Trouble finiding a typeface with ROMAN NUMERALS

[Nathan...@adobeforums.com]

I am doing a website for a company and the owner wants roman numerals in there somewhere. I have looked through many of my fonts and can't find one with roman numerals instead of numbers.

Any ideas?

thanks,
nate

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Is this a joke?

How do you plan to represent MMIV? Or, VIII for that matter. Gosh darn, this font has Roman Numerals at my finger tips. XI. There, I did it again. III.I IV I V IX II VI V III V VIII IX VII IX III II III VIII IV VI II VI IV

That's Pi (to 23 decimal places), except that Roman Numerals can't really be used for decimals.

Dave

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

If you're a Mac user, you might be interested in this script I wrote to convert numbers into Roman Numerals (for numbering tracks in iTunes):

tell application "iTunes"
set myRomNums to {"I. ", "II. ", "III. ", "IV. ", "V. ", "VI. ", "VII. ", "VIII. ", "IX. ", "X. ", "XI. "}
copy selection to allTracks
repeat with i from 1 to count of allTracks
set aTrack to item i of allTracks
set temp1 to name of aTrack
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
set myParts to every text item of temp1
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
set myNum to characters 1 thru -2 of item 1 of myParts
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
set myParts to rest of myParts
set myName to item myNum of myRomNums & (every item of myParts as string)
set aTrack's name to myName
end repeat
end tell

Dave

[Nathan...@adobeforums.com]

I wish I would have never posted this!! I don't know what I was thinking. Roman Numerals are mad up of LETTERS I have on my keyboard. Man. My brain is fried this morning. Thanks Dave.

[Toby_...@adobeforums.com]

Dave, as Spinal Tap might say, your script only goes to 11. Don't forget L=50, C=100, D=500 and M=1000.

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Indeed it does. I use it for numbering the tracks in classical music (I interpret Album in iTunes-eze to mean Work) and so far I've only needed to go to 11 -- at least on this computer; I have the same script on a different computer upstairs, and I seem to recall that I have extended it to 16 up there.

I suspect that if you want to convert arbitrarily large numbers, you need a different approach that the one I chose.

Dave

[Toby_...@adobeforums.com]

For the interested: the "rules" <http://diveintopython.org/regular_expressions/roman_numerals.html> of Roman numerals; and more than you ever wanted to know, here <http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.roman.html>.

[David_...@adobeforums.com]

For anyone interested in a short computer program to output roman numerals, see section 69 in the TeX program.

It is only 10 lines of code, but some are macros, making it difficult to extract for this message.

The main technique is to do some calculations with the original number and the string "m2d5c2l5x2v5i". It is quite a clever algorithm.

-dp-

[Neil_...@adobeforums.com]

Hey gang,

Here in the East, it's now VIII:LII PM. Can we take a break until the AM?

<lol>

Neil

[r_ha...@adobeforums.com]

Big Roman numerals use overscores, so they aren't in a standard character set. For instance, V-overscore is 5,000 and X-overscore is 10,000.

[ImJ...@adobeforums.com]

"Oh, there's I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII wheels on a big rig. And they're rollin', rollin', rollin'; rollin', rollin', rollin'."

[Neil_...@adobeforums.com]

No, Jeff...

They're Roman, Roman, Roman, Roman.... <vbg>

Neil

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

Incidentally, I can't think of any valid reason for using Roman numerals beyond, say, LXV --and that's stretching it. Using them to indicate a year (MMIV) smacks of affectation, in my view.

What do the gurus say about this in this day and age?

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

Not to mention the fact that they make the spelling checker work overtime. :)

[Victor...@adobeforums.com]

Well, when my wife started her job in the Classics dept at UC Davis, she was required to establish that she had in fact received her Ph. D. The various letters they had already requested from her advisors and the Dean of the Graduate school were not good enough for UC Davis' Dean, and so on arrival my wife went in with her diploma, which was all in Latin. The Dean's Office apparently protested that there was no date on it.

You guessed it: MM.

A credit to the university and the Great State of California. :-)

Victor

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Using them to indicate a year (MMIV) smacks of affectation, in my view.

Wasn't the reason Roman numerals were initially used for the copyright dates in movies to make it harder for the average viewer to work out when the film was made? I recall it was also supposed to have some relation to television (maybe making it harder for people to realise they were seeing a very old film on TV?), but though I've seen this sort of information repeated often, I'm still not sure if it's an urban myth.

[Victor...@adobeforums.com]

"In my entire post-Ph.D. academic career, I have never been asked to
prove I actually have a Ph.D."

Nor I. One of the glories of a state institution.

Victor

[Guy_S...@adobeforums.com]

Victor...@adobeforums.com wrote in
news:3bb47...@webx.la2eafNXanI:

> Well, when my wife started her job in the Classics dept at UC
> Davis, she was required to establish that she had in fact received
> her Ph. D.

In my entire post-Ph.D. academic career, I have never been asked to

[Darry...@adobeforums.com]

Why so snide? There really are Unicode Roman Numerals!

Unicode 2167 is "VIII"
Unicode 216B is "XII"
Unicode 2178 is "ix"
etc.

<http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=2167>
<http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=216B>
<http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=2178>

Just being objectionary....

