Font software
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Last update: Fri Nov 20 16:29:29 EST 2009
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Font software |
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Generate 3D fonts. 4MB shareware package. By Photon Computer. Check for download instructions at download.com (link).
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CD-ROM description. Software on the CD-ROM produced by EXPERT SOFTWARE INC. (US$15.67). Apparently, a 2d-font to 3d-font conversion tool.
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Overview of the font formats.
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Adobe Binary Screen Font, binary version of .BDF. Specs.
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Judy Litt at QuaLitty Design in Austin discusses typography, and provides links to font sites and font software, and offers general advice on all things typographic (hinting, font choice, font editors, etcetera). Faulty web page.
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Japanese page that explains the various electronic font formats.
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ACAF stands for Ascender Compact Asian Fonts. Their blurb at the launch in 2006: ACAF uses proprietary techniques to render the complex ideographs found in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts. By using component outlines, versus entire character outlines, ACAF offers significant benefits over standard TrueType or OpenType font formats. And unlike other compact font formats, such as stroke or stick fonts, the quality of Ascender Compact Asian Fonts is such that no embedded bitmaps are necessary for typical screen sizes. This savings in space by reusing pierces of font outlines is useful for high quality (scalable) fonts on mobile devices and digital TVs.
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AccentKernMaker (akm 2.1) is a useful script which works with existing Fontographer[tm] metrics files (.met) Based on the available kerning information, akm 2.1 creates a complete kerning table for accented characters for Macintosh Standard, Macintosh Central European, and Windows East European character set. It also offers a possibility to create kerning table for custom encoding. It's a free on-line web service.
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Specs.
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Reactions by typophiles to Acrobat Reader 7, released in December 2004. Good news: It includes Myriad and Minion Pro (for free). Bad news: read on. Grant Hutchinson writes: "Every release since 4.0 has been bigger, slower and more bloated with creeping featuritis to the point of disfunction. Meh, indeed. Do yourself a favor... download version 7, install the free fonts and turf the rest." The general feeling is to hang on as long as possible to the Acrobat Reader 3 and 4 versions.
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Font software company that offers a nice intro to the font formats, and sells conversion software such as Crossfont, Wrefont and TransMac.
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Adrian Robert's pages with links on random generation of images (using iterated function systems, or fractals), including a bit of material on random font generation. He wrote the free program "randim".
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Written in PERL. Dead link.
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afmtodit creates a font file for use with groff and grops. Perl code. By Hurricane Electric.
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Explanation of the idea of hand-antialiasing by Chris Johnson, who claims Microsoft may well have borrowed his ideas for their ClearType. He has produced some Mac bitmap fonts that can be freely downloaded.
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Article by Nicholas Negroponte from Wired 2.01.
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Dead link. Archive (FontPool), history of type, type classification (by Matthias Neuber and Morton K. Pedersen), page layout guide, type choice guide, logo type guide, mixing type guide, Windows software guide, Mac type software guide, glossary. By Kevin Woodward.
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Free on-line application by Beyondnorth publishhed in 2008: Alphatype can be used to view your favorite fonts on any computer. Includes an easy access interface for changing font attributes. Alphatype is meant to generating new typographical ideas and will not replace system font viewers. Other on-line applications by them include Alphapixeltype, and Alphagrid. All are useful for type selection and layout.
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Links to font software of French origin.
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By PC Webopaedia.
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Tutorial on anti-aliasing in Adobe Photoshop.
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Basic font page at Apple. International fonts. Techical type page.
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From Nicolas Fabian's description of this wonderful but short-lived company: "Ares Software Corporation was founded in August, 1990. The company's goal was to create value added software which enhanced existing font libraries and simplified the daily work of graphic designers, typographers and micro computer users in general. Ernie Brock, Harold Grey and their team of dedicated programmers produced some of the most creative typographic software in the history of computers, including the legendary FontStudio, FontMonger, FontHopper, FontMinder, FontFiddler, and the most unique software of them all, FontChameleon. But, when Adobe Systems purchased Ares, all competing Ares products were discontinued on June 6, 1997. A most unfortunate event in the history of creative typography." Martin Kotulla reminds people that Ares was very useful in producing artificial copies of fonts, and that Adobe's purchase is interesting.
