What's inside special.fnt?

[bmüller]

Hi,

is there any tool to view characters in a Creo fnt file?

especially special.fnt - we are thinking about switching from win_chcn_font.ndx to directly using msyh.ttf.

br Bernhard

[BenLoosli]

The *.fnt files are compiled and only machine readable.

Look for the *.src file to get the source. The file is in a M/D format from a Gerber plotter. The m codes move the pen to a certain location with the defined character box. The d codes drop the pen and start the move to that location. Not easy to understand at first but it does make sense if you look at a simple character like an A or !.

What I have done is build a note in Creo with all the characters on a keyboard and then duplicate the note and then change the font for different font files to see what the keys will print as.

[bmüller]

thx for the hint with the source file. luckily there are some comments for each symbol 😄

there are a lot of "non" keyboard symbols - greek, math, ...

I checked some and they are all included. so should be fine.

[MartinHanak]

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@bmüller wrote:

Hi,

is there any tool to view characters in a Creo fnt file?

especially special.fnt - we are thinking about switching from win_chcn_font.ndx to directly using msyh.ttf.

br Bernhard

---

Hi,

special.fnt file is created by compiling special.src file.

See Creo7_installation_administration_guide.pdf page 107, section Displaying the Text Symbol Palette in
Creo Parametric ... characters defined in special font are displayed when you use font as drawing font and enclose some characters between CTRL+A and CTRL+B codes.

See Creo7_installation_administration_guide.pdf page 116, section Special Font Definition.

Example of location ... E:\PTC\Creo4_M120\Creo 4.0\M120\Common Files\text\usascii\special.src

You can find this file in special.zip attachment.

header

codeset 4
height 38
width 36
xextent 63
spec_height 24
base_offset 8
ascender 6
fixed_width 1
ics 1
gap 4

" " ... coded character is placed between quotation marks

m means move pen (do not draw a line) to specified position

d means draw line from current position to specified position

" "
width 54
m 10, 14
d 12, 12
d 18, 10
d 24, 12
d 26, 16
d 24, 20
d 12, 22
d 10, 24
d 12, 28
d 18, 30
d 22, 28
d 24, 26
m 27, 30
d 41, 30
m 34, 30
d 34, 10
m 43, 2
d 50, 20
d 43, 38
d 8, 38
d 0, 20
d 8, 2
d 43, 2

I extracted the list of characters into  Special Font Definition special_list.txt file. At the end of the file some characters are non-ascii, I do not know how to use these characters.

You can use special_list2.txt to create note in a drawing. Second line is enclosed into CTRL+A and CTRL+B characters.