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FIGlet font file for the Elian constructed script

WHAT

• Elian Script is a pigpen cipher for the Latin alphabet. It has a deliberately flexible formal structure which affords the writer a high degree of creative freedom in the representation of characters.

  For more information, visit: http://www.ccelian.com/ElianScript.pdf

• FIGlet, in the words of its authors, is "a program for making large letters out of ordinary text". You may have seen this kind of thing in signatures on Usenet or in the MOTD of your university's computer systems.

  For more information, visit: http://www.figlet.org/

USAGE

Install FIGlet and place elian.flf in a suitable location. Your default FIGlet fonts directory can be located with:

$ figlet -I 2

(figlet will also look in the current directory for fonts.)

Invoke figlet with -f elian. Some examples:

$ figlet -f elian 'hello world'
$ echo "abcdefghi\njklmnopqr\nstuvwxyz" | figlet -f elian
$ shuf -n1 /usr/share/dict/words | tee >(figlet -f elian)
$ figlet -f elian < war_and_peace.txt

BUGS, KNOWN ISSUES, and OTHER AFFRONTS

• You really, really need a font with monospaced block element characters, like DejaVu Sans Mono, to view the output properly. (If you're reading this in a web browser, the examples probably look like garbage.)

• Does not currently support numerals, punctuation, accented characters... in fact basically everything except ASCII letters. Also, there is no difference between how uppercase and lowercase letters are rendered.

• The font file is UTF-8 encoded; each block element character is actually three bytes wide, which FIGlet's chkfont utility does not much care for. In practice, it seems to render fine with figlet.

• Dash placement for S, U, and Y is a little unusual, being located at the outside corner of the box rather than the inside, or near an endpoint. This allows us to take advantage of kerning without producing ambiguous constructions (as in the YL and RS pairs below):

        ▝   █           █   ▘
  

  █ █▀█ █▀▀ █ █▀█ █▀█ █ ▀▀█ █▀█ ▀▀▀ ▀ ▀ █ ▀▀▀ █ ▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ █ ▀▀▀ ▀ ▀ ▘ ▀ I D Y L V E R S E

• As a compromise between aesthetics and unambiguousness, dashes "lean" or "gravitate" toward the horizontal center of the box to which they belong (e.g. see PT, UP):

  ▘                 █     █
  

  ▀▀█ █▀█ █▀▀ ▝ ▀▀█ █ █▀▀ █ █▀█ ▝ ▀▀█ █ ▀▀▀ █ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ █ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀ ▀ ▘ ▀ S E P T U P L E T

• Stylistically, this is really not the most imaginative variant of the script. If you're interested, go see what other people have done. :)