Fonts

Redstart · May 14, 2006

What is the best font for typing suit symbols on computer? Is a special one available?

Gerardo · May 15, 2006

Symbol.ttf is the only one used & usable, at least with current client.

Sigi_BC84 · May 15, 2006

Assuming your question is not directed specifically towards the usage within BBO (can you actually change the font for the BBO client?):

I'm particularly partial to fonts which contain "white" suit symbols for hearts and diamonds, which are a lot more readable on black and white printouts than the standard symbols. These are unicode points 2661 and 2662 respectively (this is how they look: ♡ ♢).

The Windows Character Map utility allows you to check your fonts for the presence of these symbols (Arial Unicode certainly contains them).

Most fonts contain the standard card symbols, but as I said they are not as easy to read if you can't colorize them appropriately (I'm convinced by now that the best colorization scheme in the one most people use on these forums, ie. ♠♥♦♣; I think they should use it on playing cards as well, would make sorting the hand way easier and you would have less accidents regarding diamonds and hearts...).

--Sigi

kenberg · May 15, 2006

Sigi,

You may have to start very simple with me and perhaps with others of my age group. Suppose I want to use suit symbols on a webpage (I do, actually). Assume I want to do this in html (since I don't know how to do it in anything else). Could you write down an html line that I could try on a webpage that hopefully would actually show up as a suit symbol in a font that you recommend? Or am I misunderstanding what this thread is addressing?

Thanks,

Ken

barmar · May 15, 2006

HTML appears to have them as built-in special characters:

♠

♥

♦

♣

so you don't need to deal with fonts and character codes.

Sigi_BC84 · May 15, 2006

You may have to start very simple with me and perhaps with others of my age group. Suppose I want to use suit symbols on a webpage (I do, actually). Assume I want to do this in html (since I don't know how to do it in anything else). Could you write down an html line that I could try on a webpage that hopefully would actually show up as a suit symbol in a font that you recommend? Or am I misunderstanding what this thread is addressing?

You can take a look at the HTML code that is generated for forum posts to get an idea. Let's take the spade symbol as an example, this is generated as:

<span class="spades">♠</span>

and CSS class "spades" is defined as follows:

<style type="text/css">
 .spades { color: blue; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
</style>

(If you don't know yet what "CSS" means, I strongly suggest learning about that because it makes web site composition a lot more convenient.)

If you don't want to type that long <span> thing all the time, you could invent a short sequence (eg. "!s" like in BBO) and search/replace this with the above later (after you're finished writing the actual page). Or you could make an editor macro to insert the appropriate string. Maybe your HTML editor has a special way to do this sort of stuff. It all depends...

Having said that, I strongly discourage the use of small graphics (images) as card symbols. This gets highly inconvenient if you want to cut/paste out of the page, or send the content via email or print as text etc.

--Sigi

Sigi_BC84 · May 15, 2006

If all you want is a really simple webpage, and all this advanced stuff is too much for the moment, just do the following:

In the HTML header of your page, make sure you have

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

(preferably as the first element after the <head> tag).

Now you can use any character that actually exists in the font you are using -- right in the HTML code. So you can actually cut'n'paste a "real" ♠ symbol from somewhere (or enter it via a keyboard macro) into the HTML file you are creating. This is easier to read for you while you are writing the page, but you lose the colorization possibility that way (that calls for a <span> element in any case).

Make sure that your editor or HTML editor saves the page in "UTF-8" encoding, or else it won't work.

--Sigi

kenberg · May 15, 2006

OK, thanks to both of you. I have some symbols up, I'll read about CSS. I understand the point about trouble emailing if the symbols are in.

I am planning on writing a few pages about agreements that I like. A lot of my play here is with very minimal agreements and a look at forum topics shows that this is not just my problem. I have in mind being able to say something like "I have some common ambiguities listed and I suggest a preference. I can play it other ways if you tell me, but lacking anything better, how about this way." I have been slow in getting to this, but I have a (very) small start.

Some of the symbols can just be for fun, but I will keep in mind the email/printing problems.

Thanks,

Ken

Sigi_BC84 · May 15, 2006

I understand the point about trouble emailing if the symbols are in.
[...]
Some of the symbols can just be for fun, but I will keep in mind the email/printing problems.

I was not saying that having any symbols in the page is bad or will lead to trouble when emailing.

What I'm saying is that using images (GIF, PNG or JPG) as suit symbols is a bad idea.

By all means use ♠ or the actual character (with proper encoding, as explained above) instead of writing "S", "H", "D", "C" (I find that highly annoying, and probably I'm not alone), just don't use pixel images.

--Sigi

Gerardo · May 15, 2006

I see now.

I found IE has problems when using a font other than Arial, particularly with the diamond symbol.

This is the relevant part in the CSS for the suits:

red { color: red; font-weight: bold }
.spades { color: blue; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
.hearts { color: red; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
.diamonds { color: orange; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
.clubs { color: #00C000; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
.suits { font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 120% }
.hiddenpost { color: #EEF2F7 }

This way, the 4-color scheme is done the way Sigi described above, the 2-color scheme uses class="red suits" and class="suits", and the 1-color scheme (the proper one for HIDDEN posts, which just turns the text foreground to the background color, but doesn't work as intended when suits are colorized) is just class="suits".

