Skeletons: A link between theoretical and physical letter descriptions

摘要

Most characters represent a blend of aspects which are essential to the embodiment of a given letter with aspects which embellish or adorn the essential aspects. In attempting to separate these two classes of aspects, it was found convenient to introduce a formal structure which is intermediate between the physical character and the abstract letter description. This formal structure was termed a skeleton. The letter-skeletal and skeletal-character links are presented followed by an example wherein one begins with an abstract letter description, proceeds to formulate a skeleton, and finally generates a character. The relations and applications of this work to the fields of character recognition and character generation, particularly where multiple fonts are involved, are also discussed.