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Alfred's Serif Users' Forums → General Discussion → Designing a clock face
In the Tengwar topic the subject arose of distributing twelve glyphs evenly around a clock face, pushing the thread somewhat adrift from its ‘Art & Literature’ origins. The following three posts have been moved from that thread.
Thinking about the clock, I suppose it needs to start with looking at clock mechanisms for craft work to find the size, then producing a design and printing it onto thick card, then make a hole in the card so as to mount the clock mechanism and the card in something.
For the design, if one has the glyphs each horizontal, if each glyph is in its own text box, centred, and start with one text box and make eleven copies so that they are all the same size and change the glyph for each as appropriate, then align them using numbers in the transform panel, using measurement about the centre, and calculate where to locate each centre using coordinates derived from the centre of the clock, the radius of a circle, and a choice as appropriate of values 0, 1, 0.5 and root3 upon 2.
Perhaps best to work in pixels as the measurement unit.
William
Supplementary note: As a result of separating the threads, I need to add in an attachment of the file with the twelve characters used for the design.
The font is also needed, here is the link to the web page from which the font can be obtained.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/l … search.htm
Also, the reader may like to have a look at the Tengwar thread that Alfred mentioned as there is some non-Tengwar information there that gives a background to how this thread arose.
https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=100 in some posts starting with the fifth post in the thread.
For the design, if one has the glyphs each horizontal, if each glyph is in its own text box, centred, and start with one text box and make eleven copies so that they are all the same size and change the glyph for each as appropriate, then align them using numbers in the transform panel, using measurement about the centre, and calculate where to locate each centre using coordinates derived from the centre of the clock, the radius of a circle, and a choice as appropriate of values 0, 1, 0.5 and root3 upon 2.
Instead of starting with twelve copies of text box and doing numerous calculations to place them in a circle to form a clock face, start with just two copies: one at 12 o’clock and another at 6 o’clock. Group them and duplicate the group, and then rotate the duplicate by 30° to yield boxes at the 1 o’clock and 7 o’clock positions. Duplicate and rotate by 30° again for 2 o’clock and 8 o’clock, again for 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, again for 4 o’clock and 10 o’clock, and one last time for 5 o’clock and 11 o’clock.
That is a good idea.
I tried using Affinity Designer.
However, the glyphs are then not horizontal.
However, if one ungroups, then rotates each of the two text boxes individually back by the same amount, they become horizontal.
However, I had tried with an Arial A, back rotating about the centre, and the A was not in the right place.
So I rotated another copy of the original grouped text boxes, ungrouped, made the A red so I could tell which was which, then backrotated about centre top, and it went to a different place, but still not quite the right place.
So do we need a way to, in effect, back rotate about the centre of the glyph? Would that, if we could do it, give the correct result?
Does this need a way to centre the glyph vertically in the text box as well as centreing it horizontally?
Is there a way to do that?
William
Double-clicking on the rotation paddle of a selected object will reset its rotation to 0°. The text needs to be centre-aligned rather than left- or right-aligned, with the centre middle anchor chosen in the Transform panel.
With the above in mind, open the attached Affinity Designer file and observe that the words in the 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock positions are currently ‘one’ and ‘six’ respectively, with the ‘one’ being upside down. Clicking on either of those words will result in its containing group being selected in the Layers panel, and clicking on the tiny triangle there will expand the group to allow access to the individual text objects without the need to ungroup anything.
Select the ‘one’ layer and double-click on its rotation paddle, and then edit the text to read five instead of one. Repeat the procedure for the text in the other group (to make it read seven instead of six) and then reset the rotation for the remaining words.
A note about configuring the shape of "wide aspect ratio" characters to fit around a clock-face. The work described was in PPX9.
I noticed a problem when I generated the disk object I posted earlier. My purpose was to show the set of glyphs in William's poem disposed around the edge of a disk. Placing them wasn't my problem, although account should be taken of the various subsequent posts on that topic.
My problem, which I didn't solve, was my desire to have the glyphs conform to the circular path. That means, individual glyphs, which are rather wider than a single normal text character should themselves curve to fit the path.
The problem originated in that the glyphs I copied were those in William's picture, and were within a graphic. I copied them using a screen copying app, and was thus holding a vertical rectangle with the glyphs stacked vertically.
Now, it was easy to crop each glyph from the stack, and then I tried to curve each glyph using the distorting tool. This where to snag showed up. Trying to distort just one glyph (remember, one cropped from several) brought up the whole original stack. That might have been OK, if I could have re-cropped each glyph. But they were too close together to separate.
So my comment is that if you try to distort a cropped image, the crop is removed.
I have not investigated any further so far, and I would be grateful if anyone could suggest a remedy. I may just have ignored a simple process in PPX9.
If I had started with a set of individual glyphs (not linked in a graphic) I believe I should not have had a problem. This note is not about how to get such a set, but to bring to mind the interesting crop/distort effect.
Hello Jack
There is an attachment to a post in the other thread with the poem.
There is also a link for a page from where to get the font.
Simply open the poem file in WordPad, then format what appear as black rectangles with the font and there are the glyphs in vector format.
Deleteing the newline characters between them should give the poem in glyphs all on one line.
I have done hardly anything with text on curves, will it curve the glyphs automatically?
I am interested to see if the glyphs curve. The effect, if it occurs, should be most obvious with the ones about colours.
For convenience here is the link to get the font.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/l … search.htm
William
The poem file is attached.
