Re: [QUESTION] How to make a font?

En réponse à "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>:

>
> Well, if you ever want to make Type 1 fonts out of your efforts, you
> probably *don't* want to start with Metafont.
Of course not :)) . But I must say that the 300 pages of the Metafont book are
more attractive than the 500 of the FontLab manual ;))) .

 You'd probably prefer to
> create/scan font outlines and adjust them with other tools, and then
> convert them to METAFONT (there are utilities to do this).
>
True. Unfortunately I'm not graphical artist, so the result would be quite
ugly. Since I'm pretty good at numbers, Metafont is maybe a good idea :)) .

> The problem (which is also its advantage, paradoxically) with METAFONT
> is
> that it's too powerful -- a font made for METAFONT is in fact, a
> complete
> computer program that creates the font given a set of parameters.
> Since
> the METAFONT language is quite complex, there aren't any utilities
> (and
> nor can there be, in the general case)  that can deal with METAFONT
> and
> produce any meaningful output in, say, Type 1 format.
>
Really? When I had browsed the web in search for converters, I remember a few
Metafont-to-Type 1 converters popped up...

> You *can* hand-convert METAFONT programs into Type 1 by tracing out
> the
> curves that it generates, etc., and building the Type 1 font that way.
> Of
> course, this is very tedious, and also quite difficult, since Type 1
> can't
> express a lot of nuances that METAFONT can. Plus, it defeats the
> purpose
> of automation -- unless you're a professional fontographer, you
> probably
> don't need the level of power METAFONT gives you (at least to start
> with).
Very true.

> Outline curves in Type 1 is good enough for most conscripts, anyway,
> and
> you can always generate METAFONT programs from them easily. You can
> then
> hand-tweak the resulting METAFONT programs should you see the need to.
>
> (Of course, you might have to do extra magic with those .tfm files if
> you
> want to do ligatures and stuff, which METAFONT handles quite
> beautifully.)
>
That's the main thing. I want a font for Maggel, but it's so much packed with
ligatures, dissociations, characters that connect to the following one while
others don't, characters which change a bit shape when connected, etc... like
the Arabic script but more complicated :)) . If I have to make that into a
normal True Type or type 1 font, this would be a bit tedious I think...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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