   3Strands.ttf VERSION 1.01 READ ME
   27 April 2002
   Daniel U. Thibault
   D.U.Thibault@Bigfoot.com

   This is a freeware alien font.  It looks somewhat like if
someone had dipped three worms in ink and had them race each
other on the paper.  It looks best printed (300+ dpi) or at 
large screen sizes (24+ pt).

   The basic concept is thus: using this font, you generate 
lines of "text" that look like a continuous braid of three 
strands that sometimes split or merge, turn around, stop and 
start, and weave in front of or behind each other.  This simple 
principle turns out to be very rich in possibilities --I could 
not squeeze all the possible glyphs in the printable character 
set.

   For proper results, each "word" (string of characters 
terminated by a blank on either side) should be enclosed in 
any of the following pairs of characters:

Opening characters:  (   <   [   {         
ANSI                40  60  91 123 147 145 171
Closing characters:  )   >   ]   }         
ANSI                41  62  93 125 148 146 187

   There is no need for the closing character to match the 
opening character.
   (145-146 are the curly apostrophes; 147-148 are the 
curly quotes; 171-187 are the guillemets)

   Other pairs that were considered are:
Opening characters:  "   '      !   ?   /
ANSI                34  39 139  33  63  47
Closing characters:                \
ANSI               132 130 155 161 191  92
   They weren't used since we did not need more than seven.
   (130 is the lowered curly apostrophe; 132 is the lowered curly quote; 
139-155 are the angle quotation marks; 161 is the Spanish closing 
exclamation mark; 191 is the Spanish closing question mark)

   The two pictures (3Strands1.gif and 3Strands2.gif) show the 
resulting font.

   I made this font with a combination of Corel Draw, Softy 1.07b, 
Font Creator Program 3 and some home-made software tools.

CHARACTER MAP NOTES

   I tried to fulfill the TrueType minimum recommended character set, 
whilst also remaining within the 0..255 ANSI character code range.
   The following non-standard mappings were made to fill ANSI gaps:
Unicode   ANSI   Character
  321      129   L stroke
  322      141   l stroke
  286      143   G breve
  287      144   g breve
  304      157   I dot
  305      164   dotless i
  350      173   S cedilla / soft hyphen
  713      175   macron

   The following glyph pairs have identical appearances; the "copies" 
were made so Macintosh Roman mappings (which lie in the 0..255 range) 
give access to as many of the otherwise Windows/Unicode-only glyphs:

Unicode      Windows   Mac   Character
8800         -         173   not equal to
 350         173       -     S cedilla / soft hyphen

8734         -         176   infinity
 304         157       -     I dot

8804         -         178   less than or equal to
 287         144         -   g breve

8805         -         179   greater than or equal to
 286         143         -   G breve

8706         -         182   partial differential
 190         190         -   vulgar fraction three quarters

8721         -         183   summation
 188         188         -   vulgar fraction one quarter

8719         -         184   product
 189         189         -   vulgar fraction one half

 960         -         185   pi
 179         179         -   superscript three

8747         -         186   integral
 178         178         -   superscript two

8486         -         189   Ohm
 185         185         -   superscript one

8730         -         195   radical
 215         215         -   multiplication

8776         -         197   approximately equal to
 254         254         -   lower case thorn

8710         -         198   increment
 222         222         -   upper case thorn

9674         -         215   lozenge
 253         253         -   lower case y acute

8260/8725    -         218   fraction
 221         221         -   upper case y acute

61441/64257  -         222   fi ligature
 240         240         -   lower case eth

61442/64258  -         223   fl ligature
 208         208         -   upper case eth

 728         -         249   breve
 166         166         -   broken bar

 729         -         250   dot accent
 382         158         -   lower case z caron

 730         -         251   ring accent
 381         142         -   upper case z caron

 733         -         253   hungarian umlaut
 353         154         -   lower case s caron

 731         -         254   ogonek
 352         138         -   upper case s caron

 711         -         255   caron (hacek)
 322         141         -   lower case l stroke

VERSION HISTORY

1.01 Minor adjustments; 27 April 2002
1.00 Original release; 26 April 2002

   Feedback is welcome!