Questions, questions...

[Bennecelli]

I am trying to decide which version is the best for me to buy. On the purchase page, I read "FontCreator Home Edition can NOT be used for commercial purposes." I'm not sure I know what this means. Does this mean that fonts created with the Home Edition cannot be distributed or sold? If so, how does the software prohibit that? I read the comparison chart but I don't see how the Home Edition is limited for commercial usage. How is the operation of the Home Edition limited and how do the limitations effect the operation? If I buy the Home Edition and later decide I want the Professional Version, can I upgrade? If so, at what cost?

[Erwin Denissen]

Hi Bennecelli,

Well Home Edition says it all. It is meant for personal use at home. Although it is not allowed, there is technically nothing that prevents you from distributing fonts created with the Home Edition. We might change that with upcoming releases.

You can buy an "Upgrade from Home to Professional Edition" as shown here:
http://www.high-logic.com/register.html

[Dave Crosby]

You can buy a car or a Loaded Car with all the options, bells and whistles.

Same here.

[Rontenfour]

Hi "Everyone" --

I have purchased the "Professional" version of this fine product primarily because my life's experiences have taught me that shortly after purchasing a limited function version of ANY product I find myself trying to use one of the missing functions that is included in the "advanced" (in this case Professional) version. And then I wish I had the more advanced version of course.

ANYway, I am very new to this forum, and have a question. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I have developed a new font ("Old Gothic English" in nature) up to the point where I am nearing completion. It has been a fun and interesting effort involving mixed use of MS Paint and Font Creater 5.6 primarily as well as two other bit image manipulation applications to a lesser extent. I would like to consider making this font available to the public (when done).

In addition, and perhaps more importantly, I have deverloped a way to create a variant of ANY font that recreates each letter or character with a "Cross-Hatch" pattern, I have about half a dozen "Cross-Hatch" patterns thus far and I find the results quite attractive, especially when trying to create a "fancy sign" or "Graphic Display".

Is there a "central" place where people can submit fonts (and variants described above) for distribution in some of the font "packages" that I occassionally see for sale?

Any suggestions, assistance, advice, counsel, and pointers are gratefully welcomed.

Thanks,
Rontenfour

[Dave Crosby]

You are off to a fantastic start! I LIKE your fonts!!!!

You can share your fonts here:

viewforum.php?f=10

Selling them requires more effort.
There are lots of sites selling fonts that may or may not accept your fonts and have to charge a percentage (who knows what?).
http://www.fonts.com/

But they are in competition with sites offering thousands of free fonts from people just wanting to get their names out there.

You can start your own website, but getting traffic volume with all the competition is difficult.
Ray Larabie has been successful at this method.
http://www.larabiefonts.com/

Good luck to you!

[Rontenfour]

Wow -- Thanks Dave !!!! For the supportive assessment AND the pointers. I will do some exploring via your suggested links. I have finally completed 52 letters and 0,1,2. Soooo, getting close to done, but I am finding that every time I look at a complete "test display" of the entire character set I see something that "needs" change. So I guess this is an iterative process (hopefully NOT w/o end).... I HAD started creating a separate font for each of the (now 14) Cross-Hatch patterns, but that takes an hour or two that essentially becomes wasted when I make significant "needed" adjustments. I think I will let the "base" mature before spending a lot of energy on all of the Cross Hatch "versions".....

Thanks again,
Ron

[Dave Crosby]

You may want to take a look at this thread on "How Long does it take to make a Font?"

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1022

[Rontenfour]

Hi Dave -- Thanks for your thoughts. I hope you didn't mis-understand me. I spent well over a month creating my base "Font" (and actually MANY months if you count the time I spent on my TRS-80 creating many of the basic character forms on a 48 x 48 bit matrix). The effort that takes several hours is the process of converting an existing font to a "Cross-Hatch" patterend "version" of that font. I have not timed that process fully but I am pretty sure it's hours and not days. I developed the process to do that conversion and have 14 (could make more) cross-hatch patterns. One of the things I actually wrote on my "to do" list this morning was to take 6-10 characters from the base font and start a timer. And then divide by 6-10. That way I'd know more accurately how long the conversion would take for an entire font of 255 (or so) characters. I'll try to post the results soon. Thanks for your guidance. Ron

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't suppose this is what you want to hear, but I reckon its a waste of time doing cross-hatching like this. Make the solid font and apply the cross-hatching fill or any other fill you like in your DTP or graphics program.

[William]

Ron's cross-hatching is vector, whereas the desktop publishing program fill might be bitmap.

So, if, say, a large A0 size poster is to be prepared as a pdf and printed, maybe Ron's method would be better for such an application?

William Overington

19 June 2009

[Rontenfour]

Thanks William -- You have very crisply explained exactly why I started the Cross-Hatch FONT effort in the first place. I have been doing the "bit-map" cross-hatching for years, and while it CAN be done, it is horrendously inconvenient. What little experience I have, thus far, makes me realize just how really pleased I am with the power and convenience of being able to access a cross-hatched entire character set with the single click of a key per letter. Of course things like Italic and instant size adjustment just add to the already far more than expected power and benefits. I guess you said it all in 4 words -- vector is the victor. Thanks again William, Ron

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

After hundreds of hours of work you have just one pattern for one typeface design that is a fixed size in relation to the glyphs. If you apply the fills in a graphic application you have hundreds of patterns that can use a fine or coarse grid at any angle, and can be applied to any typeface.

In a drawing application like CorelDraw you can use postscript fills, which are vectors. It would be a much better use of your time to design the postscript fill (or a high resolution bitmap fill (300 dpi is adequate for printing).

[Rontenfour]

Hi Everyone -- I have iterated to the point where my head spins. And while none of my letters look much like the originals from TRS-80 days, I am beginning to think maybe the end is in sight. I still think I would like to pursue the "Cross-Hatching" process, but I have an over-riding question. I hope someone can help. Is there a "standard" way to obtain some sort of "Copy-Right" protection for the base font? The cross-hatching is not as exposed since it's the result of a"process" that is not easily copied, but if I were to make the 62 characters available they would be easily copied. I welcome any thoughts, help, guidance and assistance on ways to maintain "ownership" of the forms. Thanks, Ron

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

You own the copyright to the font there is nothing you need to register or do to claim the copyright. If it says © all rights reserved in your font then thats what it means. You can embed a license agreement or agreement link in the font Naming fields.

Enforcing the copyright, of course, is another matter entirely.

[kpkale]

I have been going through this post. Probably someone might be able to help me.

I am using GDI+ library in VB & C++ to draw a hollow TTF Font on a picturebox. Now I want to do cross hatching inside this font and have the flexibility of changing distance between hatch lines, or change the angle of hatch lines. Can anyone guide me on the logic of how to do the hatching? I essentially need to do a vector hatching as I want to use the same logic to draw the hatch on paper using a X-Y pen plotter.