creating fonts in CD and kerning

[gnurf]

When you have created a new set of fonts, how can you set up the kerning, especially with pairs like AV AT etc. The help files mention importing file metrics, but is there any other ways. Or do I have to get a font creation program like Fontographer or FontLab(?).

-Paul

[gnurf]

When you have created a new set of fonts, how can you set up the kerning, especially with pairs like AV AT etc. The help files mention importing file metrics, but is there any other ways. Or do I have to get a font creation program like Fontographer or FontLab(?).

-Paul

[Peter Clifton]

Paul

Synchronicity or what, Just finished adding lower case characters to my 5x7 bitmap emulation font.

As far as I know you can only import font metrics from an existing .afb file.

I find the filters supplied do an ok job, I use them for creating fixed width fonts at various resolutions to simulate LCD bitmap displays that our company uses.

I would never dream of using the fonts I create outside of a DRAW / graphics environment and have always in the past converted the fonts to curves, prior to getting them printed professionally.

To sum up if you are serious about font designing and using the fonts in other packages you are going to need a dedicated package like the ones you mentioned.

Peter

[gnurf]

Well, isn't synchronicity the latest hype? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

About serious font design, I happen to get projects where it sometimes could be nice to have a ready font, instead of i.e. stretching the text and so on. Especially when it is similar projects for the same client.

Anyway, I don't create fonts very frequently, and therefor wouldn't really like buying a font program that I use perhaps a couple of times a year.

But the afm-files are plain text files, I noticed. Anyone having experience of editing (even creating) afm-files?

One another thing I forgot to ask in the first message: How can I add version info to my fonts created in CD? Now it will only say Version = Unknown (or something similar).

-Paul

[Peter Clifton]

<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>Fires up webferret<LI>Enters 'truetype font utilities'<LI>Finds a site called 'Fonts and Things'<LI>Peter says "Wow!"[/list]

Paul

Pay a visit to
www.fontsnthings.com

Loads of stuff there and in the utils section is a url pointer to the Microsoft Type Home Page which looks like it has a lot of useful stuff including a TrueType properties editor.

Peter

[Larry Elliott]

Paul,
If you have a similar commercial font to the one you have created that has the kerning tables then all you need to do is save the commercial font to the name that you want for your new font. Set your page size and all to the specs that Corel recommends for font creation. Bring in one letter at a time from the commercial font and replace it with your creation in the exact location at the lower left and save it to the new 'commercial' font file. This will usually get you very close, you may have to recall a few letters and do a little adjusting. Usually what throws the kerning off is node handles that extend beyond the actual bounding box of the letter itself as this gives a false 'size' to the actual letter. You can check this by drawing a rectangle around each letter and then using the node edit tool click on each node and see if any handles protrude past the rectangle. This is very common on long curves with only one node, you may have to add a few nodes to break them down into smaller arcs.
Maybe this will get you going and save several dollars on a dedicated font creation prog.

Larry Elliott...