Underline font?

[jriemerm]

Given Xara's inability to underline text--perhaps the most fundamental feature missing in this otherwise brilliantly capable program--has anyone ever come across, or created, any simple fonts that are underlined in their standard face?

The place I miss this feature the most is doing banner ads, representing hyperlinked text in a graphic. I usually use a drawn line, or a text line consisting of underscores beneath the text, with line spacing adjusted to make it look like an underline. In both these cases, it's quite more time consuming that just typing or editing text which is underlined by default.

Or, if no one knows of some simple underlined fonts already in existence, are there any Xara-loving font hobbyists who would consider taking this on? I'd do it myself, but I don't have any idea how to publish a font.

thanks,

james

[jriemerm]

Given Xara's inability to underline text--perhaps the most fundamental feature missing in this otherwise brilliantly capable program--has anyone ever come across, or created, any simple fonts that are underlined in their standard face?

The place I miss this feature the most is doing banner ads, representing hyperlinked text in a graphic. I usually use a drawn line, or a text line consisting of underscores beneath the text, with line spacing adjusted to make it look like an underline. In both these cases, it's quite more time consuming that just typing or editing text which is underlined by default.

Or, if no one knows of some simple underlined fonts already in existence, are there any Xara-loving font hobbyists who would consider taking this on? I'd do it myself, but I don't have any idea how to publish a font.

thanks,

james

[jriemerm]

As a followup to my question, it occurs to me that Xara is associated with buyfonts.com, and for them to publish a handful of free underlined fonts would be a lovely gesture, given this inability within Xara. (Underlined versions of the most standard faces on the web--arial, times, etc.--would be a great place to start.)

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James Riemermann
MN Office of Tourism
james.riemermann@state.mn.us

For travel info: www.exploreminnesota.com
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[This message was edited by James Riemermann on February 05, 2001 at 07:36 AM.]

[This message was edited by James Riemermann on February 05, 2001 at 07:37 AM.]

[gwpriester]

Hello James

I guess my question is why do you want to underline text?

Underscored text is a throwback to the manual typewriter, which having no ability to emphasize text, such as bold facing or italics, used an underscore for this effect.

As any text created on any device in the past two decades has the ability to assign a style to text, the underscore has become redundent.

If you need to create text that appears to be linked text on a web site, just add a line under the text?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...

[jriemerm]

Gary,

Here's why any graphics tool with an eye to the web should support underlined text: virtually everyone who uses the internet knows that underlined text denotes a link. It is the standard, agreed-upon visual representation for "click here", without having to say "click here". Until the advent of the web underlined text *was* a throwback to the typewriter. It no longer is; it has a new meaning utterly unrelated to "emphasis".

Of course, you can do that with simple HTML on a web page. But most banner ads are not HTML, and many sites don't even accept HTML banner ads.

Faking this in Xara is not a huge task. I can draw a line under text, adjust the length, thickness, position and color to make it look like real text underlining. And when I edit the text, I can stretch or shorten the line to match the text. Not a great imposition, but with true underlining, like nearly every other text-handling Windows program, it would be a mouse-click. Edit the text and no change is necessary.

Someone else has suggested that the lack of underlining might relate back to some very old, very fundamental code in Xara, and thus cannot be changed without massive changes under the hood. Massive changes under the hood are hard to do and can undermine program stability. Fair enough. But if Xara could work around this longstanding irritant by offering a handful of underlined fonts, maybe they should.

thanks,

james

james

============================================
James Riemermann
MN Office of Tourism
651/297-2077
james.riemermann@state.mn.us

For travel info: www.exploreminnesota.com
============================================