Pixel Polka

[William]

I saw the thread on Pixel fonts in the Support forum.

viewtopic.php?t=1263

I thought that I would try to produce such a font.

Here is my attempt.

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

William Overington

[William]

This morning I produced Pixel Polka Outline as a variation of Pixel Polka.

I started Font Creator 5.0 and opened PIXPOLKA.TTF Pixel Polka. I then saved as PIXPOLKO.TTF and then used Tools | AutoNaming... to name the font Pixel Polka Outline setting the version as version 0.03, the same version number as the Pixel Polka font from which it is derived.

I then used Tools | Glyph Transformer... to alter all glyphs using Thin (35, 35).

I then used Tools | Glyph Transformer... to alter all glyphs using Hollow (70, 70).

As 70 is twice 35, this has the effect of producing an outline font without altering the final location of the original contours. The font was then saved.

After that I inspected the glyphs, both by looking at them individually and also by using the font validation facility. Looking at the glyphs with the grid options set to 256 and 16 with the grid colour set as red=244 green=209 blue=11 gave a good display, particularly as this font has outer contour lines mostly aligned onto 256 font unit grid lines.

The only reported errors were with the three lowercase tilde accented characters, (a tilde, n tilde, o tilde) and with the asciitilde. The tilde accent of a tilde was altered and then copied to the other glyphs, pasting being after deleting the original tilde accent of each of those glyphs. The problem was resolved by making the accent three contours instead of two contours.

I wondered whether I should manually alter the combination border: in the event I did not.

The font looks good at 12 point, where it looks solid, 18 point, 24 point, 36 point, 48 point and 72 point. At other sizes it can look awful on-screen: the mathematical pseudohinting which produces the crisp on-screen display at the above sizes results in problems at 14 point.

However, the font seems worth using at certain sizes.

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

Some readers might like to try copying the following text onto the clipboard and pasting into WordPad and then formatting using Pixel Polka Outline at 72 point.

Aually.

The word is Actually yet in the above line the ct is set using a ligature glyph which is within the Private Use Area.

William

[Erwin Denissen]

The block size in your font is 70x70 which it significant smaller than what is mentioned in the tutorial from Cal Henderson, so you run into problems a bit faster with small font sizes.

FontCreator 6 will contain a way to make the glyphs look more crisp. We expect to release it in May.