Nice! Reminds of Century (Light)...The x looks to slim and small, IMO.

classy and very convincing, with enough of an FS edge to make it different :)

That Q’s tail is lovely.

And yeah, the diagonals make things difficult sometimes.

Very nice. The lack of that third angle is keenly felt when we attempt this sort of thing. Particularly in the N! Nonetheless, you've succeeded quite admirably nonetheless.

Pity I can't see the whole thing. The view pane refuses to finish loading for some reason.

Don't hold your breath on the third angle, you'll go blue. Oh, I forgot, you already are. It's a committment of (at least) 24 new bricks, possibly more. Oh, but what it would allow!

Firstly, this is a very nice font. I downloaded it and tried it using Microsoft WordPad. I awarded it ten points.

Regarding angled lines.

The choice for the X and the x was between two choices, either

a sloping line that goes sideways by a whole brick width for each brick height going upwards,

or

a sloping line that goes sideways by half a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

The first choice uses a set of two bricks for each row of bricks and the second choice uses a set of four bricks spread over each two rows of bricks.

There are various possible new ways to produce an intermediate angle, each of which would need some new bricks to be added into the FontStruct system.

One way would be to have a sloping line that goes sideways by two-thirds of a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

Another way would be to have a sloping line that goes sideways by three-quarters of a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

There are two sloping lines needed for X and x.

Yet that is just for two sloping lines. There are other sloping lines as well that might be implemented.

For example, a sloping line that goes sideways by one-third of a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

Also, various other sloping lines.

For example, a sloping line that goes upwards by two-thirds of a brick width for each brick height going sideways.

And so on.

It is a lot of new bricks.

However, a lot depends on how big a job is the adding of new bricks.

Not all of the bricks for sloping lines need be added at first, or indeed at all. Those for an intermediate angle of X and x would be a good first choice.

Incidentally, some readers may already know of the following method for calculating the angle of the line.

For example, the sloping line that goes sideways by half a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

Starting Microsoft Calculator and using View Scientific mode.

Make sure that the options Dec and Degrees are selected: these are the default choices.

Enter the number 0.5 to represent the ratio of half a brick width for each brick height going upwards.

Click in the box labelled Inv so that it has a tick in it.

Click on the button labelled tan.

The angle of 26.565051177077989351572193720453 is calculated, which rounds to 26.6 degrees.

Using 1.0 as the input number for the calculation gives the result 45, which is 45 degrees.

So the angles for the new lines can be calculated, and rounded manually, as 33.7 degrees for the two-thirds option and as 36.9 degrees for the three-quarters option.

Mathematical note for those interested: Clicking the tan button with the Inv checkbox set produces the arctangent function. That is, the angle whose tangent is the number being input.

(Microsoft calculator is often found by using Start, All Programs, Accessories, Calculator).

Correction:

I wrote as follows.

For example, a sloping line that goes upwards by two-thirds of a brick width for each brick height going sideways.

I should have put the following.

For example, a sloping line that goes upwards by two-thirds of a brick height for each brick width going sideways.

Congratulations! FontStruct Staff have deemed your FontStruction worthy of special mention. “Romantic” is now a Top Pick.

Ball terminals, a great g, wonderful Q and R, plus that really nice 5: Classic!

I have now produced some images of the new brick sets that would be needed for an intermediate slope.

These were made using Microsoft Paint.

The slopes produced are very similar so probably only one set would need implementing, together with horizontal mirror images for the other line of the X or x character.

Another consideration is whether any additional bricks would be needed for the crossover of the two sloping lines when constructing an X or an x.

The two-thirds of a brick sideways for each brick upwards choice would need some extra bricks.

However, the three-quarters of a brick sideways for each brick upwards choice would need no extra bricks.

I have since thought that if a thicker line were required, then some more bricks would be necessary.

I am still thinking about this.

This is quite interesting and FontStructors are invited to join in and try to solve the problem!

How many new bricks would be needed in total and what are they?

@p2pnut: Thank you for your kind comments.

I have thought of the following way to express the design of the various bricks in this thread.

Please regard each brick as being overall with x coordinate going from 0 to 120 and y coordinate going from 0 to 120.

The choice of 120 is so that whole numbers may be used for expressing distances of one-third of a brick and two-thirds of a brick whilst also allowing for development using some other fractions of a brick width, such as one fifth and one eighth.

Each brick contains one or more contours.

Please label the first contour as either ABC or ABCD or ABCDE or ABCDEF depending upon how many points there are in the contour.

If there is a second contour, please label it as PQR or PQRS or PQRST or PQRSTU depending upon how many points there are in the contour.

If there is one contour, choose A to be at the left-most point of the contour. If two or more points are at the same left-most value, then choose the lower down point as A. After that, label point B as the next point in a clockwise direction and so on for point C and any further points.

If there are two contours, then choose the first contour to be the one with the left-most point and if both have the same left-most value, then choose the one with the lower down of those left-most values. Label that contour starting at A as above. Label the second contour from P, choosing P to be the left-most point of the contour. If two or more points are at the same left-most value, then choose the lower down point as P. After that, if the contour is not of a white hole inside the first contour, label point Q as the next point in a clockwise direction and so on for point R and any further points: if the contour is of a white hole inside the first contour, label point Q as the next point in a counterclockwise direction and so on for point R and any further points.

Thus the design for a brick can be expressed as a sequence of letters and coordinates, which will hopefully be useful both for discussing brick designs and also for transferring brick designs into the FontStruct software system if the management decide to incorporate whatever brick designs are produced in this thread into FontStruct.

In the present thread, all points are on-contour points, which is because the brick designs are made using straight lines.

The illustration provides an example.

The coordinate values are as follows.

A is (0, 0) on-contour
B is (90, 120) on-contour
C is (120, 120) on-contour
D is (120, 0) on-contour

An interesting situation arose when making the illustration in Microsoft Paint.

I used the Romantic font for the letters.

The lower curve of the C had a gap in it when produced using the Text tool in Paint.

I got around that by starting Microsoft WordPad and also a second copy of Paint.

I then keyed the letters into WordPad, with a space between the letters, and then used the Print Screen key to copy the image onto the clipboard. I then pasted into the second copy of Paint and then selected the images of the letters and copied them from there into the diagram in the first copy of Paint. I then moved the image of each letter to the required place in the image.

When I am making the diagrams using Microsoft Paint I tend first to save in 16 colour bitmap bmp format and save in that format as I proceed, then, when the image is complete I also save as a gif for uploading to this thread.

However, it is possible to edit a gif in Paint. So I have tried making construction_kit.gif in the hope that some readers might like to download a copy and then produce a design for a brick by editing the gif. After editing, please trim to a width of 220 pixels using the Image Attributes... facility of Paint.

Look what I found.