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Yes, there are Unicode codepoints for roman numerals. On the other hand, there is relatively minimal use for these codepoints, except in scholarly work or databases, since using the alphabetics is so convenient.

T

[David_...@adobeforums.com]

Are there any adobe fonts with specially crafted roman numerals, using those unicode codepoints?

I am not working on a project where roman numerals are used as part of an identifying label. I have no idea why. Anyway, I'd use the dedicated symbols if they existed. I normally use cronos, minion, myriad, and other common typefaces (not all in the same document).

I didn't see them browsing through InDesign's glyph palette.

[Guy_S...@adobeforums.com]

David_...@adobeforums.com wrote in
news:3bb47...@webx.la2eafNXanI:

> I am not working on a project where roman numerals are used as
> part of an identifying label. I have no idea why.

I'm not either.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

As far as I know, there are no Adobe fonts with such numerals in their actual Unicode slots. Sorry!

Regards,

T

[Darry...@adobeforums.com]

Adobe Ming Std L, Kozuka Gothic (Std and Pro), and Kozuka Mincho Pro and Std have several Roman Numerals in them. The Kozuka fonts ship with InDesign CS, as I recall.

The Mac OS X Character Palette with its Font Variation pane is a wonderful thing, no?

[Kari Puikkonen]

Lucida Grande has Roman Numerals.

Kari

[Neil_...@adobeforums.com]

OK, but which is easier -- simply typing, say, VIII; or looking up the specific glyph?

Neil

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

I just tried to locate a Lucida Grande Roman Numeral using Apple's Text Edit and the Character Insertion palette, but no luck. I was wondering if the Roman Numerals had serifs in constrast to the font generally in order to answer Neil's question.

And the answer is: typing the letters is easier -- but, is the result the same?

Aha! InDesign's glyph palette shows me that the result is the same; the numerals are sans serif. Mind you, the spacing is different. I guess the spacing doesn't matter if you only want to count from 1 to 12 with the occasional use of 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. Start using combinations and you're going to have spacing issues.

InDesign's custom glyphs sets would make these pretty easy to access. But generally speaking, it seems to me, the numerals ought to be serifed. I'll often swith to a serif font if the need arises for Roman Numerals, even when the body is set in sans serif.

Dave

[Darry...@adobeforums.com]

Even if Roman Numerals aren't very interesting, I thought I'd share how I found them on my Mac running Mac OS X.

I found the Lucida Grande sans-serif Roman Numerals using the Apple Character Palette. However it's not found in the "Roman" view, surprisingly enough! You have to use either the "Unicode" or "Glyph" view (the pop-up in the upper left corner of the Character Palette.

The Unicode view has three tabbed sections: Unicode Blocks, Unicode Table, and Favorites. Select "Unicode Blocks". The Block with the Roman numerals is named "Number Forms" about halfway down the list. Then you should see the Roman Numerals.

If you then select one of the Roman Numerals, then you can select the "Font Variation" drop-down menu. This will show *all* of your loaded fonts which have that particular character.

Then if you select one of the font variations like for Lucida Grande Bold, then you can change the View to "Glyph". This shows the character of interest in the font you selected, along with other nearby characters. And if you "hover" over a character, you can see the Unicode, UTF8, and Character-ID numbers for that particular glyph. And then you can "Insert with Font" into whatever document you have open.

Teach a man to fish, and eventually he'll find the sideways Latin Characters in Kozuka Mincho Std. ;)

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Hmmm,

My Character Palette doesn't seem to have that pop-up.

Dave

[Steve_...@adobeforums.com]

Dave,

It works for me the way Darryl describes in Mac OS X 10.3.4. Do you have Panther installed? This enhancement came with Panther, I believe.

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Yes, I'm running 10.3.4. I'm accessing the Character palette from the flag menu in the menu bar (although I got the same palette when I used the pop-up in the Font palette in Text Edit's font palette.

Ah, that's interesting. I see the same palette as you on my iMac/20 but not on my iMac G3/700. And they're both running 10.3.4.

Hmmm again.

Dave

[Steve_...@adobeforums.com]

You might need to go to your preferences in your home folder and delete the preference, "com.apple.CharPaletteServer.plist"

[Stuart...@adobeforums.com]

Teach a man to fish, and eventually he'll find the sideways Latin Characters
in Kozuka Mincho Std. ;)

Well said!

I’m wondering why Unicode actually has distinct characters for roman numerals. The Wikipedia article

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals>

mentions compatibility with non-Western-European character sets. But the way the article displays in my browser makes it hard to understand what it’s really trying to say.

What’s also interesting is that the Lucida Grande font with these characters uses a slightly different shape for the second and third ‘I’ and ‘i’ of the numerals VII, VIII, XII, vii, viii, and xii. At first glance this looks like a mistake, but it seems pretty consistent. Anybody know why?

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Steve, that did the trick.

Dave

[Darry...@adobeforums.com]

The Wikipedia article mentions that can be used for clock faces, which makes a certain amount of sense.

The article displayed fine for me, they even used a couple of the Unicode Roman Numerals.

And if I had 65,000 Unicode slots to fill, I wouldn't begrudge giving Roman numerals a small number of slots.