How to include and use new fonts in wxWidgets projet?
I am using VS2005.
I just want to print text using new ttf font.
Thanks in advance!!
Unless you're willing to link against something like FreeType:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeType
...most any program is going to require the font to be installed to the operating system, by the user or by some OS-specific script. You can't just load it by filename off the cuff in your app.
Because of the platform dependence of naming and accessing custom fonts, the path of least resistance is not to try and hardcode a font...but to let the user pick one out of a dialog. You would use a wxFontDialog for this:
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxfontdialog.html
It will let you retrieve the wxFontData, from which you can get the chosen wxFont:
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxfontdata.html#wxfontdatagetchosenfont
Once you have that, you can save and reload an identity of the font via the native string interface:
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxfont.html#wxfontgetnativefontinfodesc
Trying to formulate these strings on your own or work with the "face name" is a little dodgier:
http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxfont.html#wxfontsetfacename
Generally speaking a lot of the same problems arise here as dealing with fonts in HTML. If you have a very specific idea about the cross-platform appearance of some text, your best bet is often to make an image out of that text and use that instead of going through the hoops to get the font you want in the app. If you're more flexible and have a lot of text the user is interested in, then they may be interested in changing the font too. So just use a default but offer the user a choice to pick anything they want which is installed on their system.
(Note: I personally consider the handling of fonts in pretty much every OS or document system to be a disgrace. Imagine a world where in order to get a graphic to display in your program you had to register it with the operating system through a complex process and it would not copy from machine to machine when you copied a document in which it was embedded. We're dealing now with graphics that are orders of magnitude larger than font files, and yet they are handled seamlessly while people seem to accept the lack of seamless font transfer as "normal". Archaic DRM mindsets of font vendors is one side of the problem, but lame technology is another big component.)
Related
I currently have a script which processes .exr files, and when manually opening an exr file you are given the option of opening with transparency or with alpha. However, when scripting the opening of an .exr you are given no such options. There is no OpenOptions like there is for say PDF, and as far as I can tell their is no code generated by the listener that dictates the choice between transparency or alpha. Additionally this choice does not seem to be captured via an open action.
My question is: Has anyone figured out a way in CS6 or in CC a way to choose automatically whether an .exr file loaded through scripting is loaded with alpha or transparency?
Answering my own question.
As far as I can tell there is no way to script any behavior relating to opening EXR files with alpha/transparency. The way I was able to work around this was using the Pro EXR plugin, specifically the EZ version which is free, to automatically set exr files to always open with alpha. It's very disappointing that even in CC exr files lack any sort of script-able options when opened. Hopefully adobe will fix this is future versions.
Link to the plugin. The installer zip includes the free version. You can bring up the default options if you press shit when opening a file. I hope this helps someone else who may find themselves needing to interact with exr files with photoshop scripting.
For anyone who stumbles upon this, here's a little history on the subject of Photoshop EXR format implementation (specifically about this alpha split issue):
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/369637
The gist of it is that Adobe developers work with "straight alpha" which means transparency is a property of the alpha channel. The majority of visual effects software developers use an "unpremultiplied" alpha workflow, in which the alpha can represent anything, though crucially this is often used to represent objects that have transparency and brightness such as a candle flame.
An update on the answer from the asker - ProEXR is now open source, and there is an additional open source alternative called EXR-IO. Both work very well, and currently have slightly different feature sets.
There's a program called PPStream which is currently only available in Chinese, it allows for access to a myriad of ad-supported movies and TV series. The problems is that it is in Chinese and menus are indecipherable.
Is it possible to hook into the part of Mac OS's API that puts text on the screen so that it routes it through a wordlist first, translating the text into English? Would the API hook be able to differentiate the different applications calling the API?
I have no experience at all with Mac APIs, just pondering on if this is worth pursuing or not.
Thanks.
Edit: The reason I would like to do this at API level is that I need to dynamically dispatch HTTP queries with a list of strings to be translated (movie titles Chinese -> English), and the edit-the-i18n-file approach wouldn't do. Any other suggestions?
I haven't downloaded, installed or run PPStream myself so I'm speaking "out of my rear end" in a sense, but there are a number of ways to localize an app. But you really need to have access to the raw, uncompiled code and project to do it correctly.
The three most likely ways the string resources are saved are these:
1)
The app may have a strings file from which it fetches the strings to be displayed in the interface.
You may be able to make a copy of this strings file and set it to English or whatever language you choose.
2)
The strings may be baked into the code itself. This is generally a NO NO for commercial grade MacOS & iOS apps, but lazy and/or inexperienced developers can do this especially if they don't think their app will ever be used in other languages.
3)
The most likely set up is that there will be a folder hidden in the application package, inside the "Resources" folder, that has named like "en.lproj" or "English.lproj" or "de.lproj" or "zh_CN.lproj" or "zh_TW.lproj" (these last two are especially likely if this is only in Chinese).
