Bouton Bookends - Discussion

[angelize]

Thanks for this Gary, this font could also be useful with WDMX for some interesting bullets!

Bouton Bookends can be found inFree & Fixed Fonts Gallery.

[Gare]

You're welcome, Frances.

This typeface can be used with any webpage building program if you use @fontface.

But I'd discourage doing this, because the glyphs sometimes are exceptionally intricate and the overall file size is what matters when you fetch a typeface to load on a page. And this is a large typeface.

If anyone is interested in building a font for the web, I can help. And I can begin with suggesting that in addition to alpha-numeric glyphs, we also put buttons and common symbols in, so the page fetches once from the server, not twice to preload fonts. Here's an example page of symbols only. Which do we think could be added to an alpha-numeric fonts?

[wizard509]

Which do we think could be added to an alpha-numeric fonts

Gare, I'm not sure I follow. Are you asking which of those symbols to add?
Not being into doing anything web related I don't know. However I have circled some that may be handy. I hope I"m not too far off base here.

[Gare]

Hi Larry—

I was just throwing out a suggestion.

If you want to use a non-standard font on a website, the servers need to push the font to your system's browser before you can see anything.

It stands to reason that if you have three embedded (or @fontface) fonts you want to preload, this means three fetches from the server to your system to your browser.

That creates probably a noticeable time lag, a stall, a wait, and mostly you have a fraction of a second to interest your potential audience...and you lose because your fancy page loaded too slowly.

Forget the icons I posted for a moment. All I'm suggesting is that if you're going to create your own alpha-numeric font for the web, that you include common symbols you know in advance you'll use. So instead of having to preload an alpha-numeric and a symbol font, there's only one fetch.

I designed a typeface around Triplex Condensed for the Xara Xone, and within it, are these extended characters which are actually symbols. Do you see how these can be added to text without loading a special typeface? We've been using arrows on XX since January, while some we've not needed yet.




But if we get a reoccurring need for a symbol in the future, I'm going to pull this typeface off the server, add the glyph and then upload it again.

[wizard509]

OK thanks Gare. I guess I didn't understand and was off base.

[Gare]

Not "off-base" at all, at least not the way I interpret the phrase, Larry. To me, "off-base" means "rude" or asking an inappropriate question.

I was just trying to explain why mashing up a font destined to be a Web font is a good idea.

And you get it now, right?

Change of topic, and I'll move this:

I don't think we're going to get any fonts to fix...Bill and I have come up empty.

So as a substitute, what say all of us who are interested get together and create a group tg font?

I volunteer to coordinate the effort, and will provide royalty free public domain glyphs that need tracing over, specifically from the Burgeon stamp catalogue Barbara picked up at a garage sale and contacted what remains of the company (who said we're good to go on copying this excellent stuff).



Let me pick 62 images that need tracing and refining. I'll assign them to volunteers to trace and supply the "font masters" (Bill, me, Mike and anyone else who knows how to work a font editor), and together we'll evaluate the font and massage it until it's ready for Prime Time.

What do we say to this?

-g-