Garava - My First Proper Font

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I have lots of experience editing fonts to add missing characters or accents, but relatively little in creating fonts from scratch. My most recent project came to a grinding halt when I found out that the fonts I had been given permission to edit were all forgeries of commercial typefaces.

So I decided that the only way to get good free fonts was to make my own. The project wasn’t a complete waste of time, in fact it has proved very useful to learn more about font editing, and has given me the confidence to create my own fonts. As the fonts were missing several important characters, I had to learn how to create new ones using bits of existing characters, or from the geometric shapes on the Samples toolbar.

Garava is a Pāli word meaning “Respect.” Seven typestyles are now complete: regular, italic, bold, bold italic, Small Caps, Small Caps Bold, and Heavy. The font now includes the full Latin Extended Additional character set and extra symbols. The font is not yet ready for release.

As always, any feedback is much appreciated.

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If testimony were required to:

  • illustrate the efficacy, versatility and efficiency of FC5
  • demonstrate what manner of professional results can be obtained when used by an expert user

then surely this is it.

Heigh ho! How I wish I…

The subject title proclaims:

“My First Proper Font”

What else is it possible to achieve?

Joe.

PS I am not enamoured with the ‘a’. Well, you have to think of something! :smiley:

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Hello!

Compliment, looks great! But the pictures aren’t shown in Firefox (in IE, Netscape and Opera they work properly). :confused: Strange.

I had to learn how to create new ones using bits of existing characters

I have stored all kinds of single stems, circles, serifs and so on in a file called “workspace.ttf” - this makes it very easy to re-use them for new glyphs by just copying them together and using the union function.

Kindest regards,
Laenglich

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I have just uploaded the initial release of Garava, which was kindly hinted for me by a forum member, to Garava.7z

I use a Page Plus template for printing font samples, and here you can see a PDF of its output.

The 7-zip file is 36% smaller than a ZIP archive. If your archive program is unable to open 7z archives I recommend downloading the latest beta of the free 7-zip program, which achieves excellent compression, and is now just as easy to use as other Zip programs.

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Since I haven’t sufficient reason for obtaining a premium Desk Top Publishing package, I thought my problem was solved when I discovered the free PagePlusSE. Alas no. PagePlus10 apparently ignores backward compatibility problems and the file Unicode Font Template refuses to open in PagePlusSE.

Heigh ho! Stuck again.

:frowning:

Joe.

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I guess I could have made the template in Open Office, but it would have taken me ten times longer, if I could have done it all.

Edit It is not that difficult though the latest beta crashed on my first attempt. Two problems to overcome. How to enter “=” into a table cell so that it is treated as text, not as a formula? How to automate entry of code points with quick fill so that I don’t have to type 32,33,34,35, up to 9,999 manually.

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This file, Unicode Font Template.doc, downloads as a .zip file and on extracting gives a .ppp file not a .doc file. It still will not open in PagePlus SE.

Thanks for what you have done anyway. It would indeed be useful if it were a .doc file.

Thanks.

Joe.

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Bhikkhu Pesala,

Thanks. That’s fine. I’ll continue on the same lines. I’m sure it’s going to take me “a heck of a lot” longer to do it! :smiley:

Joe.

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Two problems to overcome. How to enter “=” into a table cell so that it is treated as text, not as a formula? How to automate entry of code points with quick fill so that I don’t have to type 32,33,34,35, up to 9,999 manually.

I don’t know the package which you are using, however, it sounds like a spreadsheet so it might be worth trying what works in Excel 97.

How to enter “=” into a table cell so that it is treated as text, not as a formula?

Try '=

That is, put an apostrophe in front of the equals sign.

How to automate entry of code points with quick fill so that I don’t have to type 32,33,34,35, up to 9,999 manually.

Suppose that the 32 is to go into cell C7. The following might be worth a try.

Put the number 32 into cell C7.

Into cell C8 put the following.

=C7 + 1

Copy the contents of cell C8 into C9 … cell Cn, where n is a large number of your choice within the capability of the software.

The way Excel 97 works is that C9 will thus have =C8 + 1 in it and C29 will have =C28 + 1 in it and so on, yet will display the numbers not the formula in the main array.

I do not know if this will work in the software which you are using: however, it might be worth a try.

William Overington

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The apostrophe trick works. Entering forumalae is more type-consuming than entering numbers manually.

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As William suggested, in Excel you can type
in cell A1: 1
in cell A2: =A1 + 1

Then select cell A2 and copy it to the clipboard. Select then next 9,999 cells below it. Now paste from the clipboard.

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:slight_smile: Those of us of an impecunious (or maybe just ‘mean’) nature do not posses these applications. I have MS Word 2000 because it was cheaper bundled with the MS Works 2000 suite!

How is it possible to achieve this result in a MS Word table? I cannot get the Table/Formula function to work.

This is related to FC5 to make a template - honestly! :smiley:

Joe.

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Here is a Word Document with a table that has 9999 rows. The cells contain values 1..9999.
http://forum.high-logic.com/postedfiles/9999.zip

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:smiley: Wow! Very many thanks. That’s excellent.

Joe.

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The font family is most impressive.

I have issue with the numbers. I would like the 3,5,6,8 to pass a little
below the baseline as do the c and e. The number 4 is the only number
not to reach up to the top line - I would prefer that it would unless
maybe you make 1 similarly small.

Mike

p.s. I’m taking the summer off from font work. Back when the
nights get longer!

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Thanks for the feedback Mike. Criticial appraisal is more useful than universal praise.

I checked the numbers for Garava Regular, but I couldn’t see anything wrong. The 3,5,6, and 8 all undershoot by -25 — the same as the capital C The top of the 1 and 4 align with the top of 7 and flat top of 5, which are at the Caps top of 1434 funits. Only thing wrong that I could spot is the buttom bowls of the 3 and 5 are a bit too thin — only 34 funits instead of 50 for the “C”

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Bhikkhu!

I’m not sure you should need ‘to check’, it is the quick glance
that reveals aesthetics. What I saw may be an illusion but I
did see it. The numbers don’t SEEM to have some of the interesting
features I see in the characters.

I get this impression by looking at the whole sample at once
rather than by studying each character.

I do like the font a lot!

Mike

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I’ve been looking at Garava again. In the days of metal type, the inking process was of the utmost importance and had to be very carefully monitored. If there was too liberal an application, sharp corners, say where a curved stroke met a straight stroke at an acute angle, the angle became clogged with ink. I’ve seen poorly printed text exhibiting this fault. It is my opinion, and only an opinion, that the ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘p’ and ‘q’ look as if this has happened, however impossible this is nowadays. This doesn’t detract from a great effort.

Joe.