The next post like this from you will get you a ten day ban from the forum, koeiekat. You know that I can do that, with a couple of mouse clicks. Consider this to be your yellow card.

@trienz: To quote you, "This conversation is over." Don't reopen it, in this thread, or another one in the English forum. If you want to spar with the cat, do it in the French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese forums. I don't read those. You're in thin ice, as well.

If either of you think I'm bluffing, try me.

~bobistheowl

It would surprise me if those glyphs are not included in Lobster: http://www.dafont.com/lobster.font

You should do a Windows search of your C: Drive, for both .ttf and .otf - be sure to include the period, so the search will be for file type, rather than name. You'll be able to see the folder address in the results. If it's not currently in your fonts folder, copy/ paste a copy into fonts. Don't cut/paste, however, because it's probably supposed to be where it is now. Keep in mind that the search results will show the file names of the fonts, rather than the internal font names. for example, the font named Century Schoolbook Italic has file name SCHLBKI.TTF

@TheCrafterian: 36 people downloaded your font; 36 people didn't buy it. Every font on DaFont is free to download, and at minimum, free to for personal use. Some, but not all, fonts are also free for commercial use. By making your font Donationware, you are providing a means for people to chose an amount to pay you, IF your font is used commercially, or IF they want to 'toss you a bone' for the time you took to make it.

By the way, 36 downloads on the first day strongly suggests that your font will not be very popular. A lot of people just collect fonts, like other people collect stamps or figurines of elephants. There's no guarantee than any of those 36 people will ever even open the .zip file. If you're expecting to make money from work like this, you are deluding yourself. Of the many thousands of people who downloaded fonts here yesterday, all but 36 considered 50 odd kilobytes of empty disk space to be more valuable to them than Bubbly. I count myself among the majority.

KenS, if you want to try to make this font yourself, you could read about the various font editing programs on the market in the DaFont FAQ section: http://www.dafont.com/faq.php#create

I use one that's not on that list - ScanFont 3, from FontLab. Unfortunately, ScanFont 3 is no longer sold, and it doesn't work with Windows operating systems that are more advanced than XP. FontLab currently sells a product called ScanFont 5, but it has little in common with ScanFont 3. ScanFont 3 is a stand-alone font editor. ScanFont 5 is a plug-in for FontLab's Studio5 product. The FontLab applications also tend to be considerably more expensive than font editors sold by other software companies.

@KenS: to be realistic, you're not going to be able to make a good cursive font as your one-and-only font. That would be similar to being a straight A student in 6th grade, who was promoted to high school senior, and expected to excel at that level. It could be done, but both you, and your mother, will be disappointed in the results.

At the same time, however, designing a unique and visually appealing script font is very difficult, for anyone other than Måns Grebäck and a handful of others. In fact, many 'original' font designs are digitalizations of script styles that originally appeared in old books, magazines or advertising. The designer sees an old match book cover from the 1950's, and extrapolates what the unseen letters would look like, if rendered in the same style. There's nothing wrong with doing that; even the "Myfonts" designers do that, all the time.

If your mother's calligraphy is, indeed, unique and elegant, why not scan a sample of it, post that sample in this thread, and see if any designers are interested in developing her handwriting into a font. Save your scan in .png format of .tiff, and make it big. Your goal should be to convince a font designer that making a digital version of your mother's handwriting is a better idea than the font they would otherwise do next. The quality of your mother's handwriting, and the quality of your text sample scan, will likely determine whether there is any interest from the designers, and whether that interest comes from the "A", "B", or "C" list of skill.

The impression I get is that you are very interested in having your mother's handwriting be available in digital form, but it's less important to you to create that digital form yourself.

We frequently receive requests in the DaFont forum from people who want to have someone create a custom made font, for their personal use. They usually include a .jpeg image with the letters 15 pixels tall, and ask if they can have it ready by Friday. This is a different situation.

Keep in mind, however, that making a good quality font takes a lot of time and skill. If someone decides to make a font based on your mother's handwriting, the font designer, rather than your mother, ought to own the distribution rights to that font, and any income generated from commercial use. If she's willing to make that concession, someone here may be willing to accommodate you.

What factors could or would limit the point size of text displayed in a .pdf document?

While testing beta versions of my current font project, I often create MS Word .docx and .pdf documents at very large point sizes, to help me locate small errors that can't be seen, when the text display is smaller.

During the editing stage, my caps height is 240% above standard size, but I can create a standard sized version in about two minutes by adjusting the UPM values in Metrics and Dimensions.

With the over sized version of the font, the only thing that seems to limit the size of the text display in Word 2007 is the maximum dimensions of the paper size - I can make a .pdf at 360 points, (equivalent to more than 850 standard points), without any problems. With the standard sized version, however, the .pdf document appears blank if the point size used in Word is larger than about 288, (I used multiples of 72 points, so I could display text at 288 points, but not at 360).

