But wouldn't you have to install the font manager?

Here's an a in one continuous line:

This page:

http://www.stcassociates.com/lab/fontbrowser.html

Has perhaps the most useful font tool you will find on the Internet. With this Flash app, you can view any true type or open type font installed on your computer at any size between 1 and 99 points. You can chose to use one of the default character displays, or select your own custom preview text. I'm going to keep a copy of the Internet shortcut on my desktop, and many of you may want to do the same.

~bito

Max Kisman of Holland Fonts did a similar project in 2003, called Frisco Remix. The terms of the license do not allow me to redisribute the font, but you can get it here:

http://www.hollandfonts.com/FRE03.html

The read me and .pdf can also be downloaded from that page. If I recall correctly, there was some problem with the Windows version. I couldn't open it in preview, but I could open it with Studio5 and generate an .otf version for myself. I think the archive is in .hqx format, rather than .zip or .rar.

I'm not surprised that you get so many downloads, Peter. Your work looks almost too professioanl to be free.

~bito

In a small number of cases, the file on dafont IS corrupted in some way. I tried several times to download the font Bobneverdies!, (the Bob marley dingbat font), but it was always corrupted. I told Rodolphe about it, and he was able to fix the problem quickly.

I have FontCreator, Fontlab Studio5, and ScanFont 3.13, and I use ScanFont almost exclusively. Unfortunately, FontLab isn't selling ScanFont 3.13 anymore, (ScanFont 5, the new version, is a pluging for Studio 5), but there are copies floating around on p2p and torrents.

These are the advantages of ScanFont 3.13, from my perspective:

1) It allows for direct importing of monochrome bitmap source images, (this can also be done on FontCreator).

2) It allows for variable size to glyphs. This is the most important factor for me, because of the type of fonts I make, but this is not a concern for most people. ScanFont allows for a large variety to the widths of glyphs, but the height for all glyphs within a font must be identical, or white space will be added at the top of any glyphs that are shorter than the tallest one. Glyphs from different fonts do not need to have the same height.


3) Editing glyphs with ScanFont 3.13 is much easier than in FontCreator, because the maximum magnification factor is much larger. This also make it much easier to properly adjust the side, top, and bottom bearings when there are both white and black sections of the glyph touching the edges of the glyph window, (this is more relevant with dingbats than with alphabet fonts).

4) With the proper viewing settings enabled, ScanFont 3.13 will show three different types of vector node, (blue, red, and green), each of which can be manipulated in different ways. For example, a line between two red nodes will be straight. A line between two green nodes can be pulled to create, increase, or decrease a curve. The colour of nodes can be changed to some extent, (red nodes and blue nodes can be converted to green). Dragging a red node will leave the original node in its' place, but will create another red node, which can be useful in areas of fine detail. All font making programs should allow for deleting of nodes. Deleting nodes can smooth or straighten a line which would otherwise be curved or bumpy.

5) It isn't necessary to have additional graphics programs installed, in addition to your font making program. I make all of my source graphics with MS Paint, which is a standard program on every version of Windows. With Windows 2000 or earlier, however, only bitmap images can be opened with Paint.

6) In some but not all glyphs, guidelines can be enabled to do very precise editing. When a line is off by a fraction of a millimeter, the error can be very noticeable when the font is generated. Often there are both horizontal and vertical guidelines, so it can be much easier to be spot on when doing precise editing.

7) ScanFont 3.13 project files are compatible with other Fontlab applications, so if you have both apps installed, you can use Studio5 to edit a font made with ScanFont.

8) ScanFont 3.13 is very easy to use. Everything necessary to know can be learned in a few minutes, and everything else can be learned if you read the several hundred page manual.


Disadvantages of ScanFont 3.13

1) The size of the glyphs in the font are reduced to about 93% of the size of the imported graphics, which can lead to distortion.

2) ScanFont 3.13 cannot create or open Open Type fonts.

3) ScanFont 3.13 is no longer for sale.

4) Properly adjusting ascenders and descenders in ScanFont can be more difficult than in other fonts.

How I make fonts:

1) I find pictures on the Internet that I think would look good in a font, and save them in bitmap form.

2) I convert the colours of the pixels in the bitmap to monochrome, (ie" exclusively black and white), and save the picture as a monochrome bitmap file type.

3) I open ScanFont, create a new font file, and complete the font info section, adding font family, font name and menu name, copyright and version information, etc.)

