Fonts and digits

Note, the Count version 2.6 has TrueType support ON by default in Makefiles. Here are the steps to add TrueType support to the counter in Unix:

1. If yo want TrueType font support, download and install the FreeType 1.3.1 font library (FreeType 2.x is not supported yet). The URL is: http://www.freetype.org/. Note, by default FreeType library is installed as a shared library, if you do not know how to configure your system for shared libraries, compile FreeType library as static, e.g.
   ./configure --disable-shared
   It will make counter binary little bigger but will save you from lots of trouble.

2. Go to the section Compiling and installing

Counter Parameters related to TTF

• bg and fg - Background and foreground color. The default bg is white and fg is black. Example:

  <img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?font=trebuc.ttf&bg=0000ff&fg=ffffff">
  

• border - Border space around the counter image in pixels. Default is 0.

• font - The name of the TrueType font file. Note, this is key parameter which activates TrueType font use instead of digit image. Please look at the directory structure for the location of TrueType fonts. The TTF files must be present in this directory. Alternatively, if you have your fonts installed somewhere else, you can make a link to that directory as fonts. Note, I do not create this directory. So you've to create it or make the link to the appropriate directory. Example:

  <img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?font=trebuc.ttf">
  

• pt - Point size. 1 pt = 1/72 inch. The default point size is 12.

• smooth - Smooth text or not. In technical term, it is called anti-aliasing. If anti-aliasing is on, when scaling, the font looks smooth rather than blocky.

• xres - Horizontal screen resolution. The default is 96 dot/inch.

• xres - Vertical screen resolution. The default is 96 dot/inch.

Few links about free TrueType fonts: (just to get you started)

• http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm
  
• http://members.tripod.com/~jbarta/
  
• http://warp.student.utwente.nl/ffonts/
  
• http://www.io.com/~kazushi/xtt/

Style	Image strip	Author
A		designed by the author. D, H, M, S segment added by Andrew Taylor (digits/A/strip.gif)
B		Borrowed from HTML-access counter. (digits/B/strip.gif)
C		designed by benjamin@pop3.oro.net (digits/C/strip.gif)
D		designed by the author (digits/D/strip.gif)
E		designed by the author (digits/E/strip.gif)
cd		made by the author on SGI with GIMP running on Linux. D,H,M and S are needed for countdown option. (digits/cd/strip.gif)
cdr		Contributed by Mike Casper. (digits/cdr/strip.gif)
cdd		Contributed by Sebastian Hartman (digits/cdd/strip.gif)
bang		Bangla digits. Made with GIMP by the author. (digits/bang/strip.gif)

For a huge collection of GIF digits, check out the Digit Mania page. If you design some cool digits and like to share with others try sending them to Digit Mania instead of me.

This program will work with any digits from the Digit Mania page. To use those digits, create subdirectories say, F, G, H, foo etc. inside the digits directory and rename the images to zero.gif, one.gif..nine.gif. I suggest you create an image strip out of these digits and use it instead of using individual images.

How to use other styles of digits

1. Use a single image strip for digits. This is the default behavior, that is the counter program looks for a image file called strip.gif in digits/style directory by default. Using an image strip is much more efficient than using individual digits, because
   • the size of an image strip is almost always less than the combined size of individual images.
     
   • Disk i/o is significantly reduced, because only one file needs to be opened instead of many.

2. use a individual digit image for each digit, for example, zero.gif, one.gif...nine.gif. These digit images reside in the digits/style directory. If you like to use the counter for clock, 3 additional digit images are required, e.g., colon.gif, am.gif and pm.gif. If you want to use comma in your counter digits, another image is required, e.g., comma.gif. If you want to use the counter to display date, one more image is required, e.g., dash.gif. If you collect digits from external source, do not forget to rename the images to zero.gif, one.gif, two.gif, ... nine.gif, colon.gif, am.gif, pm.gif, comma.gif and dash.gif

The section How to create an image strip describes how to create an image strip from individual digit images. If you like to use the individual digits instead, you must use the option istrip=F when you call the counter from web page, because by default istrip=T.

How to create an image strip

A program called mkstrip is supplied to create the image strip from individual digit images. Another program called extdgts is supplied to extract individual GIF images from the strip.gif (made with mkstrip). extdgts is there to help you out if you need to extract the digit images for some reason.

The programs mkstrip and extdgts compiled automatically and copied to the bin diectory located in counter source directory. Before using them, copy mkstrip and extdgts somewhere in your path, otherwise you'll get error "command not found."

Now, go to the directory where all the individual digit images are and type:

   mkstrip zero.gif one.gif two.gif .... nine.gif colon.gif \
      am.gif pm.gif > strip.gif

Create a directory say F inside the digits directory and copy or move the file strip.gif to F. You can use this strip with dd=F.

The above strip can be used for counter and clock but not date. It also can NOT be used if you want to display comma. If you want to use date and comma, you must have the image for comma and dash. For example, the strip of digit style A is created with the command:

    mkstrip zero.gif one.gif ... nine.gif colon.gif am.gif pm.gif comma.gif \
    dash.gif > strip.gif

For example, the comment of the image strip of digit style A is:

15:0:15:30:45:60:75:90:105:120:135:150:165:180:195:210:225