FontCreator for symbology in ArcGIS?

[lmjacobs]

Hello! I am a GIS Analyst for Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida. I am wondering if FontCreator would be ideal for my use in creating symbology for mapping purposes. We use ArcGIS software developed by ESRI (www.esri.com). Images are .bmp and fonts are TrueType.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Leslie Jacobs

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Your question is too vague. FontCreator creates TrueType fonts, so I guess it will do what you need. I don't think you will find an easier program to use for font creation. Unicode fonts can contain thousands of symbols. Is your mapping program limited to using symbol fonts or the ANSI character set?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

There are a few other thrreads on GIS, such as this one

Try a search for "GIS". The main requirement seems to be to rotate glyphs about their centre. To do that, I think you need to centre glyphs on the origin. I'm not sure what you need for the advance width. GIS fonts are a bit specialised.

Map Symbol.png (15.06 KiB) Viewed 15557 times

[William]

I do not know the answer to the original question at the present time.

However, I am wondering if Mr Jacobs would like to try downloading one or more of my TrueType fonts from the following thread please, installing them on his local system and then trying them out and observing how well they perform in the particular application: whether not at all, fully or partially. For example, partially might be something like displaying well but not rotating as desired due to an offset, or whatever.

If the answer is other than "fully", then perhaps we can find a solution by changing something in the fonts.

viewtopic.php?t=1947

I found the following in relation to GIS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS_%28disambiguation%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic ... on_science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic ... ion_system

William Overington

26 February 2008

[Erwin Denissen]

Hi Leslie,

Hello! I am a GIS Analyst for Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida. I am wondering if FontCreator would be ideal for my use in creating symbology for mapping purposes. We use ArcGIS software developed by ESRI (www.esri.com). Images are .bmp and fonts are TrueType.

I know at least a couple of our customers use FontCreator to design fonts to be used with ESRI software.

Here are some posts:
viewtopic.php?t=496
viewtopic.php?t=1116

[lmjacobs]

Thank you for all of the replies. I do not believe that what I explained was "vague." It was actually concise and to the point as to what I was looking for. I will not be rotating any current symbology. I will be creating map symbology sets . . . like you see in a map legend and represented on a map frame.

I have been a GIS Analyst for over 10 years and I am well aware of the threads and discussions of various types of software that can work well within my profession. Previously, a preferred software for this type of work was Macromedia's Fontographer. However, Adobe has abandoned this and is no longer supporting it. Being that I will be using my software for commercial purposes, using a software package that is no longer supported is a poor business choice. That is why I was looking elsewhere.

Thank you for your time.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Thank you for all of the replies. I do not believe that what I explained was "vague."

You may not think so, but I am telling you that it was.

You asked:

I am wondering if FontCreator would be ideal for my use in creating symbology for mapping purposes. We use ArcGIS software developed by ESRI (www.esri.com). Images are .bmp and fonts are TrueType.

Although we know what FontCreator can do, and what it cannot do, how can we know what you mean by "ideal." You haven't told us anything about what your needs are other than that you need to make Truetype fonts.

FontCreator makes Truetype fonts. Does that make it ideal for your purposes? Perhaps, as it is a lot cheaper than either FontLab or Fontographer, and easeir to use.

However, without any knowledge of your preferred working methods or any experience in using GIS software, we cannot guess what you mean by "ideal." Is ease of use more important than Postscript support? Can your staff adjust to working with quadratic bezier curves (on-curve/off-curve points) instead of the more familiar bezier curves of drawing programs?

How will you be creating your symbols? Have you already drawn them in a graphics program, or will you be drawing them directly in FontCreator. Will you be importing scanned bitmaps into FontCreator?

You can download the 30-day free trial and see what it can do, but of course it will take considerable time to find out its strengths and weaknesses, which I suppose is the reason for your post, but as all you ask is “Does it make Truetype fonts,” all we can say is, “Yes, it makes Truetype fonts.”

You can read my review to learn more.

[gditguy]

I've been having trouble creating symbols in Photoshop/Illustrator and importing them into Fontcreator and keeping the quality. Any tricks to the trade? Is there any documentation specifically for creating symbol font and importing them?

I'll keep looking of course but any help would be much appreciated.

