John,
Here goes what Soler says about the size of numbers in a sundial:
The greatest power of human sight to recognize numbers varies
largely depending on external conditions like illumination,
elevation and so on,
Hello all,
Here is a simple but a very practicalquestion
that I'm sure many sundial designers have asked themselves. I've never
heard anybody discuss this topic before. Since I've been designing more wall dials lately, this question often
comes up:
How big shoulda sundial's hour
numerals
x-richJohn Carmichael wrote:
excerptfontfamilyparamArial/paramsmallerHere is a simple but
a very practical question that I'm sure many sundial designers have
asked themselves. I've never heard anybody discuss this topic
before. Since I've been designing more wall dials lately, this
question
Michael,
I suppose one could do experiments to come up with a table of
numeral size based on distance, but I bet that such a table exists
somewhere.
Perhaps you've got Rafael Soler's book : Diseño y construccion de relojes
de sol. In it there is such table you say. In case you don't,
There is a simple rule to find the practical reading distance of
characters: 200x the heigth of the character or the othher way around
take tthe distance and divide this by 200 and you have the
charactersize.
Thibaud Chabot
At 05:45 03-06-2005, John Carmichael wrote:
Hello
all,
Here is a simple
often too small, at least for me. That is logic because the object shown is
much more inportant then the text.
Thibaud Chabot
At 06:14 03-06-2005, MMB wrote:
Yes. A good source of information would be ANY major art museum (a national
gallery for example). Contact the exhibitions department
]
To: John Carmichael [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 11:25 PM
Subject: Reading at a Distance
Message text written by John Carmichael
For example, if you are designing a sundial for a tall tower and you know
that it must be readable from a distance of 100 meters, how tall should
Dear John,
You have had sound advice from several on this list but
there is an extra point that might be of interest to you
and to others...
Those who cut inscriptions on stone walls take into account
that the top is likely to be further away from the observer
than the bottom.
Accordingly,
In my
opinion the problem of the dimension of the figures in a sundial is analogous to
that the optometrists and opticians meet when they measure our visual
acuity.
I
think therefore that the dimensions of the strokes that form the figures or the
letters must have the same
John,
But where will the observer stand?
If it's of any help, the idealdistance from
the wall, to observe a high vertical dial is:
square root of ((Height to centre of
dialminus eye height of observer)squared)minus (vertical height of
dial/2)squared))
Good luck.
Mike Shaw
53.37
What about the thickness of the hourlines as
related to distance? Couldn't we think of a formula for them too, in a
similar way that we're doingfor character height?
p.s. In a somewhat related mater, would everybody
agree that Arial Boldis the most legible of all the fonts
offered by Delta
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