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Developer (with Ari Rappoport) of LiveType at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. LiveType is font creation software that uses a parametric model for the fonts and allows the user to specify any number of constraints. Useful for creating multiple master fonts. You may also find some fun font applets at his site. ParamTT is a the complementary font design tool to create and manipulate LiveType characters.
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Soft font to truetype or type 1 converters. Commercial.
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Free copy of ATM Lite.
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Adobe product, which "lets you take control of your font menu for easier access to all of your fonts. ATR Deluxe automatically sorts your fonts according to family name, listing style, and weight variations in a submenu under each name." Comes with ATM Deluxe 4.5.
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Attila Korap |
Font technology specialist at Linotype, Germany. He was born in Manisa (Turkey) in 1974 and grew up in Marburg (Germany) before moving to Frankfurt in 1994. He studied political science and computer science at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität and later at the Fernuniversität Hagen. He joined Linotype as an intern in 2000 before becoming the full time Font Technology Specialist in 2002. At ATypI 2008 in St. Petersburg, he spoke about Automation in font production.
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Rolling Rock Software's free program for converting big fonts to .shp files.
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Commercial Windows font viewer. Free 30-day demo.
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The Batik SVG Toolkit is a Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for various purposes, such as display, generation or manipulation. The project's ambition is to give developers a set of core modules that can be used together or individually to support specific SVG solutions. Examples of modules are the SVG Parser, the SVG Generator and the SVG DOM. It includes an SVG Font Converter, called TrueType Font to SVG (ttf2svg): The TrueType Font converter application helps to embed font definitions in SVG files. Typically, one can just include a minimal subset of needed characters.
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Specs for the Bitmap Distribution Format Version 2.1. Other specs here, including AFM, CFF, CPI, FNT, ACORN, ABF, GF, HBF, DRS, PK, SWECOIN, TFM, TTF.
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The programs bdftofon.exe, pcftofon.exe, bdftopcf.exe, mkfontdir.exe allow conversions from .bdf to .fon format (used by emacs and vim in UNIX environments). Starnet went commercial, and placed those programs elsewhere. So, you'll only find them in some archives I guess.
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Beer
| Japanese and other font utilities resource page kept by Hiroyuki Tsutsumi. Freeware utilities by him, developed from 2003-2005:
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Unclear what this is. There seems to be a system called "berlin". The page goes on: "LibGFont is a library which hides the differences between bitmapped, type-1, and truetype fonts. It exposes enough information for an application to obtain metrics for each glyph and font, as well as render glyphs into a cache for onscreen display."
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James Ryan's routine for creating big letters with polylines. Free.
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BitCopy 2.0 costs 2000 USD, plus 186 USD per year for maintenance. Creates bitmap fonts for Xerox FNT, PostScript type 3, AFP, HP LaserJet, PCL4 and 5, from PostScript and truetype fonts, Atech FastFonts, and other bitmap fonts. A bitmap font editor is included. By Lytrod Software Design Tools.
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Free program that permits the editing of (colored) bitmap fonts in 8-bit TGA, 24-bit TGA, 32-bit TGA, RAW or BMP format. By Thom Wetzel.
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Free Windows utility to combine bitmap characters into words and phrases.
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Free bitmap font cutter for MS/DOS.
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Add dynamic fonts to your web pages. Commercial product. It looks like the Bitstream product requires so-called .pfr binary files, which are probably directly derived from truetype files. I guess you can get these from Bitstream's 200-font WebFont Maker CD. Also, the users need the Bitstream web browser add-ons. See also here.
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bmfontgen
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Free utility for converting truetype and opentype fonts into bitmap fonts that can be exported as xml or png files. Written in 2006 by Gary Kacmarcik.
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Free Windows font viewer.
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Russian type technology site with articles.
