Font scaling advice sought

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Alexander
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Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 10:15 am

Font scaling advice sought

Post by Alexander »

Hi, hoping someone here can help me out. I'd like to use a font in my Visual Basic application.
It's Franklin Gothic Demi, regular 10 pt. I use this in Excel which will scale a whole page and at 85%
this font looks great and is a perfect size for my VB project. It's very clear and nicely combines condensed + bold.
The same font at 100% isn't so good.

Can I "scale" the font down from 100% to 85% anyhow so it'll look the same as in Excel?
If yes, can anyone give me a hand, or advise what I might need to achieve that?

Thanks very much for any info.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

So what's stopping you from using Franklin Gothic 8.5 point?
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Alexander
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Alexander »

It looks nothing like the 10 pt one. And isn't very nice by comparison.

Can we put images into these messages? - I can show you what I mean.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

There's an attachments tab below the message reply box.

The license terms would not allow you to edit the font.
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Alexander
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Alexander »

> There's an attachments tab below the message reply box.

I can't see that here. Maybe I'm too new ?

>The license terms would not allow you to edit the font.

Licence? There's a licence involved ? How does one acquire or get permission? Who from ?
That aside, its it even possible to scale a font ? Should I look for something else or at designing something
new. It doesn't need more bold or italic or anything. Are there people that do that?

I did tryout all the fonts in my system but nothing else was as good.
It's wanted for a public domain project btw, with no commercial interest of any kind.
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Alexander wrote:> There's an attachments tab below the message reply box.

I can't see that here. Maybe I'm too new ?
Perhaps. Don't you see this below the message reply box?
Attachments Tab.png
Attachments Tab.png (3.76 KiB) Viewed 9497 times
Alexander wrote:>The license terms would not allow you to edit the font.

Licence? There's a licence involved ? How does one acquire or get permission? Who from ?
Are you really that naïve? Look at the Legal Tab in the Font Properties. You would need to contact Microsoft to edit one of their fonts and use it in your project. It matters not a jot that it's a public domain project.
Alexander wrote:That aside, is it even possible to scale a font ? Should I look for something else or at designing something new. It doesn't need more bold or italic or anything. Are there people that do that?
Sure, but after scaling a font, the hinting will probably be wrong or lost altogether. I don't know about Franklin Gothic, but some fonts have a feature to use differently shaped glyphs at very small sizes, and below 10 point is small.
Alexander wrote:I did try out all the fonts in my system but nothing else was as good.
That's probably because of the very good quality hinting in Franklin Gothic.

Find a font with a GNU type open license agreement that allows you to modify it, but it is a difficult task to create fonts that look good at such small sizes. Microsoft even provide free tools with which users can manually hint their fonts, but it's not a job to undertake lightly.

The Autohinting available in FontCreator is simple to use, but you may need manual hinting.

I think your best option is to keep looking for another font that you can use, or perhaps use a bitmap font editor.
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Alexander
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Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 10:15 am

Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Alexander »

Hello,

Don't know about naïve, I was more thinking no-one would design and distribute a font not to be used (and my idea for altering it was just to emulate how it shows in Excel).

I don't see that Options or Attachments thing here, but if you take a look here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49222457/Image2.jpg
Image attached inline
Image attached inline
Image2 (2).jpg (47.93 KiB) Viewed 9488 times
That's what I'm trying to replicate. Particularly the size. Maybe you can suggest something to try ?

Thanks for the other suggestions, I doubt I could get anywhere myself, funny I did contemplate bit mapping but decided there must be heaps more
to it. (I've never heard of 'hinting'.)

Perhaps someone would design something for me, for a fee? What kind of price, etc. Anyone interested, please PM me ?
(Hope that's ok Mr Moderator :)

Thanks for responding.
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Re: Font scaling advice sought

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Of course, the license allows you to use the font at any size you need. What it doesn't allow you to do is to modify the font.
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