Handwriting Font Sheets

Gallery
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Hi, I am not sure if this is the right category thread, but I am redoing my sheets that I give people to make handwriting fonts.

Would anyone like to test them out for ease of use?

Keep in mind, I would normally be the one printing them. I print on my printer’s “BEST” setting in “COLOR”, you may wish to do the same to get the proper effect

I am already contemplating about removing the 4th line (you’ll know what I mean after viewing) due to g’s, j’s, p’s, q’s, & y’s.

I would welcome any feedback.

Okay, here are the links to the graphics.

http://thump.net/1235524/avatars-samples/page1.gif
http://thump.net/1235524/avatars-samples/page2.gif
http://thump.net/1235524/avatars-samples/page3.gif

Thanks :slight_smile:

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I have to confess I’ve not tried creating a script font. My handwriting is not so good.

I think the fourth line is useful as a guide for the descenders. I wonder how you use it in practice. Do you overlay a transparency and write on that? Otherwise, how do you erase the lines from the scan? Erwin’s template has no lines, so one can write directly on the template, though one might find it harder to keep the proportions of characters even.

The circles might be a hindrance when drawing italic script characters.

A GIF image is difficult to edit if one wants to design a font with different proportions, e.g. shorter descenders, or bigger x-height. A Windows Meta File without the lines might be more useful, then one could draw the lines first to define the x-height, ascenders, and descenders at the right position. One might start by drawing the H, y, and b first and draw the horizontal rules to suit those characters.

The figures also need a consistent width in most fonts. Perhaps they could be printed in a column so that figure width guidelines can be drawn for them. £€¤¢ and +=÷−× also need to be the same width as the figures.

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Thank you for your input. My handwriting is lousy as well! :slight_smile:

I completely agree; not good for italic. This would be for print or doodles. In my mind, I already have something churning for italic / calligraphy-like submissions. Although my calligraphy skills are poor (newbie), I have noticed on practice sheets some special guidelines, and I thought about incorporating that into the sheets, but I haven’t started that project yet.

Back to these … Actually, I scan at a higher than recommended dpi via my favorite art program (Jasc Paint Sop Pro - SO EASY TO USE). I just adjust the “Brightness & Contrast” just a bit and all the light gray goes away, leaving the submissions in tact and jaggie-free!

The reason I was contemplating removing the 4th line is that with people’s real-life handwriting (including my own), my g’s, j’s, p’s, q’s, & y’s tend to be longer than a professionally done font like “Time New Roman”. I used ‘Times’ as the guide characters. I do like & appreciate your comments about the proportions & figures. I will work on that.

I like Erwin’s template, but the boxes are very small; I can barely see the white spaces. There’s almost 1.5" border on top, left-side, & right-side, plus a 2" border at the bottom. I printed it at best quailty. You know what would be cool … A sheet that fits behind it with the horizontal lines.

Maybe that’s where I should begin again ???

Thank you Bhikkhu Pesala, the wheels are churning once again!

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I remember a professional fontographer instructing his clients to write down certain combinations of letters in addition to each individual one. My guess is that he wanted to get a feel for the letter spacing, ligatures that arise, and intersection points without making those decisions himself. Although I’m not sure where I might be able to customize ligatures such as my own “At” and plural “s”, it’s something to consider.

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Welcome to the forums.

Although I’m not sure where I might be able to customize ligatures such as my own “At” and plural “s”, it’s something to consider.

The use of ligatures in fonts is an interesting topic. The way intended for the future is to use a feature known as glyph substitution. However, ligatures can also be used by direct mapping: this can lead to non-standard mappings yet can be useful for some purposes, such as producing hardcopy printout locally.

The Font Creator 5 program does not support glyph substitution features. Also, even if a font does support glyph substitution it is only of use if the software using it can also support glyph substitution. However, as time proceeds maybe a later version of Font Creator will support glyph substitution features.

However, at present I would encourage you to produce such ligatures as you choose and make each of them accessible to a program such as Wordpad using a mapping in the Private Use Area. That area is from U+E000 to U+F8FF, though it is probably best to place your ligatures in the region U+E000 to U+EFFF.

In addition, at some future time when glyph substitution features are perhaps available and an updated font is perhaps being made, those same glyphs would be available to be referenced in a glyph substitution table. This would be easier than attemting to draw the ligatures at that time as, in my opinion, it is best, for handwriting fonts, to try to do all of the artwork at one session and all of the glyph production at one time if possible: this is so that any choices made perhaps almost subconsciously are done together within the same train of thought.

Also, it is possible to make glyphs which are accessed using glyph substitution also to be accessible using a Private Use Area mapping, so that direct access from an application program is still possible.

and plural “s”, it’s something to consider.

Now that is an interesting thought.

When I have seen examples about glyph substitution they have always had sequences of glyphs which end with a character which “uses ink”. If a sequence such as small e small s space can be used for glyph substitution then an “es for the end of a word within a sentence” ligature could be used.

Example of fonts with ligatures within the Private Use Area are my Quest text font, my Chronicle Text font and my Style font. Quest text is rather large so maybe Style and Chronicle Text are easiest to study. In each there is a glyph for a ligature of small c small t at U+E707. The designs of the glyphs are very different within the two fonts. Please note that Chronicle Text is one of my older fonts which started off in the Softy program. The Style font has been produced entirely using Font Creator 5.

Each of those fonts has a thread in this Gallery forum.

The fonts are all available from the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm

William Overington

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And now there’s the new HL software :wink: