[AccessD] More Word/graphics OT

Jürgen Welz jwelz at hotmail.com
Wed Dec 21 17:02:52 CST 2005


I've got my graphic logos going into document body and headers and tables in 
multiple kinds of footers with good control of size and placement.

I've also tried a WMF capable graphics program, to wit, Corel's Paint Shop 
Pro X.  After cleaning up the TIF files (letters vary in height by 2 or 3 
pixels in 150 and don't line up on bottoms) and converting to 2 color (logos 
are two color, but the graphic has 85 interpolated 'smoothed' colors at some 
edges, of course on curves, but also on straight horizontal lines) before 
converting back to 16 bit and then filling with our target color, the WMF 
file save menu offers the option of saving with or without vector data.  I 
was hoping for purely vector data.  The resulting files were over 90% of the 
size of the TIF originals; huge.  Resizing down to the 1700 bytes of our 
current WMF's left them as blurry vague messes.  The existing WMFs are far 
superior, though not adequte in my opinion, and slightly off color.

Clearly I need a better Graphics program.  I believe I have an old copy of 
Corel 4 kicking around, but I'm not sure whether it will support a vector 
format I can use in my forms/reports/documents.

I had a look at a downloadable Font editor program and the trial version 
does a nice job of converting a graphic file to a pure vector scalable font, 
though I haven't figured out the kerning well enough to do an accurate 
facsimiile of the required logo, I can duplicate the characters exactly.  
There is also a stylized black line that looks a bit like the Nike 'Swoop' 
that becomes a purely horizontal line below the primary corporate names.  I 
believe I can make the start of the swoop by converting a left paranthesis 
character with a fair bit of descender and tie into a horizontal line or 
running into a line of '_' characters set to display at the top of the line 
below (by moving the line to the top of the font).  By Italicizing or 
setting enough kerning, I can get the top of the 'Swoop' over the first 
character as required (all logo text has about a 7 degree italic slope).

This should get me a 'graphic' file size of a few dozen bytes rather than 
the multiple K file sizes we now have for logos.  Does anyone know whether 
emailed PDF conversions will keep the logo intact for systems that do not 
have the custom font I am considering?  Does a copy of the font get sent 
with the file?  I really only need to define a maximum of 8 characters for 
the current companies.  (Divisions have a 50% Grey Arial Italic Bold font 
added after one of the primary Logo company and some have 'A Joint Venture' 
starting from the end of the 'Swoop'.  Those variations of the main logos 
can all simply be set up by adding text of the Arial font and perhaps 
overlaying a transparent text box to fine tune the height of the added 'A 
Joint Venture', or perhaps revising a font to be samll enough, yet in the 
upper portion of the character space.

Anyone with some suggestions?  Other options?

Ciao
Jürgen Welz
Edmonton, Alberta
jwelz at hotmail.com





More information about the AccessD mailing list