2. The process of claim 1 , wherein the process action of segmenting the character into the first section and second sections, along a straight dividing line which transects the character transversely and which has a prescribed position and orientation, comprises an action of segmenting the character along a horizontal line having a prescribed height from the bottom of the character.
1. A computer-implemented process for animating alpha-numeric characters, comprising using a computer to perform the following process actions for each of at least one character: segmenting the character into a first section and a second section, along a straight, geometric dividing line which transects the character transversely and which has a prescribed position defined by a distance between a first prescribed point on the dividing line and a prescribed horizontal line associated with the character and orientation defined by an angle of rotation about a second prescribed point, said first prescribed point and second prescribed point being at the same location or different locations; assigning a rotation point to at least one character section; for each character section, during each of a series of prescribed-length time periods, displaying the section so as to exhibit in comparison with its appearance in the immediately preceding time period, a translation with respect to the other section, or a rotation about the rotation point of the section, or both, or no change as long as there was or will be some change in at least one of the sections during one of the time periods; and whenever a gap exists in a stroke of the character between the first and second sections during a time period, displaying a connecting section for each stroke gap which connects an end of the character stroke in the first section with a corresponding end of the character stroke in the second section, such that the character appears contiguous across the stroke gap.