SS2 special characters fonts

[67241bf598826ZylonBane]

The current SHTUP small text fonts include only the same characters included in the original fonts. The encoding is CP850, except for ñ and Ñ being transposed. This error has been preserved in the SHTUP version in case any vanilla localizations rely on it.

ISO-8859-1 and Latin1 are the same thing. CP850 supposedly supports all the same alphabetical characters ISO-8859-1 does, so it seems like it would be easier to stick with CP850 than switching over to a different encoding.

[67241bf598c80Marvin]

The case for Latin1/ISO-8859-1 is that both it and its extension form the first part (+00 until U+FF)  of the original Unicode standard. Meaning that when handling the files on any machine, especially when converting them to UTF-8 (even if Dark does not support it), you cannot lose any information during editing. The texts might not show up correctly if you don't supply the proper fonts, and Eastern Europe is still screwed, but at least it's harder to mess up.  The Czech translation even auto-converts from UTF-8 in their Github repo (which is the correct way to do it imo).

Plus, supplying ISO-8859-1 fonts across the board (SCP, SHTUP, maybe even original newdark) means that English and German (the only official versions iirc) and most fan translations (Brazilian/Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) would be correct ootb and not require their own replacements while profiting from the improved kerning and legibility of the SHTUP fonts.

[67241bf59902dZylonBane]

Plus, supplying ISO-8859-1 fonts across the board (SCP, SHTUP, maybe even original newdark) means that English and German (the only official versions iirc) and most fan translations (Brazilian/Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) would be correct ootb and not require their own replacements while profiting from the improved kerning and legibility of the SHTUP fonts.

Eh? The vanilla German translation is encoded in CP850, which has its Ä/Ü/Ö characters at different locations than 8859-1

[67241bf59915dMarvin]

Unmodded, yes. When you use the full translation mod or my SCP translation, subtitles, whatever, you have custom strings, hence you could either have all mods rely on the same font package and supply it separately, or bundle it.

[67241bf59929bZylonBane]

Modded wouldn't be "out of the box".

SHTUP fonts have to be compatible with the vanilla string resources. Switching over to 8859-1, if that's what you're suggesting, would make SHTUP incompatible with the official German translation.

If that's not what you're suggesting, then I have no idea what you're actually suggesting.

[67241bf5993b2Marvin]

OOTB = with the standard mods applied, or supplying from the same source.

Yeah, you're right, the main caveat is that a mod like SHTUP is supposed to be independent from any other mod whereas I was thinking with the entire newbie mod collection in mind.

[67241bf599633ZylonBane]

forking the CZ fonts is probably not a good idea

Which character encoding did you use? ISO-8859-2? Windows-1250? CP852? Kamenický?

[67241bf5997f1voodoo47]

I don't think I've changed the encoding, so whatever the original special characters font has, the CZ translation should also have.

what I'm trying to say here is the CZ font is not exactly done by the book, and should be treated as such - whatever dumb thing I may have done there will be inherited by any potential fork.

[67241bf599975ZylonBane]

The moment you changed any default characters to different characters, you created a new encoding. Did you pick character positions for the new characters at random, or in accordance with an existing encoding? Using a previously non-existent encoding would have made updating the strings... challenging.

[67241bf599a9fvoodoo47]

uhh.. let me see whether I can remember - I think I have simply taken the original special font, loaded it together with the fully translated CZ strings, and then simply started to edit the fonts bit by bit until all the special characters were displayed correctly ingame. a slow and tedious process I wouldn't want to go through again if I can help it.

[67241bf599bacZylonBane]

Okay I took a look at the CZ mod. It appears you kind of half-mutated ISO-8859-1 into ISO-8859-2.

Would there be any value to the community in having full SHTUP-style implementations of ISO-8859-1 and ISO-8859-2 available?

[67241bf599ce9Marvin]

The reasons I could give, just to reiterate:
* central archive of the best possible fonts for any SS2 translation
* opportunity to fix non-SHTUP fonts for good like metafont.fon (lacks the "ß" necessary for the German translation, lacks almost all accented characters, does not even do US-ASCII properly)
* improved maintanability/ease-of-use for developers when converting between UTF-8 and the necessary SS2 encoding (e.g. ISO-8859-1 needing no conversion at all)

[67241bf599ef5luigge]

@voodoo47 Hello there, I am trying to mess with the thiefon program to generate the fonts like I have done in the past. my question is, if I haven't already asked in the past, what parameters should I use to generate the BLUEAA font because whatever I use -a or -A doesn't work.

the font is created but on the game it doesn't display.

I figured out, nevermind. just in case I need this again
change from rgb to indexed and use the pallet of the other font
and do thieffon -c -b 0 -p 254 - w 1

[67241bf59a043ZylonBane]

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=11286.0

[67241bf59a12fluigge]

that is very useful thanks