Whats New

December 2025

Deprecation Notice

The API functions to search the gallery and search documentation will be withdrawn during December 2025. This does NOT affect the web page search functions for these items, which are now done in the client, what is being withdrawn is the server-side search available through the GET method of /api-bin/api.php.

If you want to reproduce the deprecated API functionality yourself take a look at the files:

• /docs/docs_data.js
• /gallery/gallery_data.js

These files contain JSON encoded data that can be used directly by search tools such as Lunr search and are updated on every website change.

Changes to Crown Handling

These changes may break earlier blazons (or at least cause them to display differently)

I have made changes to the way that crowns are organised to make a clearer distinction between generic crowns that can be used in any context and given any desired tincture (now known as Crowns Generic) and the fully realised, high quality crowns of specific countries (that I have categorised as Crowns Named). These crowns are always proper.

Bug Fixes

I have fixed the positioning of the following edges when used on divisions - rayonny, engrailed, invected, fir twigged, fir tree topped and meandering. (Issue #718)

When an ordinary which occupies a large part of the field is filled with a division the lines of division now match up with the corresponding lines of division on the field. (Issue #714).

A charge encircled by text now works again, and can use any of the different fonts described in the text extension. (Issue #711)

November 2025

New Charges

• Snaffle Bit (for horses)
• Kite (the bird, apparantely not all kites are raptors, so I've put them with the birds)
• Bear claw
• lavender flower
• Greatly improved goat salient, now with features!

Other Changes

Three charges between a chevron are now all the same size.

I've added a new two-colour treatment, vairy-en-point, which uses the patter from the vair-en-point fur but you can choose your own tinctures.

lampasse is now accepted as a synonym for langued to set the colour of a tongue

To obtain the quadrate cross made of ermine tails, use an ermine cross, to get a regular cross filled with the ermine fur use a cross ermine. (Neither of these should be confused with an actual cross ermine which is an annoyed weasel - just my litle heraldic joke there!).

Documentation Updates

The page on the text extension has been re-written to match the currenty implementation and I have added pages to show all the glyphs supported by each font.

I've added a page that lists charges that have been suggested but for which I can't find suitable images, please help if you can.

Bug Fixes

The positioning of the ant charge has been fixed.

The ankh emblem is now a seperate charge from the egyptian/ankh cross

When printing rolls of arms there is no longer a phantom shield outline present. Additionally, the blazon shown below preserves the original text formatting.

Claw used to be a synonym for foot but is now recognised separately.

The orle nowy is now drawn correctly (at least in the larger shield shapes. Additionally, code has been written to allow any ordinary to be replaced by a "hand-drawn" version in cases where the automated edge drawing code doesn't work very well.

September 2025

New Charges

• Horse bit

May 2025

Gallery search is now done client side - a largish amount of data is downloaded but the search capability is much improved.

April 2025

New Features

You can now invert the entire shield (e.g. to indicate that the owner is dead by appending the shield shown inverted or the shield shown in death

I have written a new documentation page on all of the available shield modifications.

New Charges

The following charges have been added or modified:

• The brazier can be inflamed of a different tincture

Bug Fixes

Rolls can now show full achievements not just plain shields.

January 2025

Fixes

The gallery "latest likes" page has been fixed.

December 2024

I have started work on the rather complex problem of putting multiple charges on multiple bars, so far you place up to six charges on a single bar! Watch this space for more...

New Charges

• A coronet of a loyalist (always proper)
• Wildman proper (diferrent to the existing wildman)

November 2024

I've added the construction slightly enhanced / slightly abased which can be used to move ordinaries (only) up or down a small amount - see the ordinaries page for full details.

October 2024

I'm experimenting with toning down the default eye colour of creatures from pure white to a very light grey so they don't appear quite so "bug-eyed". I've done lions, eagles and mythical creatures so far. The change is quite subtle but comments are welcome!

Bug Fixes

• (roe)buck is now a synonym for stag.

August 2024

"Working..." Notification

Sometimes, with large blazons (or in the case of program errors) the processing of the blazon and the drawing of the image can take a long time (up to 30 seconds). There is an inevitable temptation to keep pressing the "Draw Shield" button if nothing appears to be happening, which just starts off many more, very long processes and may cause the server to have capacity problems.

The "Draw Shield" button will now display "Working..." as soon as it has been pressed and is disabled. It is automatically restored once the shield image has been retrieved (or after 20 seconds if there is a problem with the server).

If there are any problems with this function please let me know via the contact page.

Bug Fixes

• The original "3D" bezants have been restored.
• Charges on a bend sinister are placed correctly again.
• Someone reported that azure is not showing correctly as hatching but I can't reproduce this. Can anyone provide an example blazon? (Resolved)

July 2024

New Charges

The following charges and ordinaries have been added:

• Austrian Imperial Crown (only proper)
• The heater shaped bordure can be embattled
• estoile inflamed
• handbell ancient
• Greek Orthodox cross (maps to crosslet)
• Cossack cross (been around for a while but missing from the catalog)
• Bulgarian orthodox cross
• Papal cross

June 2024

New Charges

The following charges have been added, or replaced with improved versions:

• lizard statant
• tortoise proper
• bear passant proper
• parrot proper
• stag trippant proper
• seahorse natural
• sea turtle (shelled)
• beaver proper
• wolf passant proper

New Documentation

There is a new set of documentation pages which consolidates all previous sources of information. There has been considerable clean up of redundant content and there is now a comprehensive search feature to allow you to look for specific terms anywhere in the documentation, including the visual catalog (although the original, catalog item only search is still available here.

I still a few additional articles to add from the "Buy me a coffee" blog and some pages from the Github wiki but it is my intention to use this as the single source of all DrawShield information from now on.

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