Russian text - convert from shx to TTF

Hi - Having a little trouble working with an ACAD file which has been givento me with a shx file. The problem is the appearance of the shx file is awful, very faceted.I have to reproduce the drawing to look professional, unfortunately thesupplied shx file is not going to cut it on this front. So my question is, isthere a way / work around to get the shx text to a decent looking TTF like Arialetc...without lots of ????$$$ appearing, this is what happens when you apply a simple change through the conventionaltext style manner.

You cannot "convert" a SHX font to TTF.

 

Do you have the Russian language pack installed?

How would I check whether this is installed. I also have a pdf generated from the clients end, which also looks terrible.....all faceted single line font. I have tried various other tricks, i.e. rasterizing and OCR but have been unsuccessful. It was more if there was a work around in ACAD......

Can you attach a copy of the drawing to your next post?

assuming the text is in a Russian (looks like cyrillic) script rather than a roman one you need to find a font that contains the correct charachter set. These are often stored in the 128-256 character slots. If the font you are applying only has the first 127 characters defined you will get rows of ??????????

 

I can't find the font we used when we were producing Russian text but I know it wasn't a string one.

Rusian text example.zip

 

Please see the attached example with shx file also.

 

This doesnt seem compatible with any other character sets.....just display lots of undesirable characters.

That is pretty much the same font we used. It is unlikely any western font is going to include the same charachter mapping as you have there. You may be lucky to find a TTF font on a Russian site but be careful, cyrillic looks the same to me but isn't.

This was the conclusion I had come to, but was hoping I was wrong, as this font just looks truly terrible!!

This was the conclusion I had come to, but was hoping I was wrong, as this font just looks truly terrible!!

Well, I'm no judge of fonts, but here's a link that includes a zip file of dwgs with some cyrillic fonts that might help. http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-2004-2005-2006-DWG/Can-t-Read-Russian-Font-ESKD1-SHX/td-p/1442769/page/2

As for being careful of certain sites, I'd be more worried about getting swamped with porn ads than about getting the wrong type of font. Do be careful!

That is pretty much the same font we used. It is unlikely any western font is going to include the same charachter mapping as you have there. You may be lucky to find a TTF font on a Russian site but be careful, cyrillic looks the same to me but isn't.

Sorry, but I didn't really follow here, Dave. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. AFAIK, there is no Cyrillic language, but the alphabet is used for several Slavic languages. However, I have run into (at least) two different keyboard layouts for Russian. Could this be what you were referring to?

Unfortunately these are very similar looking fonts....I was ideally wanting to convert to Arial unicode or something similar.....the single line shx type layout is not acceptable for what I'm trying to achieve. Its looking like I will have to type manually if I want the end product to look presentable.

Sorry, but I didn't really follow here, Dave. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. AFAIK, there is no Cyrillic language, but the alphabet is used for several Slavic languages. However, I have run into (at least) two different keyboard layouts for Russian. Could this be what you were referring to?

No, I was repeating what the Russian that worked in our office said when we gave him a cyrillic font. I am happy to accept that he misled me.

Unfortunately these are very similar looking fonts....I was ideally wanting to convert to Arial unicode or something similar.....the single line shx type layout is not acceptable for what I'm trying to achieve. Its looking like I will have to type manually if I want the end product to look presentable.

Maybe you can ask over in the LISP forum if there's any way to convert programmatically.

No, I was repeating what the Russian that worked in our office said when we gave him a cyrillic font. I am happy to accept that he misled me.

Well, a lot gets lost in translation, so the misleading may have been unintentional. Or he may have been splitting hairs over something that not even most Russians would understand. I've seen both sorts of situations and everything in-between and even beyond!

Maybe you can ask over in the LISP forum if there's any way to convert programmatically.

BTW, if you haven't already posted over there, note that some of the guys over there are Russian, so they may be able to help in whatever way is easiest/best.