TY

[Dick Pape]

I use Font Creator extensively to create symbol fonts. Mostly I use BMP images but have used other types also. I set the Import Image parameters to Smooth Filter-None and then adjust the Threshold values to get the most detail possible without too much darkening or too much lightening. On the images I work from this is a very critical setting as you either end up with black details or blank details. (In some other thread is noted a trick of importing an image several times varying the Threshold values until you can construct a single image from the several images.)

Everything is dependent upon the quality of the input image. The fewer the colors used or the absence of a background gives a better result. You lose detail when having to adjust for color conversions as everything has to become black or white in FC. And obviously, less complexity of the input makes the conversion more straightforward.

I keep the input size large so as to not lose details in the conversion. I prefer having more "points" in an image than fewer. The number of points doesn't change once imported. I can always correct the size of the image in Font Creator but cannot add lost details. Once converted into Font Creator I don't think details ever disappear -- they just get smaller or larger.

Perhaps you could explain or show examples of the "lost quality" you are seeing.

[gditguy]

You mention, "Everything is dependent upon the quality of the input image," and "I keep the input size large so as to not lose details in the conversion." Are you referring to using 8 bit vs 16 bit or what resolution - 72, 300? Which are recommended?

Have you tried using a PNG, GIF, JPG rather than a BMP? Shouldn't a vector image such as a WMF or EMF work as well? I've had trouble with vector imports.

Also, can you force colors? Say I wanted to use an American flag...would that end up black and white or could I force the red, white and blue?

When importing images in FC it seems they are always resized to a tiny version. I then have to resize the image. Is this standard?

Thank you so much for your help!

[Dick Pape]

1. Easiest one first:
Fonts don't have color characteristics. Some people can color a font using a paint program or by setting the entire glyph to another color - but that is separate from the design of the font itself.

Fonts don't have width characteristics either -- they are formed by a string of straight lines (or curved lines) between two "points". A closed loop has to be formed to give it width.

The simplest is three points which when linked together form a closed figure - a triangle. The fattest or thinnest, simplest or most complicated of fonts are alike that way -- consisting of such closed figures.

2. Next one. The FC Import Image Load menu shows which types of files can be selected: jpg, jpeg, gif, png, bmp, ico, emf. wmf. For any of the others, I use Irfanview to convert to one of the accepted formats. This has worked very well but I've found some EPS files are unreadable by Irfanview either (and I don't know why). I have resorted to capturing the image using Snagit (for example) and saving it as a bmp file.

Irfanview is your friend to read and convert formats from/to. It has a Batch conversion feature for changing formats of an entire directory.

3. Since I work with symbol fonts I want as much detail as possible as some printer ornaments are incredibly complex. This is a different need than someone converting alphabetic letters where there is very little detail to the image. (A letter O may have 8 points or something...). I don't care how many jagged edges there are in the image. Some I will edit out and others will be left in to give "character".

I probably don't have the terminology correct but I have a 600dpi scanner - if I had a 3200 dpi scanner I'd use it - to better represent the image shapes.

Some images are too big (have too many jaggies) and can't be easily corrected within FC. When that happens I will change the Threshold or Filters in the Import menu and see the result.

4. After all the images are entered and edited, I use the FC Glyph Transformer to "Scale" the images up or down. There's the same amount of detail in whatever size the character becomes. I use Scale to make consistent sizes throughout a font.

[Dave Crosby]

gditguy said:

When importing images in FC it seems they are always resized to a tiny version. I then have to resize the image. Is this standard?

It sounds like you have not changed the Multiplier in the Import Image (Icon with Picture with sun) tool. Look in the Glyph Tab.

Be sure to check the bottom box to make your new value the new default.

[gditguy]

Wow...some serious progress here thanks to you guys. Everything looks so much better now.

I'm still a little in the dark how things work overall though. I created a black square (symbol) with an airplane cut out the center of it. I want the image to take on a blue color later. Am I correct in saying the black will change color and the airplane cutout will stay white or do I have to add a background color of white? Or will the cutout show whatever is behind the symbol...in my case a map...and this will not work for me.

Thanks so much for your help!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Am I correct in saying the black will change color and the airplane cutout will stay white or do I have to add a background color of white? Or will the cutout show whatever is behind the symbol...in my case a map...and this will not work for me.

The background will stay transparent — it is not white. Check out any font, e.g. WingDings. You may have to use graphics.

[gditguy]

Graphics?