Inside those folders will be localized XIB (or older NIB) files. And if you make a copy of this folder and then modify the newly made copy to add your new language.
Options 1 & 3 are ones you might be able to copy and then modify, but then again it might not work (especially these days when there's code & app signing). I've never tried this without an accompanying project, so if you have success, you should comment your question and/or this answer and let us know.
I have to extract text from invoices and bills pdf files
The files layouts can get complex, though its mostly filled with tables.
I've read a few dozens articles already about the pdf format, how easy it is for our brain to grasp it and how hard it is for a machine to understand its structure.
Also downloaded a few tools like the python's pdfminer and some java tools, some even have rule based layout extraction, like LA-PDBtext these are all great libraries, leaving you the final step.
Adobe also has an online service called exportPdf but it can't be customized
Bottom line, I understand that in order to extract text from structured pdf files and convert it to XML for example, there should be some level of manual work.
I also found From Data Extractor, a non free tool with the ability to set extraction rules that claims to do the job, though its hard to find a proper manual and it runs only on windows.
I thought I may even try a to convert those files to images and try tesseract-ocr but decided to ask for advice here before I spend more time on it.
I'll be very grateful if someone with such experience give me a hint.
I've done a lot of PDF extraction and I can confirm as you've already discovered that it can be a painful process to start. One of the important things to understand is that there is no concept of "tables" within a PDF, just text that happens to have lines around it. Also, there's no guarantee that the linear order of text within the PDF code actually matches the visual order when printed. In other words, there's no guarantee that "hello world" is written in that order, it could be draw 'word' at coord 20 then draw 'hello' at coord 10. Most PDF creators don't do this but still there's no guarantee. The more creative a PDF creator is (InDesign, Illustrator, etc) the more likely the text is going to be harder to get out. And actually, once a designer starts messing with fonts too much some programs will sometimes actually output words one character at a time, changing the font just slightly each time.
That said, I'd recommend the first one that you looked at, LA-PDFText. You can run it in discovery mode (blockify) from which you can create rules. I don't have Java installed anymore so I can't test it but it seems very promising.
Your second one, A-PDF Form Data Extractor, only really works with actual PDF forms. If this is your case I'd recommend just using an open source solution like iText/iTextSharp.
The last OCR one makes me cringe. I just can't imagine going through those hoops would get you better text representation than parsing the PDF. But then again, PDF is a visual format so maybe it would.
Personally I use iText/iTextSharp for this kind of thing but I also like to do things the hard way.
It is not clear if you are looking for the development tool to automate the data extraction from bills and invoices or just for the one time tool (utility) that can be used by the non-developer?
Anyway here are some specialized tools including engines they use:
Tabula (open-source, especially designed to extract data from tables in PDF. Can export shell scripts for batch processing, runs as the localhost web service, powered by JRuby Tabula engine)
Viet OCR (open-source .NET desktop utility for text extraction from PDF and images, based on tesseract oct engine)
Bytescout PDF Viewer (freeware closed source .NET utility, detects and extracts tables, including scanned invoices, powered by PDF Extractor SDK)
DISCLAIMER: I work for ByteScout.
I'm writing a new document-based cross-platform chemistry application (Win, Mac, Unix), which saves files in its own format (no standard format exists for this field). I'm trying to decide on a file extension for the saved files. My questions are:
How important is it nowadays to stick to 3 characters?
Where can you check how much this file extension is already used? (Google helps, of course, but it does not tell me how much a given app is popular)
Do I really need to use a file-specific extension? My save format is gzip'ed XML, so I could name it .xml.gz, but I fear it would confuse beginning users (i.e. when you see it, it does not immediately "ring a bell").
Finally, do you have other important guidelines when choosing for your own programs?
PS: I tried to keep the right balance between "giving too little information" and "being too specific to be really useful to others". I'll happily provide more information in comments if the need arises.
FileInfo.com lists a lot of file extensions along with their own estimation of how much it is ued.
I suggest a unique extension (rather then xml.gz) so that the OS can identify the file type to users when looking at a file listing or whatever. 'Ringing a bell' is important, especially if you will have less sophisticated users.
I don't see any need to stick to 3 characters, but I wouldn't go bigger than 5 (I don't suppose I have a real reason for this, other than personal preference).
How important is it nowadays to stick to 3 characters?
It's not unless you have to support older operating systems. All current OSes handle >3 char file extensions without any problems. Think of .html, .config, .resx, and I'm sure there are more.
Where can you check how much this file extension is already used?
check out FileExt.
Do I really need to use a file-specific extension? My save
format is gzip'ed XML, so I could name
it .xml.gz, but I fear it would
confuse beginning users (i.e. when you
see it, it does not immediately "ring
a bell").