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On November 15, 1998, Microsoft claimed a major breakthrough in font technology with what they are calling "ClearType". They state: "The effective tripling of horizontal resolution in ClearType subpixel rendering allows much greater fidelity to the true angle of italic type, and ClearType's patented color-filtering techniques maintain high contrast and so enable comfortable [on screen] reading". The book "Now read this" (John Berry and John Hudson, 2004, Microsoft Reading and Advanced Reading Technologies Group) explains the technology in more detail. In the ClearType project (2004), Microsoft releases six Western families (Calibri and Consolas by Luc(as) de Groot, Candara by Gary Munch, Corbel by Jeremy Tankard, Cambria by Jelle Bosma, and the extraordinary Constantia by John Hudson) and one full Japo-Western family, Meiryo, developed by Eiichi Kono and Matthew Carter. Review by Anne van Wagener: Calibri is a pleasure to read, Cambria is a formal and solid workhorse serif, the informal sans Candara is her least favorite, Consolas is a monospaced typeface, Constantia is her favorite--it is a clean and readable serif, and Corbel, a sans, is crisp and refreshing. On a trademark note: Constantia is the name of a pre-2000 typeface designed by Bill Horton (Foster & Horton)---if Bill plays his card right, he could make some good money off this. Typohile discussion. Microsoft we page on the ClearType font collection.
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File extensions listed and explained. See also the site at the University of Heidelberg or Hans Christophersen's List of File Extensions. Dmitry Karpov's list (in Russian).
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3D application to create 3D effects with fonts.
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Shareware for 3d-ing and animating characters.
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Commercial site specializing in Photoshop tips and links for web page design and fancy font enhancements. Go here to view fancy tricks with fonts.
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Includes hundreds of fonts with their graphics packages.
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Crack for Adobe Type on Call CD |
There are two programs out there, TITM.EXE and TAO.EXE that are to be used as explained by someone on the abf newsgroup: The program TITM.EXE decrypts fonts from the Adobe Type on Call CD version 4.1. The other program, TAO.EXE, decrypts fonts from version 4.0, which I have never seen. Each font on the CD is comprised of four files. The file with the extension *.pf_ is the encrypted one. Copy all the files from the font you want from the CD to the directory with TITM.EXE. Then type TITM XXX.pf_ where XXX is the name of the font file. For example: TITM Eucbi.pf_ After about a minute or two, a new file will be generated from the old one, with the extension *.pfb But wait...there's more! You then have to take this new file and apply the same procedure using pfbfix.exe included in the crack package. After you have done this, you will have a working font from the CD.
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Tutorial by Wide Area Communications.
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3D application to create 3D effects with fonts.
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German graphic designer who has his own studio. He created the (free) experimental font family Drebiek (2008) around the theme of the triangle, the morbidly obese Diet-Fat (2008), Cartoons Abstract (2009), the monoline Cinga (2009), the experimental Boss M (2009), the art deco stencil face Trage Keinen Namen (2008) and the simple handwriting face Berger & Berger Caps (2009). One can also download a font tool called Typometer. At Dafont, he calls himself Dundeee.
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Debra Adams |
Author of "abcdefg" [a better constraint driven environment for font generation] (1989 Raster Imaging and Digital Typography conference, pp. 54-70), as employee of Xerox PARC. She describes an experimental system that automates the generation of letters in a font from four master characters (o, h, p and v).
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Archive of pre-1996 fonts and font software. Has refont, Orienteering Control Description TrueType Font, three signature making pieces of software, Supersigno (software for creating Esperanto fonts), and Inuit1.00.
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Product to make your fonts Euro-conmpatible. 30DM. By Harald Deutschmann in Berlin.
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DigiType Service |
Digital type software company headed by Ernest Imhof. Based in Switzerland.
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Doodle Buzz
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Brendan Dawes's on-line tool for making fancy doodles. It allows you to create typographic maps of current news stories.
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Specs of CPI format invented by Erik Bachmann.
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Download software, discussions, software and advice.
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Specs.
