Can QCAD handle a zero width character? If so, how?

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wijit
Newbie Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:30 pm

Can QCAD handle a zero width character? If so, how?

Post by wijit » Sat Nov 21, 2009 6:37 am

Many languages have characters that must be placed above or below other characters. Above and below here mean the place right above the highest point and right below the lowest point of another character. In normal text or word processor programs this kind of combinations can be made by typing the base character first and immediately followed by one of these zero width characters. It seems to me that QCAD can only always place a character next to the just previously typed character and with a constant width. This means we cannot type an x then a ^ to make an x hat. I have to include Thai texts in my drawing jobs which will be useless if I cannot do it no matter how good or complex is the drawing. My client would not accept the job. I will have no point to introduce the software to my students to change their habit of using pirate software such as Microsoft Visio or even AutoCAD.
I install QCAD on Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. Both of them work very well. However I could not find the source code of the program. So I could not evaluate myself to be capable of getting the result and that is why I ask this question here.
Regards,
Wijit.

matbech
Active Member
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:33 am

Post by matbech » Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:10 am

Did you already try to convert ttf fonts as they suggest in this topic?

wijit
Newbie Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:30 pm

Post by wijit » Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:16 am

[quote="matbech"]Did you already try to convert ttf fonts as they suggest in this [url=http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?t=1022]topic[/url]?[/quote]

If you mean what is in the page http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?t=415, yes, I did. However, I could not make any thing good from it. This may be because of my lack of knowledge on how to do it the right way. What I did is here:
1. Obtain the source from ftp://ribbonsoft.com/archives/ttf2cxf/t ... src.tar.gz as suggested by Andrew.
2. Uncompress the tar.gz contents on my Desktop.
3. Open the main.cpp file by gedit.
4. Replace lines with the patch Niels Ole Salscheider suggested.
5. In terminal: cd ttf2cxf-0.0.0.1-src (the directory I mentioned in step 2)
6. Still in terminal: sudo make
I noticed that the date and time property of the file ttf2cxf changed to approximately when I executed the make command. The file has an executable icon in the file browser. However, I got nothing from double click on the icon and when call it in terminal I got "command not found".
I'm not a programmer but try to give as much information as I can. Some of the info may not be in the expert jargon. Please forgive me for that.
Wijit.

wijit
Newbie Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:30 pm

Post by wijit » Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:42 pm

I've got it!
If you place an entity to the left of the origin (the red cross or 0,0 of a character) => 0.4 units the charater will be a zero width character.
Cheers,
Wijit.

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