Found that suits look smaller than other characters, so font-size: 120% in the definitions. Also, the colors look right on a light background like this, on others sligthly different ones may work better).

kenberg · May 15, 2006

I understand the point about trouble emailing if the symbols are in.
[...]
Some of the symbols can just be for fun, but I will keep in mind the email/printing problems.
I was not saying that having any symbols in the page is bad or will lead to trouble when emailing.

What I'm saying is that using images (GIF, PNG or JPG) as suit symbols is a bad idea.

By all means use ♠ or the actual character (with proper encoding, as explained above) instead of writing "S", "H", "D", "C" (I find that highly annoying, and probably I'm not alone), just don't use pixel images.

--Sigi

Got it. Thanks again.

Redstart · May 16, 2006

Oh dear, I seem to have opened up a technical can of worms.

I just want to produce documents for teaching purposes. Yes, I actually use paper!

I will try to find symbol.ttf as suggested by Gerado. I was under the impression that a dedicated font was available for suit symbols.

Playing cards with suits of four colours are available, at least in U.K.

Redstart.

Redstart · May 16, 2006

P.S.

I used to use Zapf Dingbats on my Mac, but I have gone over to Windows and am not sure if it exists on Windows.

For 'white' symbols, just use outline style of font.

Redstart.

ng:) · May 16, 2006

Try this font:

http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/cardsttf.html

Gabor

kenberg · May 16, 2006

Oh dear, I seem to have opened up a technical can of worms.

I just want to produce documents for teaching purposes. Yes, I actually use paper!

I will try to find symbol.ttf as suggested by Gerado. I was under the impression that a dedicated font was available for suit symbols.

Playing cards with suits of four colours are available, at least in U.K.

Redstart.

Paper? I read about something called paper on the internet. I understand its use was quite widespread at one time.

I guess I may be the chief cuplrit in leading this thread astray. I was uncertain of what your original intent was, but it did give me a chance to get some useful information.

Best wishes,

Ken

Finch · May 16, 2006

If you are producing word documents or similar, you will find the suit symbols available in various fonts. The two I use most often are either in Symbol, or in Garamond.

If this is what you want to do - produce printed documents, rather than html - I can tell you more about how to do this in MS Word.

Sigi_BC84 · May 16, 2006

I just want to produce documents for teaching purposes. Yes, I actually use paper!

I will try to find symbol.ttf as suggested by Gerado. I was under the impression that a dedicated font was available for suit symbols.

Forget about the Symbol font. You don't need it. Arial and many other popular fonts have the four suit symbols included. Proper Unicode fonts have the "white" variants included as well. Use the white variants for black&white documents, and use the stock variants in four colors for colored documents. That's all.

Playing cards with suits of four colours are available, at least in U.K.

Do you know any Internet retailers? I'd be interested in having a look at prices and such.

--Sigi

Sigi_BC84 · May 16, 2006

http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/cardsttf.html

I like that one! Thanks for the link. I was actually looking around for while but couldn't find anything.

--Sigi

Redstart · May 18, 2006

Thanks to all for your input. I have downloaded the Cards font, wich looks good on screen though I have yet to print it out.

I have trawled through Arial, but can't find the magic combination to bring up the suit symbols. Perhaps that sort of thing is easier on the Mac.

For four-colour cards, and plenty else, try the Chess and Bridge Shop

http://www.chess.co.uk/shop

They are based in London, but have a mail order agent in Florida.

erki_ · May 18, 2006

test: ♠♣♥♦

test2: ♠♣♥♦

hm, partially works for me, copied from character map under arial font

firefox displays all symbols

ie lacks diamond

Cascade · May 18, 2006

I have four fonts called

CardArial

CardCourier

CardFootlight

CardTimes

I do not know the origin of these fonts nor can i find them in a web search.

If someone can assure me that these are fit for general consumption I can put them somewhere for others to use.

I have forgotten where they came from someone sent them to me with some system notes.

Sigi_BC84 · May 18, 2006

Thanks to all for your input. I have downloaded the Cards font, wich looks good on screen though I have yet to print it out.

It's always worthwhile to make a test printout with all the different fonts in question on one sheet. Many fonts look different on paper than on screen (mostly they look better on paper because the special symbol tend not to be optimized for screen display in most fonts).

I have trawled through Arial, but can't find the magic combination to bring up the suit symbols. Perhaps that sort of thing is easier on the Mac.

The Unicode points for suit symbols start with 2600 for ♠. Open Character Map, enable "Advanded View" and enter that value into the appropriate field. The view then jumps to the symbol and you don't have to browse the map.

For four-colour cards, and plenty else, try the Chess and Bridge Shop http://www.chess.co.uk/shop

I was there but couldn't find the item I'm looking for in their shop. All I found were the usual playing cards. But I've found out by now that they are called "No Revoke" Spectrum cards and are indeed manufactured by Carta Mundi, so they should be available in Germany somehow. I'm gonna keep looking.

--Sigi

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