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"D-Type Font Engine consists of an ultra-fast grayscale rasterizer capable of generating beautiful antialiased type on screen or any other raster device." It works with TrueType, type 1, OpenType and type 3 fonts. For Windows, Mac and Unix. A demo (DType V3.2) is available. Located in Toronto, Ontario.
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Paul Haeberli's free C code (1989) for transforming mouse positions into dynamic (and calligraphic) strokes. A free port to OpenGL and GLUT (and Mac OSX) by Nicholas Zambetti is here. Zambetti lives in Ivrea, Italy.
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Dynamic fonts | Dynamic fonts are fonts formatted in such a way that they can be either automatically grabbed from the author's site or embedded in an html page. This insures that the html page reader sees the page in the intended font, which is especially useful for non-standard scripts. Two competing formats exist today, PFR (Portable Font Resource) and EOT (Embedded Open Type). Tools exist to create PFR or EOT files from TTF files. PFR is supported in Netscape 4.0 and above. EOT is supported in Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. It is Bitstream/Truedoc (PFR) versus Microsoft (EOT). Why the original TTF files could not have been used for this purpose, only the devil knows. Tools to create these dynamic fonts are here: [Google] |
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Will Trillich's free DXF 3-d fonts for use with Bryce software.
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Commercial product by Electric Rain: 3D Font FX v2.0---a 3D text renderer based on truetype fonts. For Windows. FFX Asia (1999), an oriental simulation face, is here.
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Founded by Ben Bauermeister and Clyde McQueen in 1990, former employees of Aldus. Based in Seattle, it created for Hewlett-Packard FontSmart (a product that gives users 110 fonts and a font-management technology for HP's LaserJet 5L, 5P and 5Si printers in an innovative and compressed format). It also made FontWorks (a truetype font generation engine for Windows), Infinifont (a parametric font generation system), and PANOSE (a fonty classification system). On December 21, 1995, HP bought the company and that was the end of it. Bitstream's page on ElseWare. The in-house type designer was Karl Leuthold. They produced about 340 "clones" of the major typeface styles, including Albertus, AntiqueOlive, Arial, AugustaEC, BistroEC, BodoniEC, BookAntiqua, BookmanEC, BookmanOldStyle, CGOmega, CGTimes, CafeEC, CenturyGothic, CenturySchoolbook, Clarendon, CourierEC, EtnaEC, GaramondEC, GeneraEC, GillSans, Goudy-Old-Style-EW, GraphosEC, InformaEC, LetterGothic, LetterSansEC, MentorEC, MetrostyleEC, ModalEC, NewTributeEC, OperinaEC, Ozzie, SchoolbookEC, StationEC, StriderEC, StylusEC, TerasEC, TerasMonospaceEC, Univers, VillageOldstyleEC, WilmingtonEC.
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The Embedded OpenType File Format (EOT) was developed by Microsoft to enable TrueType and OpenType fonts to be linked to web pages for download to render the web page with the font the author desired. This link prepared by Paul Nelson (Microsoft) specifies the format of the EOT file so that authoring tools can create embedded or linked fonts and add them to a page, and servers serving web content can serve font content with web pages, and 3) User Agents may download, extract and temporarily install fonts of the EOT file suffix that are included in the @font-face definition of a CSS style sheet. It is a dynamic font format supported in Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. It permits an author's font to be used in an html page without explicit downloading. Developed and marketed by Microsoft to choke the competition (Bitstream/Netscape/Truedoc's PFR), the format can be obtained from a truetype or opentype file by using WEFT.
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Sells a 2000 font (TT and T1) CD called Fantastic Fonts for 13USD. Plus 300 truetype handwriting fonts for 13USD. And 300 funky fonts for 13USD. Font Magician (13USD) lets you create special effects. Kid's Fonts (300 truetype fonts) for 13USD. Based in Rockland, DE. Footnote: Expert Software is one of the world's largest font cloners. I doubt that they ever made an original font. For example, under the label Ly's Media, they renamed all the WSI "Hand-Plain" series LEHN001 through LEHN283, and sold them once again. It is a real mess. Download that collection here.