4) I import the bitmaps, and assign the corresponding ASCII code number.

5) I save the font after importing one or more graphics, (certain editing functions can only be done if the font project has been saved after the glyphs were added).

6) In magnified mode, I adjust the side, top and bottom bearings, and save again.

7) Any adjustments to the vector nodes would be the next step.

(I didn't do steps 6 and 7 in my 2007 and 2008 fonts).

8) Save the final version of the font project.

9) Save the font as .ttf or type 1. If I want to create an .otf version, I open the Type 1 .pfb file with Studio5, and generate the font in .otf format.

I would want to stress that I'm probably the only one here who is using this procedure. Most font authors are creating their glyphs from scratch, either in a graphics program, or with the drawing tools within their font making program. I'm also primarily a dingbat fontmaker, so precison in adjusting the bearings is much more important, but I don't have to deal with things like ascenders, descenders, and kerning.

I'm certainly interested in knowing how other people make their fonts.

~bito

Re: Relevancies of font names: In Windows, you can't use two installed fonts with the same name at the same time, even if the file names are difference. It may be possible if the files names and menu names are different, but that would solve one problem and create another.

For example, I can't use both an .otf and a .ttf version of a font like Garamond at the same time, even if one file is named GARA.OTF and the other is named Garamond.ttf, because both have the same font name internally. Dual use on a Mac may be different. As far as Windows is concerned, Pico and PicO ar the same name, because the naming is not case sensitive. If someone using Windows has the Maniackers Design Pico already installed, it would have dibs on the menu name if they installed either version of yours without uninstalling that one first. You wouldn't have this problem with Zepto, because, as far as I know, yours is the only font with that name.

Would a lengthy EULA inside your font prevent clone sites from distributing your font? Probably not, because Rough Typewriter has such a EULA, and those site are appropiating it anyway. The difference is that JasonArthur's terms of use cannot be legitimately misinterpreted. That is certainly not true of v 1.0 of Pico. Masayuki Sato from Maniackers Design could also have objections to your use of 'his' font name as well. That's all I have to say in this thread, so I'll let you have the last word.

~bito

I seem to have been wrong about the pronounciation of your font name. The zero and the capital O in the font used for this forum look very much alike. If it is a captal O, then it would not be possible to have two or more of your Pico, your PicO, and the Maniackers Pico installed at the same time, as they all have the same font name. This adds further ambiguity to the interpretation of the .png graphic in v. 1.0 posted on dafont in May, 2009, as the Maniackers' Pico had already been released by that time.

My point was that the terms of use for JasonArthur's Rough Typewriter are crystal clear and explicit, but your terms for PicO can legitimately be misinterpreted. I'm not an apologist for the fly-by-night font sites that obtain their files from dafont. I'm just suggesting that, when you have specific intentions with reference to the use and placement of your font, you should express those intentions with precise wording, preferably within the font header or the license information contained within the font file, where people can read them even if the supplemental files have not been included.

Here's a C from a font I was working on a couple of years ago, and which I'll probably never finish:



but it's probably way too big and complex for this project.

to display images:
type IMG inside square brackets, ([ and]), followed by the internet address/url of the picture, (ie: http://...), followed by /IMG in the square brackets, without any spaces between the [IMG] tags and the url.

JasonArthur, I looked at Rough Typewriter, and you have very clearly stated the terms of use in the read me, license doc, and also in the license information stored within the font.

d[esign], I looked at Pic0, and your terms are stated in the .png graphic, but there is no read me or license doc, and the only terms of use stated within the font itself are '...do not redistribute...', which is somewhat vague, and subject to personal interpretation. In the current version 1.1, you have, however, included license instructions in the .png graphic.

If you have FontLab Studio5, you may want to read the internal license information in Rough Typewriter, as the wording is very explicit and legally sound. If you don't have Studio5, the license information is included on the downloads page for Rough Typewriter at abstractfonts.com

I'm not sure what changes you made to this font between the v. 1.0 from May, 2009, and the v. 1.1 from January, 2010, but the .png graphic has changed completely. In the older version of the .png, you state "Like Pico but free, hence the name Pic0", but the notation that "Pic0 is free for personal use" is in light gray text, only five pixels high, which makes it easy to miss, and unable to be read unless the graphic is magnified.