Complexity of the glyphs is not a factor - these fonts use the minimum number of nodes, and the test font file sizes range from 9 - 31 kb, for around 70 glyphs.

Other than the limit to the size of text display, (and some problems displaying the minus/ hyphen glyphs, when the font is generated in .otf format), both the regular and over sized versions work fine in Word, Notepad, and .pdf. I don't have any advanced graphic design programs like Illustrator for additional testing.

Thanks,

~bobistheowl

@The Crafterian: if you upload your fonts only to DaFont, you could add a line similar to this in the header, (the header is the section where you add the designer information in your font editor. When the font is opened in preview, that information appears above the very small upper and lower case text display):

'This font was uploaded by its designer to DaFont. Any other site making this font available for download has done so without the designer's knowledge or consent.'

Some sites might not add your font, if it has this sort of disclaimer. It would also be a criminal act for a different site to edit the header.

This disclaimer won't prevent other sites from posting your font, but it may limit the number of sites that do so.

This is the 338th time that Lobster has been identified in the Font Identification forum.

Please note that the designer of Lobster, Pablo Impallari, has designed addition weights of Lobster, as well as several other excellent fonts that have not been posted on DaFont. Check them out on his home page: http://www.impallari.com/lobster/. The download links are at the bottom of the page.

@TheCrafterian: Try downloading a few 'Free for personal use' or 'donationware' fonts here, from different designers. Check the .zip file for supplemental files called 'read me', 'license', etc. If you like the wording that someone else has used, write something similar, but not exactly the same, and include it with your new font, when you submit it.

koeiekat's suggestion to include licensing terms in the font header is also excellent advice. Keep in mind that the download at DaFont would include your licensing terms document, but hundreds of other font download sites might add your font, without your knowledge or consent, and without including your read me document. Someone downloading your font from one of those sites might assume that it's free for all use. If your license terms are included in the header, they will see that, if they open the font in preview. Avoid putting your e-mail address in the header, however, as this will often appear in search engine results, which will result in you receiving a lot of spam e-mails for penis enlargement pills and from Russian dating sites.

http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/152358/my-font-never-appear-in-dafont

Starting a new thread about this two days in a row will not get your font posted more quickly, especially when you only submitted it three days ago.

@TheCrafterian: If this inquiry is about your submission, Futuristic Evolution, don't be selling the cow just yet.

There are more than 23,000 fonts available on DaFont. No one can or will help you with this inquiry, if you don't tell us which of the fonts you've installed have this quirk.

It should not have been necessary for me to point this out.

You need to hold your water. A follow up after two days is premature.

If you want immediate gratification, upload to Fontspace. Your submission will be posted within a couple of minutes. That's also why there are a lot of shit fonts on that site; there is no evaluation process in place there, to weed out the clearly amateurish submissions. There are a lot of great fonts available at Fontspace, and many that you won't find here. There are also many that you won't find here for a completely different reason.

All the more reason to mention the licensing terms in the headers of your fonts. You might clearly set out the terms in a read me or license document in the .zip file you upload to Dafont, but there's no guarantee that other sites that use DaFont as the source for their files will make anything more than the .ttf available.

The moderators here also remove links posted from any site that has the download in an .exe file type, (if legitimate, a self-extracting installer), as opposed to a .ttf, .otf, .zip or .rar file for the download. There's no telling what you might be adding to your computer, when you open an executable file obtained from an untrustworthy source.

You can start by reading this section of the FAQ: http://www.dafont.com/faq.php#create

You'll need a font editor, (a program that turns vector images into font files). A vector is a solid image created by lines attached to two or more points, called nodes.

Depending on which font editor you plan to use, you'll either draw your font characters, ("glyphs"), with the font editor, or import your images from a graphics program, (Adobe Illustrator, MS Paint, etc.), into the font editor.

~bobistheowl

In Microsoft Word, when I select text from a font I'm working on, there's no space above the glyphs:



but if I type and select the same text using other fonts, a lot of white space above the glyphs is selected:



I'd like to add a small amount of white space at the top, just enough so the tops of the rounded glyphs aren't flattened at lower point sizes; perhaps 30 editing units. I'd also like to reduce the white space below by an equal amount, so that the net width between lines of text stays the same, otherwise there will be too much of a line gap, when the Q isn't used.

What do I need to do?

Thanks,

~bobistheowl

1) Download and install Winrar. You can get it here: http://rarlab.com/download.htm Go with the X86 32 bit version.

2) After installing Winrar, double-click on a downloaded .zip file, and select Extract from the menu, then click the OK button. A folder containing the files within the .zip will be created in the same folder as the .zip itself.

Keith, you could have saved us both some time and effort by just opening the file called !LEGEND.TXT in the download .zip.