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<TITLE>Steps to creating a font...</TITLE>
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<H1 ALIGN=Center>
Tutorial
</H1>
<P>
I shall not presume to teach aesthetics, I concentrate solely on the mechanics
here.
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample.html#FontCreate">Font Creation</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample.html#CharCreate">Creating a character (tracing
outlines)</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample2.html#Navigating">Navigating to other characters</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample2.html#Creating-o">On to the next character (consistent
directions)</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample3.html#consistent-stems">Consistent serifs and stem
widths</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample4.html#accents">Building accented characters</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample4.html#ligature">Building a ligature</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample5.html#metrics">Examining metrics</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample5.html#Kerning">Kerning</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample6.html#Marks">Anchoring marks</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample6.html#Variants">Character variants</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample7.html#checking">Checking your font</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample7.html#generating">Generating it</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample7.html#Families">Font Families</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample7.html#summary">Final Summary</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="scriptnotes.html#Special">Notes on various scripts</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="PfaEdit-TeX.html#TeX">FontForge and TeX</A>
</UL>
<P>
If you wish to follow along with the tutorial, <A HREF="tutorial.tgz">this
bundle</A> should provide you with the basic files you need.
<H2>
<A NAME="FontCreate">Font creation</A>
</H2>
<P>
First create a new font with the <CODE>New</CODE> command in the
<CODE>File</CODE> menu (or by using the <KBD>-new</KBD> argument at startup).
<P>
<IMG SRC="newfont.png" WIDTH="419" HEIGHT="189">
<P>
Give the font a name with the <CODE><A HREF="fontinfo.html">Font
Info</A></CODE> command from the <CODE>Element</CODE> menu. You use this
same command to change the encoding (ie what characters are available in
the font), set the copyright message and change the ascent and descent (the
sum of these two determines the size of the em square for the font, and by
convention is 1000 for postscript fonts, a power of two (often 2048 or 4096)
for truetype fonts and 15,000 for Ikarus fonts).
<P>
<IMG SRC="fontinfo.png" WIDTH="376" HEIGHT="544">
<H2>
<A NAME="CharCreate">Creating a character</A>
</H2>
<P>
Once you have done that you are ready to start editing characters. Double
click on the entry for "C" in the font view above. You should now have an
empty Outline Character window:
<P>
<IMG SRC="C1.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
Select the Import command from the File menu and import an image of the character
you are creating. It will be scaled so that it is as high as the em-square.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C2.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
Select the background layer as editable from the layers palette, move the
mouse pointer to one of the edges of the image, hold down the shift key,
depress and drag the corner until the image is a reasonable size, then move
the pointer onto the dark part of the image, depress the mouse and drag until
the image is properly positioned.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C3.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
If you have downloaded the
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/autotrace/">autotrace program</A>
you can invoke <CODE>Element->AutoTrace</CODE> to generate an outline
from the image. But if you have not you must add points yourself. Change
the active layer to be the foreground, and go to the tools palette and select
the round (or curve) point. Then move the pointer to the edge of the image
and add a point. I find that it is best to add points at places where the
curve is horizontal or vertical, at corners, or where the curve changes
inflection (A change of inflection occurs in a curve like "S" where the curve
changes from being open to the left to being open on the right. If you follow
these rules hinting will work better.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C4.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
It is best to enter a curve in a clockwise fashion, so the next point should
be added up at the top of the image on the flat section. Because the shape
becomes flat here, a curve point is not appropriate, rather a tangent point
is (this looks like a little triangle on the tools palette). A tangent point
makes a nice transition from curves to straight lines because the curve leaves
the point with the same slope the line had when it entered.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C5.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
At the moment this "curve" doesn't match the image at all, don't worry about
that we'll fix it later, and anyway it will change on its own as we continue.
Note that we now have a control point attached to the tangent point (the
little blue x). The next point needs to go where the image changes direction
abruptly. Neither a curve nor a tangent point is appropriate here, instead
we must use a corner point (one of the little squares on the tools palette).
<P>
<IMG SRC="C6.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
As you see the old curve now follows the image a bit more closely. We continue
adding points until we are ready to close the path.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C7.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
Then we close the path just by adding a new point on top of the old start
point
<P>
<IMG SRC="C8.png" WIDTH="272" HEIGHT="283">
<P>
Now we must make the curve track the image more closely, to do this we must
adjust the control points (the blue "x"es). To make all the control points
visible select the pointer tool and double-click on the curve and then move
the control points around until the curve looks right.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C9.png" WIDTH="266" HEIGHT="279">
<P>
Finally we set width. Again with the pointer tool, move the mouse to the
width line on the right edge of the screen, depress and drag the line back
to a reasonable location.
<P>
<IMG SRC="C10.png" WIDTH="266" HEIGHT="279">
<P>
And we are done with this character.
<P>
Well sort of. If you are like me you didn't get everything quite right even
though you checked. You can use Element-><A HREF="problems.html">Find
Problems</A>... to check for simple mistakes (like having your vertical lines
be slightly skewed).
<P>
You can use <CODE>View->Next Char</CODE> and <CODE>View->Prev Char</CODE>
to look at additional characters.
<P>
Most modern fonts will contain accented characters. Accented characters are
easy to make once you have made the accents and base characters they depend
on. For example if you have created the "C" character and the "cedilla" then
you can scroll the font view until you can see the "Ccedilla" character,
then select it and use Element-><A HREF="accented.html">Build Accented
Char</A> to create the accented glyph.
<P>
Of course you can also do this manually. Another way is to select the "C"
character and do Edit->Copy Reference, then select the "Ccedilla" character
and Edit->Paste, select the "cedilla" character and Edit->Copy Reference,
select the "Ccedilla" character again, and open it up by double clicking
on it, and then doing Edit->Paste. You will probably have to adjust the
cedilla until it snuggles properly under the C.
<P>
When you have created all your accents you have created your first font.
<P>
One of the hardest tasks of all is getting to spaces around the characters
to look nice. FontForge has a
<CODE><A HREF="autowidth.html#AutoWidth">Metrics->Auto Width</A></CODE>
command which attempts to guess reasonable values for the character spacings
in your font. Just select the "All" radio button in both sets of buttons
and press OK.<BR>
<I><IMG SRC="autowidth.png" WIDTH="276" HEIGHT="268"></I>
<P>
At this point you might want some bitmaps to go with the postscript (this
is not compulsory). Go to <CODE>Element->Bitmaps Available</CODE> and
select the pixel sizes you want bitmaps in (Note, that on X and MS windows
pixel sizes often do not correspond exactly to point sizes. You can then
use the bitmap editor (<CODE>File->Open Bitmap</CODE>) to clean up the
bitmaps, or you can generate your bitmap fonts and then
<A HREF="http://clr.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/download.html">use someone else's
bitmap editor to clean them up</A>.
<P>
<IMG SRC="BitmapView.png" WIDTH="254" HEIGHT="273">
<P>
Last of all you can generate font files. Select <CODE>File->Generate
Fonts</CODE>, select the outline font format, and which (if any) of your
bitmaps you want converted into a bitmap font.
<P ALIGN=Center>
-- <A HREF="overview.html">Prev</A> -- <A HREF="overview.html">TOC</A> --
<A HREF="editexample2.html">Next</A> --
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