It should be noted that the name of your font, when pronounced, is "Pic zero", as opposed to "Pick-Owe". "Pico" is a font designed by Masayuki Sato for Maniackers Design in 2008, (his font doesn't resemble yours). Perhaps you could tell us the font to which you were referring in the "Like Pico but free..." graphic from v 1.0

I think that, when you're making freeware fonts, any publicity is good publicity. The whole point of making a free font is that you hope other people will download it, and, if you're really lucky, they'll actually install it, and use it for something. I'm probably not the only one who has thousands of unopened font zips, downloaded and squirelled away, like at the ending of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". If other sites want to host some of my fonts, I have no problem with that. I google my own stuff occaisionally, and I find it interesting when some site in Brazil, Germany or Viet Nam have decided to exhibit one or two of them. As long as the read me is included with the .zip, I have no problems with other sites making them available. There's always the possibility that someone will discover one's work on an obscure site, and do a search to find more work by the same font author. If downloads from another site reduce my dafont statisticss by a little bit, it's not the end of the world.

Link for KaiM'sHandwriting font at deviantArt:

http://kaixm.deviantart.com/art/Kai-s-Handwriting-161179431

KaiM, I downloaded and installed your font, and I opened it with ScanFont 3.13 and FontCreator 5.5. I have the following observations:

1) The 'Font Info', (that's what it's called in ScanFont), is incorrectly entered. For 'Font Name' and 'Full Name', you have entered 'Kai'sHandwriting', but for 'Family Name' and 'Menu Name', you have put 'Handwritten'. For this font, you should put 'Kai'sHandwriting' in all four fields. I don't know how that's done in FontCreator.

The Family Name and Font Name should be different only if you are making multiple weights of the same font, such as Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic.

For example, if you are using a Windows computer, look in your Installed fonts folder, (C:\Windows\Fonts or the Fonts folder in the Control Panel, (they're the same), and note that the standard fonts like Tahoma will have Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic weights installed, but if you open MS Word, Tahoma appears only once. The other weights come into play if you select the Bold or Italic formatting in your document or project. If you have only a regular weight installed, the font glyphs will be slanted to the right if you select Italic formatting, and the lines will be thicker if you enable Bold. For many fonts, however, the Bold, Italic and Bold Italic weights may look significantly different from the what the Regular weight would look like when leaning right or made thicker.

The Menu Name is how the font name will appear in the list of installed fonts for MS Word, Notepad, or other apps that use installed fonts. When I installed yours, I couldn't find it inintially, until I checked the font info in ScanFont. As is, it shows in the fonts listing as 'Handwritten'.

Your Embedding settings are set as 'Only printing and previewing of the document is allowed, (read only'. This may or may not be what you wanted. As is, your font cannot be embedded in a document, (if a font is embedded, it means someone can see it in an electronic document if they don't have the font installed on their own computer). It's very easy to fix that with FontLab Studio5, and the default setting is 'everything is allowed' for ScanFont, but I don't know how to adjust that in FontCreator.

You might want to look at the orientation of the lower case j, with reference to the baseline. Unless you had wanted it to look like it does, you need to lower the placement of this letter significantly. The lower case k would benefit from some work, as well. It seems unduely small by comparison to the other 'tall' letters, and I think it whould look better if it was wider, as well. You might also want to look at the spacing for capital V and W. When typed together, they seem to meld into one character. The caps for A-L as a group look a lot more interesting than M-Z, so much so that they don't seem to belong in the same font.

Your font looks better with Bold formatting enabled.

Your glyphs are VERY rough. Usually a font with similar complexity to yours, and with a similar number of glyphs, will have a file size in the 40 kb range, but yours, at 374 kb, is about ten times as large. Try opening your font project file, (or open the .ttf file with your font making program), double click one of the glyphs, and look for the magnifier; it should be prominent in the Tool Bar, and it should look like a magnifying glass with a + in the center. If you are using FontCreator, you should see a drop down list box beside the magnifier icon. Change the setting to the maximum, (probably 500%), and you will see that the edges of your glyphs look like the coastline of Norway. If you're using FontCreator, go to the Menu Bar, and chose View → Mode → Point, and you will see all the vector nodes. There are probably at least 100 extra and unnecessary nodes in each glyph.

