Towards a feature-based interactive system for intelligent font design

The desire to computerise and accurately represent contours of characters has seen an increased emphasis as more and more applications endeavour to seek benefits from the digital form. The latter lends itself to be exploited by fast processors and the resulting output to be displayed not just on electronic devices such as computer monitors and laser printers, but also on numerically controlled machines. These in practice are used to generate desired outlines on paper, metal, plastic or wood by means of cutting and engraving. The process of computerising font outlines, however, embodies the common problems of domain change approximations and truncations. In the case under consideration, the capturing phase is best undertaken by means of mathematical splines, where a series of spline segments are connected together to form a computer model of the original. The digitisation phase of representing the modelled image on a finite resolution output device tends to be the more dominant concern. This is not just because of the transformation process (going from semicontinuous to discrete form), but also because the resulting image needs to embrace the distinct features of a font, has to be aesthetically acceptable, and requires to be in a form which is legible. This paper attempts to address some of the concerns encountered by modern typographers. It reports on a development of an interactive system to facilitate a feature-based design approach. This uses geometric constraints to express spatial relationships within, and between, font features. These provide much of the instructions required by a rasterizer to ensure a satisfactory outcome. In addition, to aid flexibility and reusability, a font feature is not required to be constrained completely at the outset. Instead, the system prompts the user to confirm relations as and when necessary. Workings of the system and its respective architecture is illustrated through its handling of the Times Roman half-serif. The paper also looks at the way the system glues two (or more) font features together. The discussion, throughout, is levelled at providing a practical understanding of the subject matter.