Hi Carl, On traditional English horizontal dials, the Roman numerals are not only slanted along the hour lines but also have their tops and bottoms as circular arcs, centred on the middle of the dialplate rather than the origins of the hour lines. Thus, although programs such as Illustrator can, I think, slant a piece of text I prefer to draw each numeral separately as a set of polygons, arcs etc. in my CAD system. Different London makers in the 17th and 18th centuries had different conventions of what part of the numeral was aligned along the hourline. So, for example, with the numeral 'II' for two o'clock, there is a choice of running the hourline through the gap between the two 'I's or up the inside edge of one of them. For the numeral 'V' (five o'clock) the choice in the early period was to bisect the angle of the V with the hourline. Later on, the two arms of the Vs became less widely spread and the width difference between the thick and thin strokes was more pronounced. In these cases, it became common to slant the numeral so that the hourline runs along the narrow stroke. The techniques of drawing these numerals depends on the CAD package used. With TurboCAD, I use a combination of a wide-ish single line for the narrow strokes and a faint double line (later removed) to define the wide stroke which is then filled in with a solid polygon. Niceties such as tapering narrow strokes, serifs which are chamfered to the verticals etc. and which are found on the elegant late 18th century dials are added afterwards. I hope this helps! John --------------------------------
Carl & Barbara Sabanski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sunny Day! I have noticed on a number of different sundials that the Roman numerals used for the hour numbers are sloped to match the angle of the hour line. Is a special font, technique or combination of the two used to do this? I, and I am sure others, would be very interested in learning how to do this. Thank you for your help! Happy Dialling! Carl Sabanski www.mysundial.ca --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
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