Can Images act like fonts?

M
Posted By
meyvn77
Dec 14, 2005
Views
226
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Hello
I am a programmer and am creating a program for a police agencie that create a diagram of crashes that occur at an intersection. Each type of crash can be represented by about 35 images or symbols.

One might look like this: ——>——> (rear end crash) —–><—— (Head on) ect…..
Of course they will look much more professional.

My problem is that I’m not sure if I should create bitmaps, GIFs, a new Font or what…
I was hoping yall could give me some pointers.

What It must be able to do:
1) Background of the image must be transparent.
2) must be able to programmicly change the color.

Accually, now that I think about it the arrows in power point would be great if I knew how to use them programmicly..

Thanks,
Chuck
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FN
Flo Nelson
Dec 14, 2005
wrote in message
Hello
I am a programmer and am creating a program for a police agencie that create a diagram of crashes that occur at an intersection. Each type of crash can be represented by about 35 images or symbols.

One might look like this: ——>——> (rear end crash) —–><—— (Head on) ect…..
Of course they will look much more professional.

My problem is that I’m not sure if I should create bitmaps, GIFs, a new Font or what…
I was hoping yall could give me some pointers.

What It must be able to do:
1) Background of the image must be transparent.
2) must be able to programmicly change the color.

Accually, now that I think about it the arrows in power point would be great if I knew how to use them programmicly..

Couple of ideas depending on the program you are using for the programming:

1. The line tool in PhotoShop has options for different types of arrow heads. You could make PowerPoint-type arrows that way. If you have it, Illustrator is also a good choice for this. Just create your gifs in all the possible color combinations that will be used and call up a different images based on both symbol and color.

If you’re programming in Director or Flash, you can create a black gif and color it within the program.

2. An alternative method is to look for dingbat fonts that might have the symbols you need.

Flo
DF
Derek Fountain
Dec 14, 2005
I am a programmer and am creating a program for a police agencie that create a diagram of crashes that occur at an intersection. Each type of crash can be represented by about 35 images or symbols.

One might look like this: ——>——> (rear end crash) —–><—— (Head on) ect…..
Of course they will look much more professional.

My problem is that I’m not sure if I should create bitmaps, GIFs, a new Font or what…
I was hoping yall could give me some pointers.

What It must be able to do:
1) Background of the image must be transparent.
2) must be able to programmicly change the color.

Accually, now that I think about it the arrows in power point would be great if I knew how to use them programmicly..

Any programming environment with even modest graphics capabilities can draw lines that can be arranged into arrows. That’s got to be easier than trying to change the colour of the pixels in a GIF or whatever.

You don’t say what language you’re using, but any of the general purpose "free" ones – Perl, Tcl, Python, C, C++ – have either this capability built in, or free libraries to help do it.

An alternative would be to create all the images as GIFs, and create different versions for all the colours you need. You can then switch the GIF to change the colour.

Personally I’d do it in Tcl/Tk which is particularly good at what you want to do. 10 lines of code, tops. Cross platform too.
LI
Lorem Ipsum
Dec 14, 2005
Since you are a programmer, perhaps you have Microsoft’s SDK in which you can create your own fonts, albeit raster versions.

Alternately, there is a utility that comes with WindoZe, not documented, that lets you create a new font and modify existing ones.
DF
Derek Fountain
Dec 15, 2005
Lorem Ipsum wrote:
Since you are a programmer, perhaps you have Microsoft’s SDK in which you can create your own fonts, albeit raster versions.

Alternately, there is a utility that comes with WindoZe, not documented, that lets you create a new font and modify existing ones.

Nah, I’m a proper programmer, working on proper computers, doing proper work. I don’t just drag and drop things into a window to make an application. I’ve never actually written a program for Windows…

The OP claims to be a programmer too, but doesn’t say what language, hardware or OS he uses. Doesn’t give us much to go on, but my guess is that Photoshop isn’t the, er, language, he needs.

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