Remember that windows (and windows users) associate files with applications by extension, so using something too generic like .xml.gz may cause problems. You are probably better coming up with something that is more specific to your file type or application. Users don't care weather your format is gzipped xml internally, they care about what is in the file. Think about abstraction layers, your users will think of it as a file containing chemistry info not gzipped xml, so .chem is far more appropriate than .xml.gz
Some suggestions of things to thing about:
Obviously, don't clash with anything big - Don't use .doc, .xls, .exe, etc.
Don't clash with anything common in your industry domain that your user demographic is likely to have installed. For example, if you are writing a programming tool, don't use .cs or .cpp. You probably know your domain best, so write a list of all the apps you and your users are likely to have installed, and any of their competitors and avoid them.
Make sure your app includes the options to register and unregister the extension. don't just automatically do it in the installation, make sure it's an option.
Remember unix/linux and Mac are case sensitive, so consider sticking to always all lower case by default.
Remember CD/DVD file naming rules are stricter, so don't use non alpha numeric characters.
Finally, remember that most non-tech users are going to have file extensions turned off, so don't stress about it too much.
There is more info here.
Wikipedia has lists of files extensions here (by type) and here (alphabetical), and also some general information
Depends on the platform, but in general, not very important for newer Operating Systems. Check the documentation for the platforms you're targeting.
I'm not aware of better alternatives to Google. Hopefully someone else has a better suggestion for this one.
Not unless you have some reason to do so. Examples would be "I want to ensure that Windows always opens this program with my app". I'm not sure that your users need to be concerned with the extension anyway. The default configuration on Windows, for example, is to hide extensions for known file types. BUT if you have a compelling reason (such as allowing your program to easily identify files it should be able to handle, for example) then you could use the extension, or you could come up with something else.
I have only ever once written a program where I thought I needed to come up with my own extension. I used my initials. Then later I realized I didn't really need a special extension and reverted to ".xml". However, most extensions seem to be something that seems to mean something. (.doc for documents, etc.) so something meaningful is a good idea if you do need to go this route.
It sure depends on the OSes you want to support, but people have globally moved over the 3-characters extension limit these days: .html is well used for webpages, for example.
Of course, if you go to much longer extensions, people will stop visually recognizing it as a file extension, I think...
Barring your needing to be compatible with a specific OS that you know still has the three-letter limitation, no need to keep it to three characters. It may be useful to have a three-character version of it if you end up supporting those platforms.
The Wikipedia list of file formats is pretty good. Some mime mapping lists will list common extensions associated with those mappings. Ray already mentioned FileInfo.com.
It's a convenience thing; I'd probably go with your own but document the fact that they're just gzipped XML files conforming to a specific DTD and make it easy for users to use .xml.gz instead. Be sure that your software doesn't care about the extension, so that users could even choose their own if they wanted, although I'd tend to avoid encouraging them to by providing a reasonable default.
I'd go for typeability, clarity, uniqueness, and brevity -- in that order. For instance, .config is a lot easier to type than .q2z but it falls down on uniqueness. (I'm not suggesting it for your app; it's an example.) Similarly, .q2z is just a pain. :-) So for instance, .chemstuff is easy to type and probably not in wide use elsewhere. (Again, not a suggestion, just an example.)
Have it as document_name.app_name.xml.gz where document_name and app_name are variables, the latter some easily readable and recognisable short string of your application's title.
Modern systems are quite flexible, and there is absolutely no need to drag the 3-character extensions further along in time with us.
I agree that .xml.gz would confuse users, however keep in mind that modern systems are moving into recognizing files not based on extensions but by probing their headers and even contents instead. In fact, users do not often even see the extensions. For gzipped XML files, a system may decide to first unpack the file stream in memory, then find out it is a literal XML file, then it may take its 'xmlns' as the application identifier. However, such systems are not yet widespread use. In any case, don't make the mistake of only opening files by extension - be smart and raise the bar - do exactly the above to find out if the file can be considered a document for your application.
How do you change the name of the font embedded in the .ttf file? (It's for a device that's expecting a hard coded font name that I'd like to swap w/ another more readable openly licensed font).
I'd prefer a method which I can implement myself rather than installing a program.
TrueType is a pretty complex binary data format -- the kind that takes an entire book-length spec to describe. I've worked with it in the distant past.
There are specialized tools that can edit fonts, including metadata like names. I would not recommend trying to mess with the binary data in a font file without such a tool. There might be libraries available that you could call to manipulate TrueType data; if one existed, I would guess Python would be the most likely language to find it in, because there's a long correlation between font hackers and Python (Guido van Rossum's brother is a well-known typographer.)
This may be only useful in very specific situations, but should you need to change a font's name to something else that is the exact same length, you can do so in a hex editor (e.g. Okteta. Find all the instances of the name, and then edit them to be the new name. I found there were 2 copies of the name in each place - one that's normal, and another with 0x00 in between each letter.
The only evidence I have that this actually works is empirical with a sample size of 1.