William
I am thinking that for the clock face with each glyph horizontal, that the best way to do it is to go back to my original idea of a text box and make twelve copies, then placing the text boxes using the transform panel and not using rotation at all, with the additional feature of making the text box an even whole number of pixels tall, and finding how many pixels high is each glyph at whatever is the chosen glyph size. For example, typically in Windows, it use to be, maybe still is, 4 pixels for every 3 points, but point size, unlike for metal type, was measured only above the base line of the font. Descenders took up extra space. Yet these glyphs are seven-eighths of the height of the base line, to allow for interline spacing, and twenty-three twenty-fourths of the width so as to allow for inter-glyph spacing if the glyphs are on the same line.
That may allow accurate, to the pixel, placing for printing of the crosswires to indicate the location for the centre spindle of the clock mechanism.
I have found a mechanism, so the overall size of the clock face, and an appropriate size for the glyphs, needs to be worked backwards from knowing the size of the mechanism and the clock hands that are to be used.
https://www.hobbies.co.uk/german-quartz-clock-movements
https://www.hobbies.co.uk/catalogsearch … lock+hands
The clock hands are available in various designs and sizes.
I suppose that a decision also needs to be made as to how close to the glyph the minute hand goes. This could be tricky as the glyphs are wide. Perhaps a sort of sixty point star or something needs to be part of the design with a twelve point star around it.
Maybe a picture frame from Tesco could be adapted to support mechanism and the printed panel with the glyphs.
William
I suppose that a decision also needs to be made as to how close to the glyph the minute hand goes. This could be tricky as the glyphs are wide.
This sounds like a very good argument for leaving the glyphs rotated.
Maybe a picture frame from Tesco could be adapted
Other picture frames are available!
I suppose that a decision also needs to be made as to how close to the glyph the minute hand goes. This could be tricky as the glyphs are wide.
This sounds like a very good argument for leaving the glyphs rotated.
Yes, I suppose so.
Maybe rotate, except for those at 3 and at 9, provided the glyph at 6 is right way up and those at 4, 5, 7 and 8 are rotated from the glyph at 6, those rotations, I acknowledge, being what you suggested earlier. The only difference being to have horizontal glyphs at 3 and at 9.
I may have mentioned it earlier, my intention is that the first glyph of the poem is at 12. The poem is such that the seasons in the poem are at the points of the compass if you know what I mean, mixed devices but hopefully conveying the meaning. 
I suppose that if the clock were to be built using the mechanism mentioned and the glyphs of the poem specified, that there is then neverheless a great variety of clocks that could be produced, given the choice of clock hands styles, colours for glyphs and backgrounds, whether to include stars with 60 points and 12 points stars, if so, which on the inside of the other, whether to include other ornamentation, how to mount the items into a clock.
I wonder if such a clock will ever be made.
William
William
I have had a go using Affinity Designer, just the stars at present.
Here is a png image at one third size both horizontally and vertically.
As it happens, Affinity Designer only goes up to 48 points on a star, so I made one with 30 points, then copied and pasted and rotated the copy around its centre by 6 degrees clockwise. So a star with 60 points.
Then I made another copy of thr original, pasted it, scaled it bigger about the centre, reduced the radius and reduced the number of points to 12, changed the colour, then moved it to the back.
I then added a larged coloured rectangle and moved it to the back.
William
That was just a try out that would fit in a 7 inch by 5 inch greetings card from Papier.
Would that work? Or does something need changing.
The bounding box of the 30 pount stars is 1000 pixels.
At 300 dots per inch that is 3.33 inches.
3.3 inches is a bit over 84 mm.
So a minute hand of about 40 mm is the most that will go inside.
The shortest available, from the link earlier in this thread, unless one wants to start cutting, is 45 mm as the length of the minute hand, but it is not clear to me whether that is overall length of the fitting, length of the hand itself, or length from the centre of the hole.
Though tha might be alrght as the tip of the minute hand might go over the points of the star and that might be alright.
So it looks like the design that I have tried as a layout test might be fine.
Though maybe a larger A4 size print might be better.
William
The clock mechanism linked from an earlier post in this thread is 56 mm square, so just under 662 pixels square, so that is fine.
It will need a bit of care to get the circle with the glyphs centred so that the centres of the glyphs are in the correct place, as the glyphs have non-zero height and in the font the glyphs are not centred in their bounding box, being in the left-side 23/24ths of the width of the boundimg box.
William
I suppose that as the clock hands are available in various lengths, an A4 size design could be made so that various styles of clock could be made each using the same printed sheets but various styles and lengths of hands. So the minute hand could be inside the stars, or over the stars, or onto outside of the stars.
Whether such a clock will be made in real life remains unknown, but Edith could have one on a wall in her office.
William
Affinity Designer only goes up to 48 points on a star
The Star Tool in the iPad version of AD is limited to 48 points, but most of the shape tools in the desktop apps only have a low limit on the slider control. Try typing a larger number into the box.
The bounding box of the 30 pount stars is 1000 pixels.
At 300 dots per inch that is 3.33 inches.
3.3 inches is a bit over 84 mm.
300 pixels per inch is approximately 118.11 pixels per cm, or 11.811 pixels per mm. 1000 divided by 11.811 is about 84.7, which is somewhat closer to 85 than 84.
William wrote:Affinity Designer only goes up to 48 points on a star
The Star Tool in the iPad version of AD is limited to 48 points, but most of the shape tools in the desktop apps only have a low limit on the slider control. Try typing a larger number into the box.
Ah, yes. A sixty point star directly.
Thank you.
William
Alfred wrote:William wrote:Affinity Designer only goes up to 48 points on a star
The Star Tool in the iPad version of AD is limited to 48 points, but most of the shape tools in the desktop apps only have a low limit on the slider control. Try typing a larger number into the box.
Ah, yes. A sixty point star directly.
Thank you.
William
You’re very welcome.
I have posted the image that I posted in this thread in the Affinity Share your work forum.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. … ual-clock/
William
Alfred's Serif Users' Forums → General Discussion → Designing a clock face
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