The tg Font Collaboration Thread

[Gare]

28684H looks quite clean to me, Mike, at a glance.

We have two goals here: reproduction/restoration (when necessary).

-and-

"clean" gylph path construction. Every node that's unnecessary adds 1 byte to a character, so imagine what scores of them do the overall saved typeface size.

That's not to say to skimp.

This is also an exercise in ingenuity: how can a shape be expressed accurately with proper control point connections, proper placement of control points, and the correct number.

Tell you what: If I can get some more submissions from others by the weekend, I will take first crack at making the glyphs into a font, and I'll post it, with blank characters being blank. Closing contours and winding path directions are not a problem with FontLab.

Then it's Bill's big chance to critiqué me.

-g-

[mwenz]

Ill likely be able to avoid the problem induced when flipping part of the design. I just did a quickie test and if I had immediately selected all the nodes of the flipped portion and used Xara's Reverse Paths option, the exported EPS comes into TT fine.

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

Cool, Mike!

Other kind souls and wonderfully talented Xaraists: I'm serious. Trace me off some glyphs so we can have something to critiqué on Monday.

You don't really want me to spend my weekend at Putt-Putt miniature golf, do you?

-g-

[Soquili]

Gary I have a question about the nodes at an extreme. I have been doing the double node in my drawings as you have pointed out. Today I was working on cleaning up some issues with one of the glyphs using the Font Audit feature in FontLab. I exported the corrected glyph out to eps and brought that into Xara DP7. All my double nodes at extremes had been converted to single nodes. Have you encountered this before?

[Gare]

Can you post a copy, or send it to my private email, Bill? The XAR file?

It's quite possible that FontLab is using a 32 bit system for parsing the EPS files, bringing them in. And because Xara can zoom way beyond the capability of a 32 bit system, it's conceivable FontLab can't write a glyph that has nodes microns away from each other. IOW, it can't reconcile the two control points because it sees them as one in a limited 32 bit system.

Or I could be full of manure.

Can I see the gylph in question and let me play with it in FL?

TIA,

Gary

[Soquili]

Gary my working file for tracing and the imported fontlab eps files are attached.

[Soquili]

Here is the actual file that was used to export to eps.

[Gare]

I can't reproduce your problem, actually, Bill, sorry! (or should I be sorry?)

Please take a look at the attached. You did have a "node at extreme" problem there in the original Xara file. Instead of the two extremely close nodes being joined by a straight line, the top node has a control handle out to Mars. I corrected it at bottom; just a marquee select with the Editor tool and a click on straight on the Infobar.



I also noted that you are being diligent and methodical in your approach, Bill. I like what I see, and the font is going to be all that much better with your attention to the glyph set you're doing. I can appreciate your small corrections when either the printing of the stamp, or the artist's design fails to hit a symmetric area perfectly.

By the way, you might also want to try *.AI instead of *.EPS. It might overcome some sort of control point limitation neither of us fully understands.

-g-

[Soquili]

Thanks Gary, and no need to be sorry. It has been a long time since I created a font and I'm using a newer version of FontLab. Wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something in the process.