Re: [QUESTION] How to make a font?

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

> Dear all!
>
> Thanks to Christophe, who "triggered" my interest for conscripts, I have
> a
> small problem ;)
> I decided to create a script for Askaic (problably to be used for Hattic
> as
> well), that looks a bit like Cyrillic but is quite different at the same
> time.
> I can handle it fairly well with the help of Unicode, but still... some
> things
> just don't look the way I want them to look.
> So, since quite a few of you have created both beautiful conscripts and
> fonts
> for them, I guess I may take the liberty to ask you how you did it.
>
Well, not really an answer since I never made my own fonts, but I think the
best way is still to get a font maker. I personally downloaded FontLab, which
is not free, but has a free limited version (the main limitation being that you
cannot make fonts with more than 1600 characters, which is not quite a strong
limitation :)) . It seems also limited in the formats it supports, but it seems
to support True Type, Type 1 and whatever type Macintosh uses, so it's quite
enough... ;)) ) which is limited in actions but not in time. I haven't used it
yet though (the 500-page manual is certainly not foreign to this :)) ). I also
managed to get hold on the Metafont book, so it's an option I will try for my
fonts.

I think the fastest way to make fonts when you have a font maker is to have the
characters you want to create on paper, then scan them and use them as bitmaps
to draw your characters with the font maker. Most font makers (including
FontLab's limited version) can even automatically convert bitmaps into outlines
which you can than tune a bit so that the font will look good. For simple
fonts, it's the best way to do it.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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