Oct. 10, 1988 19:00 Dan Ross 1346 River St. Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408)426-4197 Laser printer font for people with visual impairment This diskette contains a proportional-pitch font in portrait orientation, for use in laser printers compatible with the H-P LaserJet2. IMPAIRED is a 31-by-(approximately)25 font with no descenders. It includes the printable subset of the ASCII character set, except that all ASCII values that represent lower case letters, actually will print upper case letters. The size of the font is appropriate for printing 7.5 lines per inch, with approximately 72 characters (maximum) per line. The appearance of the font is designed to optimize human recognition and distinction among the characters, even if the characters appear slightly blurred to the human reader. All the software for developing or modifying the font, are included in both source and executable form in this diskette. All code is written in the language Microsoft C version 5.10. FILES ----- IMPAIRED.LOD containing the LaserJet2 commands and font to be downloaded for exclusive use of this font only. IMPAIRED.SFP containing the LaserJet2 commands and font to be downloaded for shared use of this font along with other fonts. IMPAIRED.BAT for downloading the font from file IMPAIRED.LOD. IMPAIRED.TXT containing the character patterns as drawn by a text editor. IMPAIR2C.C containing the source code of IMPAIR2C.EXE. IMPAIR2C.EXE for converting the character patterns into initialization data for an array declaration in the C language. IMPAIRED.C containing the initialization data created by IMPAIR2C.EXE. IMP2LOAD.C containing the source code of IMP2LOAD.EXE. IMP2LOAD.EXE for generating file IMPAIRED.LOD. IMP2SFP.C containing the source code of IMP2SFP.EXE. IMP2SFP.EXE for generating file IMPAIRED.SFP. CL_IMP2C.BAT for compiling and linking IMP2C.EXE. IMP2C.LNK for linking IMP2C.EXE. CL_IMP2L.BAT for compiling and linking IMP2LOAD.EXE. IMP2LOAD.LNK for linking IMP2LOAD.EXE. CL_IMP2S.BAT for compiling and linking IMP2SFP.EXE. IMP2SFP.LNK for linking IMP2SFP.EXE. TEST.TXT containing some example text to be printed, which will demonstrate the font. EDITING NEEDED -------------- The *.BAT files contain directory references that are appropriate to my own computer. You undoubtedly will want to edit these files, to change the directory references. HOW TO USE THE FONT ------------------- Copy all the files from the distribution diskette into hard disk subdirectory C:\LASER. This section describes how to print exclusively with font IMPAIRED, using file IMPAIRED.LOD. This section does not describe how to install font IMPAIRED into some other word processing package. Refer to the instructions for your word processor on how to perform that installation, and use file IMPAIRED.SFP. Use the DOS COPY command, or file IMPAIRED.BAT, to copy file IMPAIRED.LOD to the laser printer. In addition to downloading the font, file IMPAIRED.LOD contains laser printer commands to reset the laser printer, to make the font permanent, to make it the primary selected font, and to set spacing appropriate to the font. IMPAIRED has font ID number 13. EXAMPLE ------- In this example, source code file TEST.TXT will be printed in font IMPAIRED. Select the root directory of hard disk C: C: CD \ If hard disk subdirectory C:\LASER does not already exist, create it: MKDIR \LASER Make it be the current directory: CD \LASER Mount the distribuition diskette on drive A:, then copy all files: COPY/V A:*.* Remove the distribution diskette from the computer. Turn on the printer and let it warm up. Then download font IMPAIRED with the aid of the BATCH file: IMPAIRED Print file TEST.TXT using a standard PC-DOS PRINT statement: PRINT TEST.TXT MORE ON HOW TO USE THE FONT --------------------------- Downloading file IMPAIRED.SFP is not sufficient for subsequent use of the font. It also is necessary to set the Vertical Motion Index of the laser printer. The proper vertical spacing is 7.5 lines per inch, or 40 pixels from the top of one line to the top of the next line, or (6.4)/48 inches per line. The Vertical Motion Index is set by the Escape sequence: e&l6.4C where the lower case letter "e" represents the Escape character, and all the other characters represent themselves. Observe that the character after the ampersand "&" is a lower case letter "L". WHAT I HAVE DONE ---------------- I designed this font for ease of recognition, not for beauty. To start with, I discarded the lower case letters because they are too cramped and have too many confusing lines for easy recognition. The characters are drawn in a mix of bold and extra-bold typefaces, with serifs only where serifs help recognition. Large areas which may be conceptualized as enclosed spaces, are partially or completely filled in, to reduce the confusion of lines. Some lines, such as in the digit 7, are slightly tapered to mimic drawing with a brush stroke. The horizontal lines in the letter E are beveled, to emphasize the open end on the right-hand side of the letter. The asterisk has a sharp, spiky appearance. Each character is treated as a special case. There is very little stylistic uniformity among the characters. WHAT I HAVE NOT DONE -------------------- There are certain activities that normally should be performed before a new product is released, that I have neglected to do. Among them are: checking the Patent Office for design patents on similar fonts checking with organizations for visually impaired persons, to discover whether similar fonts exist extensive Beta site testing, using people with a variety of impairments, to determine what modifications might be necessary for each type of visual impairment WHAT YOU NOW HAVE ----------------- Because I have not done my homework, this font must be considered experimental. I hope this font will be a useful starting point for independent investigations and experiments by people receiving this diskette. All the tools (except Microsoft C) for modifying the font are included in the diskette. Over a period of time, YOU and other people like you can make this font evolve into a truly optimized font for visually impaired readers. HOW TO CREATE OR MODIFY THE FONT -------------------------------- File IMPAIRED.TXT contains the character patterns as drawn by a text editor. The characters appear in their order within the ASCII character set, starting with character Exclamation Mark "!". Each character is drawn in a cell enclosed by quotation marks. Inside the cell there must be only Asterisk and Space characters, no Tab characters. All patterns must contain at least 1 Asterisk. Separating each pattern are: an empty line (no Spaces), a line of 27 dashes matching the (nominal) cell width, and another empty line. I used the text editor programs PCWRITE and (Microsoft) M to draw the patterns. PCWRITE does not leave Tab characters in the text it edits. M can be configured so as not to leave Tab characters. Program IMPAIR2C reads the character patterns from file IMPAIRED.TXT, and converts them to array initialization data for use in any C language program. The output is written to file IMPAIRED.C. The source code of program IMP2LOAD contains an array declaration, and an #include "IMPAIRED.C" statement to initialize the array with the character patterns. Program IMP2LOAD must be recompiled whenever the character patterns are changed. Then when IMP2LOAD is executed, it generates data file IMPAIRED.LOD. Similarly, program IMP2SFP generates data file IMPAIRED.SFP. Caution: Microsoft C version 5.0 has a bug in the use of 8086 register ES. In order to avoid the bug, I do not use version 5.0. The bug has been fixed in version 5.1. If only version 5.0 is available to you, you MIGHT avoid the bug by disabling compiler optimization. All Microsoft C programs in this diskette may be compiled using the small memory model. I have organized my C library as individual small files. Therefore all the .LNK files contain /NOD parameters and name each library file separately. To change the font ID number, change the definition at the beginning of file IMP2LOAD.C, recompile, and rerun program IMP2LOAD. REWARDS ------- I am submitting this font as part of my contribution to the welfare of the computing community. It is not to be used for direct commercial advantage, unless it is included in some other product which has significant value added. There may be a nominal service charge for copying and redistributing this diskette. Daniel Ross