Font for postal address labels

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1

Hello, I installed FontCreator trial version in hopes of learning whether or not it is possible to do what I want to do. Unfortunately, so far I can’t tell if it is possible because the trial version will not allow me to install a font that I edit in the program. Fair enough, it is a trial version after all. It will allow ‘testing’ the font but that does not tell me conclusively what I need to know.

What I want to do is this: I have a database of names and addresses that is used for multiple purposes. The text is all entered into the database with normal use of upper and lower case letters, numbers, commas, periods, and so on. That is how I want the names and addresses to appear when I do a mail merge into a word processor form letter for example. However, one of the uses of the database is to address envelopes that meet certain USPS specs. That is-- all caps, no bold text, no comma’s, no periods. I would like to find or edit a font that would achieve this for me so that I do not have to manually edit output from the database. In other words, in the database I have perhaps:

John Doe
123 E. Main St.
Anytown, CA 99999

(Note the name is in bold text.)
When I print an envelope address label directly from the database program I would like to select a font that would, without any manual editing, print this:

JOHN DOE
123 E MAIN ST
ANYTOWN CA 99999

Note the bold, period’s, and comma’s are all removed without adding any extra spaces and any lower case is changed to all upper case.

I took a stab at this with a freeware font editor. Starting with an Arial all-caps font, the editor allowed me to ‘clear’ the comma and period glyphs but the printer printed a space where those characters would have been. Also I could find no way to prevent bold text.

Is this possible to achieve with FontCreator? If I right-click a character in FontCreator and select DELETE, what will be the result in my printed output scenario above? Will there be a space where the comma/period was or will there be nothing there?

My life would be simpler if I could just find an existing font for this purpose. However, I’ve spent dozens of hours looking for such a font without success, so, i think I will need to find a way to edit an existing font for my own use on my own PC.

Thanks

2

Deleting the period and comma characters will not work; you need to change them into empty zero-width characters. Open them, delete the glyphs (the pictures of the characters), and drag the right boundary so it is at the same place as the left boundary (probably at 0).

As for the bolding; you need to make a copy of the font and, without changing anything, change its settings to bold. If there isn’t a related bold font, your computer will automatically bold the characters.

3

Thank you for explaining about comma and period. That sounds easy. I think I can accomplish that.

As for the bold text: I may be misunderstanding what you said but-- I don’t want to create bold text from existing normal text. I want to force the existing bold text in my database to be printed in normal, non-bold text on my address labels as shown in the examples in my original post. In other words I need the new font to NOT have bold characters. The postal specs do not allow bold text.

4

The thing is, you are wanting the computer to act as if it has a regular font and a bold font, yet the text to appear the same as for just the regular font.

If the glyphs in the bold font are the same as those in the regular font, then they should print the same as those in the regular font, so you should get the result that you want. I write should because that is the theory, I have not actually tried it. Until tried on the computer that you are using, there can be no absolute certainty in the matter.

However, if you do not supply a font that is named as a bold font, then the operating system on your computer may try to produce a “faux bold” dynamically, by simply copying the regular font and widening the lines of the copy.

So you need to supply a font that is labelled as a bold, even though the glyphs are exactly the same as for the regular font.

Producing that bold font is reasonably straightforward, though needs several steps.

If the regular font is named, say Anytown and is in a file named ANYTOWNR.TTF, then you would need to open ANYTOWNR.TTF and save it with another file name. The name ANYTOWNB.TTF seems useful, though that letter B is not essential: I just wanted another file name and that name gives a useful guide to a human reader of the name.

Yet ANYTOWNB,TTF would not yet contain a font that would be regarded by the computer as the Bold version of the Anytown font.

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/trying-to-produce-bold-and-bold-italic-versions-of-a-font/2010/5

I am unclear as to what is the minimum required yet the following will work well.

Format Settings… General

Change Classification Weight to Bold

Format Settings… Metrics

Click a Bold checkbox. The other Bold checkbox should change automatically as a consequence of doing that.

Format Settings… Classification

Change the Weight to Bold

Tools AutoNaming…

The Bold part should now have been set automatically.

When using the fonts, you need to install both fonts.

I hope that this helps.

William Overington

16 February 2011

5

William, thanks for explaining in detail. My guess that I was misunderstanding what Yehuda was telling me is now obvious. Thanks to you both.

I think I understand this now. Still I will need to buy the licensed version before I can proceed to know for sure if this will work on my system I guess.

One thing though as I run through this in the trial version. You wrote…

Format Settings… General
Change Classification Weight to Bold

Format Settings… Metrics
Click a Bold checkbox. The other Bold checkbox should change automatically as a consequence of doing that.

Hope I’m not sounding too obsessed with detail but aren’t all of these settings under the Format Settings… Classification tab instead of the Metrics and General tabs? Regardless though-- No worries. I think I can figure it out.

6

Well, I produced my post writing and referring to FontCreator 5.6, which is the version that I have, which is not the latest version, so I cannot be sure as to whether or not the layout might have been changed between the production of the version that I have and the latest version. If someone reading this who has the current latest version could check that out and post the result, then that would be helpful please.

William Overington

17 February 2011