wavefont

A typeface for rendering vertical bars data: waveforms, spectrums, diagrams, histograms, columns etc.

Playground  •  Google fonts  •  V-fonts  •   Wavearea

Usage

Place Wavefont[ROND,YELA,wght].woff2 into your project directory and use this code:

1<style>
2@font-face {
3	font-family: wavefont;
4	font-display: block;
5	src: url(./Wavefont[ROND,YELA,wght].woff2) format('woff2');
6}
7.wavefont {
8	--wght: 400;
9	font-family: wavefont;
10	font-variation-settings: 'wght' var(--wght), 'ROND' 30, 'YELA' 0;
11}
12</style>
13
14<!-- Set values manually -->
15<textarea id="waveform" class="wavefont" cols="100">
16abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
17</textarea>
18
19<script>
20// Set values programmatically (more precise)
21waveform.textContent = Array.from({length: 100}, (_,i) => String.fromCharCode(0x100 + i)).join('')
22</script>

Ranges

Wavefont bars correspond to values from 0 to 100, assigned to different characters:

• 0-9 chars are for simplified manual input with step 10 (bar height = number).
• a-zA-Z for manual input with step 2, softened at edges a and Z (bar height = number of letter).
• U+0100-017F for 0..127 values with step 1 (char = String.fromCharCode(0x100 + value)).

Variable axes

Tag	Range	Default	Meaning
wght	1-1000	400	Bar width, or boldness.
ROND	0-100	100	Border radius, or roundness (percent).
YELA	-100-100	-100	Alignment: bottom, center or top.

To adjust axes via CSS:

1.wavefont {
2  font-variation-settings: 'wght' var(--wght, 40), 'ROND' var(--rond, 0), 'YELA' var(--align, 0);
3  letter-spacing: 1ch; /* 1ch unit === 1 bar width */
4}

Features

• Ranges, values and width is compatible with linefont, so fonts can be switched preserving visual coherency.
• Visible charcodes fall under marking characters unicode category, ie. recognized as word by regexp and can be selected with Ctrl + → or double click. Eg. waveform segments separated by or - are selectable by double click.
• Characters outside of visible ranges are clipped to 0, eg. , \t etc.
• -–._* map to 1 value, | maps to max value, ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ map to corresponding bars.
• Accent acute  ́ (U+0301) shifts bar 1-step up, circumflex accent  ̂ (U+0302) 10-steps up. Eg. \u0101\u0302\u0302\u0301\u0301\u0301 shifts 23 steps up.
• Accent grave  ̀ (U+0300) shifts bar 1-step down, caron  ̌ (U+030C) shifts 10 steps down, eg. \u0101\u030c\u0300\u0300\u0300 shifts 13 steps down.
• Caret span is -20..120, so line-height = 1.4 is minimal non-overlapping selection.

JS package

Optional wavefont package exposes a function that calculates string from values for your convenience.

1import wf from 'wavefont'
2
3// get characters for values from 0..127 range
4wf(0, 1, 50, 99, 127, ...) // ĀāIJţŤ...

Building

make build

• Tests
• Glyphs
• Text
• Waterfall

See also

• linefont − font-face for rendering linear data.

References

• Google Fonts guide.
• Unified font object spec − unified human-readable format for storing font data.
• Feature file spec − defining opentype font features.
• Adobe-variable-font-prototype − example variable font.
• Designspace XML spec − human-readable format for describing variable fonts.
• Adobe Blank − blank characters variable font.
• Sparks – alternative font with similar purpose.

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