Here is another update to the English Stone font's DAT file used for subtitles and some readables:
fontImage_24.dat
This supercedes the Jan 30th update. As agreed, now all character spacings - as given by xSkip - are preserved (from this file in TDM 2.11). Exception: the Jan 30th repair of garbage metadata for "<" and ">" remains, including xSkip repair.
ASCII Characters (lower 128). The earlier Jan 30th post summaries those ASCII characters that needed metadata changes to avoid adjoining stray marks. (The detail report below updates newer reversions and minor revisions.)
ANSI Characters (upper 128). An analysis was also made of the status of the Stone 28 pt font's characters in the upper codepoint range of 128-255. This could be of interest if the subtitle system was some day expanded to include European languages, and continues to use the historic codepage method. The analysis also prompted some additional DAT tweaks now.
Broadly, implementation of the upper-range characters (standard or TDM-specific, as defined in the TDM wiki's I18N - Character mapping I18N) is incomplete for Stone 24 pt. The status is:
43% (55 chars) Good as is.
9% (12 chars) Good enough after DAT tweak included in this update.
6% (7 chars) Missing and shown as hollow box.
30% (38 chars) Missing accent/diacritic.
7% (9 chars) Otherwise weird. But often suggestive of glyph work started but not completed.
In addition, 7 chars within categories (3-5) were "improved", but are still not good. To really solve categories (3-5) requires DSS bitmap surgery (and corresponding DAT adjustments), which is beyond the scope of planned work.
DAT tweaks of ANSI characters (like with ASCII) were careful to avoid changes to xSkip. Tweaks can be further grouped by problem solved....
In category (2):
- (4 chars) Char is clipped, with stray mark from adjoining character on other side.
- (7 chars) Stray mark, without char clipping.
As improvements in categories (3-5):
- (3 chars) Stray mark, without char clipping
- (4 chars) Out of valid range on top edge
A categorized itemization about treatment of specific problems and characters, with further details, is here:
Information about methods, including new tools, to conduct this analysis and tweaking will be forthcoming, mostly after the 2.12 release.