Member hra… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 This topic was imported from the Typophile platform For the client of the "con-script" font I'm making I need to provide a webfont so he can avoid text-as-image or his users needing to install the font. The results do not have to reach any pinnacle of quality - I simply need to end up with a decent rendering - some blurriness being OK. I'm assuming there's a zero-cost way of doing this, but I'm in the dark concerning "best practice". Any pointers would be highly appreciated. hhp Link to comment
Member Si_… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator Link to comment
Member Ric… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 @hrant If the Fontsquirrel generator doesn't give you something you consider acceptable, drop me a line. I'll be glad to help. Rich Link to comment
Member hra… Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 So Font Squirrel is the only game in town? OK, I'll give it a shot, fingers crossed. But you might indeed be hearing from me Richard! Thanks. hhp Link to comment
Member Ric… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 @hrant All depends on the nature of the font you're starting with. OT rasterizers are generally more forgiving than TT rasterizers so sometimes there's no avoiding having to tweak the outlines to make them more TT autohint-friendly. Another option is ttfautohint. (There's Windows and 'Nix executables available but I'm not sure about Mac.) Does pretty well with bold outlines, especially those with a lot of straight lines. A work in progress. Link to comment
Member Pab… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 I used to use the Fontsquirell generator, but it strip out most of the font metadata, so you may need to reopen the font and putt all the info back in, and regenerate the font (keeping the hints table). Now I'm using TTF Autohint v0.5 and I'm very happy so far. If you want, I can give it a run on your font for you. Link to comment
Member Ram… Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 From my tests, the best results in autohinting are achieved by: 1- Generate a proper TTF font with well made blue zones in place. 2- Autohint with TTFAutohint 3- Use Fontsquirrel generator **in expert mode**, set to not autohint. Link to comment
Member hra… Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 Pablo, thank you! Ramiro, do the outlines have to be designed as TT cubic beziers, or is conversion OK? hhp Link to comment
Member Ram… Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 @Hrant: Well, conversion is OK if you compare and check against the original PS contours. First, I erase the mask layer and copy all the glyphs to mask layer. Only then I convert the foreground to TTF outlines and I go glyph by glyph checking is everything is fine and eventually tweaking some details in TTF outlines. Avoid "in poitn BCPs" (BCPs with zero value). They distort the contour when the line is converted to TTF. Link to comment
Member hra… Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 What I meant was, is the hinting ported over in a way that works onscreen? > Avoid "in point BCPs" Which I hate doing, but had to for Vem (Ernestine's Armenian). And make inflections explicit, and avoid crossing projections of BCPs, and.... :-/ hhp Link to comment
Member Té… Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 @Fink – IIRC, OS-X has a BSD foundation, so using ttfautohint there in a shell should be possible. @Pablo – I suspect that Fontsquirrelmort’s hinter is FontForge which, as I have seen, throws away any and every table it doesn’t understand, most likely because it won’t know if, when and how to rebuild them. One could probably work around that with ttx and a bit more scripting, though. Link to comment
Member Ric… Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 @Té I don't have time to check, but I seem to remember that Karsten Luecke did some work porting ttfautohint to Mac. It's on the ttfautohint repository. Github, or wherever. (I know he contributed something, I think that is what it is.) @all If you need to run the Windows ttfautohint executable repeatedly, I have instructions to do so, setting it up as a "SendTo" Menu shortcut posted on the Google Web Fonts blog. But a warning: The performance of ttfautohint ver .5 is very, very spotty. Both literally and figuratively. But I applaud the continuing effort, though. Link to comment
Member hra… Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 Hoping not to curtail this fruitful exposé, an update: With help from a Nordic friend, I've seen Font Squirrel produce quite acceptable results (surely thanks in part to this invented script being quite geometric). hhp Link to comment
Member Ric… Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 @hrant Glad it worked out. The Generator is a terrific tool, absolutely. Rich Link to comment
Member aba… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Most of the Google Web Fonts are 'magic' hinted using http://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/source/browse/tools/nonhint... as TTFAutohint bloats the filesize too much at the moment. Donate to the project to help the programmer optimize it for the web! :) Link to comment
Member Jen… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Most of the Google Web Fonts are 'magic' hinted using setnonhinting-fonttools.py The standards of what kind of font treatment may be called »hinting« have surely gone down since the good ol' days ;) Link to comment
Member hra… Posted January 17, 2012 Author Share Posted January 17, 2012 Yup. Probably because quantity and quality don't mix. hhp Link to comment
Member aba… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Interesting discussion with Dan R on twitter about this just now; I suppose 'non hinting' is a better description than 'magic hinting' - setting the PREP and GASP tables with 'magic numbers' improves rendering over no hinting tables at all, and while it is no substitute for top quality hand hinting, it doesn't effect the filesize at all :) Link to comment
Member Jen… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 MIght as well call it »religious hinting« instead of »magic hinting« ;) Link to comment
Member Si_… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 >MIght as well call it »religious hinting« instead of »magic hinting« ;) Not sure that would work, after all these magic/religious hints are stripped out of the fonts when served to Mac based browsers to reduce file sizes, and you simply can't remove religion (or magic) from any Mac/Windows debate. So maybe "mythic hints" or maybe "social hints" might be better. :-) Si Link to comment
Member dez… Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 How about "Tree falls in the Woods" hints? or "The Emperors New Hints"? Link to comment
Member Té… Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I nominate "thong hints". A thong, btw, is a small triangle of nothing tied up with some string to resemble knickers. Link to comment
Member k.l… Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 did some work porting ttfautohint to Mac (Merely compiled a Mac binary of an earlier version.) Link to comment
6
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now