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Bitmap underscore question
I wonder how it is possible for a bitmap font to have underscore appear as negative when it is crossing descenders. An example of this would be Group 94 website (click on other news items to see ones that have links with descenders).
Links in the right column text appear with negative underscore, which makes descenders more visible. Can this be achieved within a TTF file itself or takes some trickery, like custom underscored font replacing the regular one after text is loaded?
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12 Mar 2006 — 1:00pm
Pretty nice observation Magneto...
I just emailed them the wonder of yours, as i'm also impressed with the underscore they use in a pixel font. (needless to say that i'm impressed of their flash development all these years).
When / if i get an answer from them, i'll post it here...
Nick
12 Mar 2006 — 1:59pm
Very nice Flash work except that the text is blurry and so small that I can't read it. :>
A.
12 Mar 2006 — 2:06pm
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Very nice Flash work except that the text is blurry and so small that I can’t read it.
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Hello Adam...
do you use a CRT with a very high resolution? or an LCD in a resolution other than its native?
When ever you can try to see the site with an LCD and in its native resolution...
I think after that the fonts will be Crystal Clear™... as it conserns their clarity.
:o)
12 Mar 2006 — 2:29pm
The site seems to have a sound component too; a dull industrial humming, which is just annoying. Why do people do that?
12 Mar 2006 — 3:26pm
It's not an "underline" font. Watch carefully as the animation finishes - the text as animated and finished has no underline. When the text has finished moving, the Flash animation just goes back and draws a line underneath the text they want, probably in XOR transfer mode so that white pixels turn black and black pixels turn white.
It only looks this way because none of the descenders ("y", "g") ever curve back up from their lowest point. If they did, you'd see those little curls above the line, which is why real glyph-rendering systems don't draw undelines that way.
12 Mar 2006 — 4:22pm
I think drawing underlines would be a hell of a task. XOR pixel-toggle overlay over type.. I doubt it's even doable in Flash. My guess is they load the html text with one css style and after it's there they change the css into one that uses underlined version of the font on the a tag. But I'm curious if this is really the way they do it..
17 Mar 2006 — 6:53am
The joke's on me. I just took a look at a site made by myself with my own pixel font and it invert-underscores just like G94's. It's just the way Flash writes underscore in html text.