New Fonts From Old

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Bhikkhu Pesala
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New Fonts From Old

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

If you like decorative fonts, this is an easy way to make one from an existing font. I used my own Garava Heavy to test the theory.

Stage 1
• Copy the letters you want to decorate to new empty glyphs. Hinting will be preserved if they are hinted.
• Create two or three new glyphs containing the decorations, which need to be anticlockwise contours.
• Select the decorations you want to use, and the copied letter you want to use it with.

Image

Stage 2

• Open the original undecorated glyph (the one with mappings), make it empty and paste the clipboard contents. The result will be a composite glyph like this:

Image

Stage 3
• Move the decorative elements — using guidelines to position them if it helps.

Image

• Repeat using control to copy composite glyph members within the composite glyph.

Image

• Press Control H to view the results without any screen clutter. Press H to exit from clean screen mode.

Image
Garava Decorated.7z
(93.97 KiB) Downloaded 660 times
Download my Garava Decorated font if you want to see how it works in detail. The free and OpenSource program 7-Zip will open 7z archives. I don't think I'll be doing any more with this font. It was just a proof of concept. Perhaps others may find the technique useful. Any composites that use the decorated glyphs will also be decorated.
Last edited by Bhikkhu Pesala on Sun Jan 08, 2006 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dave Crosby
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WinRAR

Post by Dave Crosby »

WinRar will be needed to open this file.

You can get a copy at:

http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
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William
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Post by William »

I decided to try this technique so as hopefully to produce an additional font.

I made a copy of my working font CHRON026.TTF Chronicle Text 026 (which is the font from which I produced CHRONTXT.TTF Chronicle Text version 0.26 which is available on the web, that production by deleting the unused glyph positions still left in from the original Font Creator "new" file and then recalculating the ranges in Format | Settings ... | Ranges). The copy is CHROL026.TTF Chronicle Text Lozenge 026. Readers wishing to try the experiment practically can use a copy of Chronicle Text version 0.26 if they so wish.

Details of Chronicle Text are in the Gallery forum.

viewtopic.php?t=679

Firstly I produced a counterclockwise countour within the glyph for e with the following four on-curve points.

256, 1024
152, 768
256, 512
360, 768

This contour I then copied onto the clipboard and then went through the a..z and A..Z alphabets pasting that contour onto the glyph in those glyphs where it fitted within the clockwise contour or did so if it were moved horizontally 256n font units where n is an integer. This was most of the characters, all except S, V, X, Y, Z and s, v, x, z.

I then added an extra, unmapped, glyph with the above contour and a clockwise contour with the following points.

256, 1128
464, 768
256, 408
48, 768

Another clockwise contour was added to that glyph so that the above contours would not be shifted to the left when saving the font.

0, 0
0, 256
256, 256
256, 0

I then produced the S, V, X, Y, Z and s, v, x, z for the font by applying the clockwise lozenge and the using Select All and Edit | Join Contours | Union and then adding on the counterclockwise lozenge so that it fitted within the clockwise lozenge. Both lozenges were sometimes moved the same distance horizontally, though always 256n font units horizontally, never vertically.

This has produced a font which, in my own opinion, is rather stylish, almost like ice crystals rather than snow, which I am hoping to publish.

Thank you for a very interesting and useful idea for a way to produce an additional font. For this particular application of the idea I used only one counterclockwise contour and only moved it horizontally, so all of the lozenges are horizontally level within a line of text.

I am thinking about how to apply the idea to some of my other fonts. I am already thinking of a thin vertical line 80 font units wide with rounded ends for Quest text.

William Overington
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Post by William »

The completed font is now published and is available on the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXL.TTF

It is Chronicle Text Lozenge version 0.26.

Comments appreciated please.

William
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Post by William »

Having produced the Chronicle Text Lozenge font I thought that it would perhaps look nice if in some applications of the font the lozenges could take their own colour, rather than taking the colour of the background. However, I realized that as some of the counterclockwise lozenges go outside a clockwise contour of the original Chronicle Text font that Chronicle Text would not provide a suitable underlay font.

Thus I have produced CHRONTXS.TTF Chronicle Text Sublozenge from a copy of CHRONTXL.TTF Chronicle Text Lozenge by removing the counterclockwise lozenges from displayable glyphs. For many characters the glyph in Chronicle Text Sublozenge is the same as in Chronicle Text, yet for a few, such as s and z, the glyph is different.

The font is now available on the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CHRONTXS.TTF

I am hoping now to try producing a pdf using Chronicle Text Lozenge and Chronicle Text Sublozenge together.

William
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Post by William »

The following pdf uses Chronicle Text Lozenge.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/lozenge.PDF

The following pdf uses Chronicle Text Lozenge and Chronicle Text Sublozenge together.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/lozenge2.PDF

Both pdfs were produced using Serif PagePlus 9.04, a desktop publishing package. The pdf using Chronicle Text Lozenge and Chronicle Text Sublozenge together has the same text twice, with one copy on top of the other. The underlying copy is in Chronicle Text Sublozenge and has each of its letters coloured in a bright colour. When the copy in Chronicle Text Lozenge, all letters of which are in black, is positioned on top of it, only the colour within the lozenge shows through.

William
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