questions, try BlockChart-Rows.lsp, available >here<. If you have a folder with all those Blocks and only those Blocks in it, the BC command defined in that routine will put them all in, in rows, ensuring they don't overlap. See comments in that thread and at the top of the file.
The questions are things like:
Do you want [as I would assume] the Blocks to not overlap, as that command will place them? Or do you want each Block to fall at the position of its letter in the source Text string, regardless of overlap? [I suspect the latter would be much harder to work out.]
Are the Blocks all of similar size, in the way that characters within a font are, or is scaling something that needs to be taken into account?
What are the Block names like, and what is their relationship to the characters in a source Text string? Can the characters' ASCII codes be used to relate to the Block names? Would changing the Block names [for instance, so that they are the ASCII code numbers] be a possibility?
Can you provide a drawing with before and after? Albeit I have not followed this whole thread super close, what you are explaining now is not even close to what I thought you wanted.
Individual characters set to custom fonts in MTEXT. 🤔
@rhgrafix wrote:
.... This is turning into something I didn't expect. I'm going to download a free font creator and do it that way, I had no idea it was this hard to replace letters with custom font letters, am I really the first in the world to need this? Unbelievable!!
It may not be so hard to replace them with custom font letters, but that's not what you asked for -- it's your desire to replace them with Blocks that makes it so challenging. Text content and Blocks are just hugely different kinds of things.