It looks to me like you did the following:

1) You drew the character glyphs at or about the 72 point size on paper, and scanned them, or you did the same thing with a drawing app. Those images were then imported into your font making program, the baseline was manually adjusted, and the font was generated. If you did that, you missed two important steps:

a) You should 'clean up' the graphics before importing them. If you are importing graphic files like bitmaps or .jpegs, you should use MS Paint, or another drawing app, to refine the images. You would get the best results if you use between 400% and 800% zoom when doing this sort of editing. You might also find that a vector making program may do much of this smoothing automatically. Someone who uses vectors for their source graphics in fonts may be able to help you with that more than I can. If you're creating your glyphs with Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw or something else, I can't help there, (I use MS Paint and ScanFont).

b) You can, and should, make modifications to your glyphs after importing them into you font making program. As is, it would be very difficult to smooth this font, given the high number of unnecessary nodes in each glyph. Ideally, you would want to have as few nodes as is needed to define your curves and line widths. If you have done View → Mode → Point to see the nodes, you can move them by left-clicking the node, holding the mouse button down, and dragging the node to another location. You can delete nodes by right-clicking them, and chosing Delete from the shortcuts menu.

If you poke around at deviantArt, you will find probably at least a hundred fonts by other people which are really no better or worse than yours. Good luck on your next one, and maybe we'll see it here on dafont.

Regards,

~bito

13lah, you should read this thread on the dafont forum:

http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/338/how-do-you-know-if

in which KaiM asked the same questions that you did.

kellyEucalyp, You could try leaving a message for her on her fontspace page:

http://www.fontspace.com/carolina-mejia-villegas

or leave a comment on the Margarosa page here:

http://www.dafont.com/margarosa.font

For other font authors, check the Designers (long) page on Luc Devroye's site:

http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/longdesigners.html

Note that fonts credited to foundries, rather than individual designers, will not appear on that page.

~bito

13lah, (if you are on a PC with Windows), it depends on which Internet browser you are using. If you are using Internet Explorer, the Save As dialog box should open when you click the 'save' button on the download, then you chose the folder where you would like to save them. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, the downloaded files, (by default), will go in the Downloads folder in My Documents, If you're using a Mac, I don't know where they go.

~bito

Kai, I looked at the sample page prepared by Rodolphe, and here are my comments:

1) I like the design of the B,C,D,E, F, G, J and L, but the rest of the caps are unremarkable.

2) f and y in lower case look interesting.

3) As Rodolphe mentioned, there are inconsistencies in the widths of some of the characters, notably the c, e, r, s, u, and v, the right side of the m, and n, and the bottom of the z. All of these inconsistencies will be magnified at smaller point sizes.

4) It's hard to tell from the sample page if the spacing between letters is consistent, or if you have been consistent with the ascenders and descenders.

5) My overall impression is that you didn't spend a lot of time making this font. Keep at it, though. Most amateur font makers experience a learning curve, as they find more efficient ways to perform the same task, and by not making the same mistakes again.

What we don't know is the ratio between submitted fonts and fonts that are accepted by dafont. I would think that at least a third, (if not more), of the submitted fonts would not be accepted, and many of those would be handwriting fonts not terribly different from yours.

Other than opening an account at deviantART, as suggested by Rodolphe, You might consider submitting it at fontspace. New fonts appear there within minutes of being submitted. It's free to join. Don't expect huge download numbers over there, though. If this is any indication, of the two fonts I have up on both dafont and fontspace, the download figures are twenty-seven to thirty-five times larger at dafont.

~bobistheowl

Try spooky for the password.

KaiM, look at post #2 from Rodolphe, (he's the dafont webmaster). Your font has not been accepted, because it is 'not clean enough', so it won't be posted here. You also get an e-mail only if your font is accepted. Unlike some other sites, where all submitted fonts are accepted, dafont has a screening process in which the fonts are judged on merit as well as compatibility with various operating systems, before the accepted fonts are posted.

Submitted fonts can be rejected by dafont for a number of reasons. If you make a dingbat font with only one glyph, it won't be accepted. If the graphics are too complex to be resolved when ClearType is enabled, the font wont be accepted, and if the quality of the workmanship is sub par, in the opinion of the webmaster, it won't be posted.

Perhaps you might consider uploading your font on a free distribution site, like sharebee.com, and post a download link in this thread. Then some of the people reading the forum may download it, and perhaps offer you some comments about your work.

Several of the fonts I've submitted to dafont have been rejected for having single glyphs or for overly complex subject matter, which prompted me to make cleaner fonts. I'll give you an honest critique of your work, if you give us a link where it can be downloaded.

Regards,

~bobistheowl