Derek's Blobber is a tool that helps phoneticians to draw vowel-charts. You specify the font and the vowels in a simple script, one line per vowel, and Blobber draws the chart in the form of a bit-map. You can insert the bit-map into any word-processing document for printing, send it electronically to colleagues, and post it on the web. The script provides an economical way of sending data to other Blobber-users.

Derek's Blobber runs on any version of Windows (including Windows on Macintosh). To download it, right-click here and choose 'Save Target As...' (and note where it gets saved!) The downloaded file is called "blobber.zip"; double-click it to unzip it into the folder of your choice. Unzipping it produces five files: the application ("blobber.exe"), this present help-file ("blobber.htm"), and three sample scripts ("chart.txt", "diphthon.txt" and "sampa.txt"). You do not need to unzip it again.

To execute, double-click the application "Blobber.exe" and choose a script. Blobber will then automatically display the chart for that script.

The first two scripts use the IPA font "IPA-samm Uclphon1 SILManuscript Bold", and will not display their charts correctly if this font is not on your computer. (You can download it from the UCL Phonetics website by right-clicking here.) The third script calls for Courier New Bold, a standard font which will certainly be on your computer.

A Blobber script is an ordinary text-file that can be created or modified with any text-editor. It can have any name and any suffix -- Blobber gives the resulting chart the same name, but with the suffix '.bmp'. A script contains comment lines, headers and vowel-specifiers. With the exception of the font name and the specifiers for symbols (described below), any alphabetic items in the script can be in upper or lower case, or a mixture.

The three sample scripts provided show respectively the 22 cardinal vowels, some vowels and diphthongs with more complex symbols, and Turkish vowels. The first two use an IPA font, while the third uses Sampa. (Note that the font used in the first sample reverses the symbol for Cardinal 22, "closed epsilon".) Refer to these scripts for illustrations of the features that are described below.

Any line that starts with an asterisk is treated as a comment, and is ignored. Blank lines are allowed (and ignored). Comment lines can appear anywhere in the script.

The first three lines of the script (not counting comments) must consist of the three headers described below, in sequence.

• Line 1: The name of the typeface to be used for the symbols. To get the name of your chosen font, you need to double-click the font icon in your font library (which is normally located in C:\WINDOWS\FONTS); this opens a window showing the details of the font, from which you now copy the "typeface name". The name may be case-sensitive, and may have spaces (or non-spaces) in peculiar places. Be aware that if you change the typeface, you will need to change the specifiers for the symbols, because a particular symbol can have one code in one IPA font but a different code in a different font. If you're working in Sampa, then Courier is a good typeface to choose.
• Line 2: The size of the chart, in the form "Size=n", where n is any number. A smaller number produces a smaller chart, and vice versa. The number has no inherent meaning; 40 gives a small chart, 100 a biggish one. Whilst changing the number changes the overall size of the chart, it does not change the size of the blobs, symbols or arrowheads appearing on it, nor the size of the stubs (see "Line 3" below). So smaller charts will be more crowded.
• Line 3: "Stubs" or "Nostubs". This tells Blobber whether or not to print the legends "Close ... Open", "Front ... Back" along the edges of the chart.

The script must contain one line for each vowel that is to appear on the chart. There is an upper limit of 40 vowels (any excess is ignored). Each line must contain the four fields shown below, in sequence, separated by one or more spaces. You can, but need not, use additional spaces to align the fields and make the script look pretty.

• Vertical position of the blob. 1 is the 'close' position, 2 is 'close-mid', 3 is 'open-mid' and 4 is 'open'. Intermediate positions can be specified by putting a single decimal after the first digit.
• Front/back position of the blob. 1 is 'front', 2 is 'central', 3 is 'back'. Intermediate positions are specified with a decimal point, as for the vertical position. Blobber adjusts for the slope of the left-hand side of the chart, so that 1.5 (for example) is always halfway between 'front' and 'central' at the specified height.
• U (unrounded) or R (rounded). This field positions the symbol to the left or right of its blob, in accordance with the IPA convention. There are no other facilities for altering the position of the symbol relative to its blob.
• Text for the symbol.
  • Usually this will be the letter, punctuation mark or digit (or string of these), which produces the desired symbol or symbols in the typeface you're using. The letter, punctuation mark or digit (or string) must be enclosed in single quotes.
  • Alternatively, and to get symbols which have no easy letter-equivalent, use the ASCII code for the symbol. Do not enclose the ASCII code in quotes (that's how Blobber knows it's an ASCII code).
  • You can string together any mixture of characters (in quotes) and ASCII codes (not in quotes), provided you use a plus sign (+) to separate the elements.
  • If the plus sign or single quote represents the symbol you want, use its ASCII code.

For diphthongs, include two further fields to specify the position of the final sound in the diphthong, so that Blobber can draw an arrow. Use the same numeric specifiers as for vowels:

• Vertical position of the final sound.
• Front/back position of the final sound.

Derek's Blobber does not robustly check the script for errors. If your script contains incoherent instructions, Blobber will probably fail and produce an arcane message. But it will not damage your files.

Blobber contains a simple text-editor which you can use to amend the script. When you've finished editing, close the edit-window by clicking its top right-hand corner, or by pressing Escape. Blobber will then display the chart for the amended script. Alt+e calls up the editor again.

Copyright and all intellectual property rights in Blobber are owned by Derek Rogers, a freelance linguist. It is available free of charge for non-commercial use. If you find Blobber useful and would like to make a donation, visit www.derek.co.uk and click any PayPal button.