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G. Gibson and Associates' program for converting Truetype and Postscript Level one fonts into AutoCAD fonts. Free. For Windows.
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"The FastFont to Bitmap Font Generator (FBM.EXE) is provided for those developers that just want a quick way to generate HP PCL soft fonts for distribution with their applications. FBM generates HP PCL bitmap fonts (.SFP/.SPL) from PageTech's proprietary FastFont scalable typeface format (.FF1). The Type Importer is included with FBM to convert TrueType and PostScript Type I and Type III fonts into our FastFont format. AllType can also convert scalable fonts into FastFont format. The price for FBM with Type Importer is US$249."
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FDL is the font description language proposal (for XML) by Just van Rossum.
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On-line utility: "With Figlet, the letters you type are automatically turned into big letters."
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Kevin Carothers and Alex Korobka's free open C code to transform FNT fonts into BDF fonts (all bitmap formats). Alternate URL. Alternate URL.
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FNT or BMP to C Data Table converter by Francisco Ares.
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FONmaker is FontLab's PC program capable of automatically generating FON, FNT, SPF and BDF bitmap fonts from any TrueType or Type 1 font installed in Windows. FONmaker uses the Windows (or ATM) rasteriser to build bitmaps, so results are completely compatible with the outline originals. From Pyrus: "Use FONmaker to generate bitmap fonts from outline fonts in TrueType or Type 1 format. FONmaker can produce bitmap fonts in FON, FNT, SPF/SFL and BDF formats using standard Windows rasterizers, so resulting bitmap fonts are completely compatible with their outline originals. Other important FONmaker features include: support for multiple codepages, selectable destination resolution, batch-mode processing of many fonts at once and possibility to rename fonts."
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Discontinued program by Sampo Kaasila developed in 1992-1993 by him at type Solutions. Using TrueType or Type 1 fonts as input, the operator could modify the font weight, width, contrast, x-height, descenders and tracking and produce any intermediate font.
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Font Flowers
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Font Flowers is a nice visualization tool written by Matt Gilbert. All the curved segments of all characters in a font are placed coming out of the center, providing beautiful synthetic graphics that are open to interpretation. This project involved some FontLab python macros and Processing (ALPHA) with NanoXML and AWMartin's AIExport package.
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Adobe's Font Folio 11 released in 2007 is an OpenType-based update of Font Folio 10. For five computers, it can be had for 2600 US dollars. Adobe's announcement speaks of Adobe Font Folio 11 software, in its continuing lobbying and brainwashing effort to make people believe that fonts are software.
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Adobe lists the main font formats it is involved in.
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Font engine (font renderer) for most font formats, marketed by Type Solutions, a subsidiary of Bitstream.
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Bitstream's latyest rasterizing technology launched in October 1999. Alternate URL.
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3D Fonts and 3D Graphics Renderer sold by DCSi. " Font F/X Version 2.0 is a 3D text and animation program for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0. Font F/X transforms any TrueType font into a compelling 3D graphic image". Full evaluation product at download.com.
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Archive maintained by Manish Sharma. Many font categories, including Western, Script, Party, Typewriter, Asian, Brush, Balloon. Over 4000 fonts! Has a nice link page for font utilities.
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"Font Magic for Windows 95/98 and NT is a free easy-to-use tool for creating 3D text." From TrueType fonts. Free.
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Standard font prefixes (for foundries) and suffixes. Maintained by SourceNet. Dead link.
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The font formats (bitmaps, scalable, ...) explained.
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Font Remix tools
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Mac and PC software, initially free, and requiring Python. The tools written by Tim ahrens are plug-ins for FontLab that allow scaling of glyphs without affecting the stroke weight. Also, they allow to tune the width, height and weight of single letters interactively, automatically generate small caps, generate superiors, inferiors, numerators and denominators, create true condensed and extended versions, generate tabular figures with only a couple of clicks, and slant glyphs while keeping vertical tangents straight.
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FontRenamer, versuons 1.37 and 2.04. Free utilities for Windows.
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Font technology links bcollected at PDFzone.
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Font software cracks.
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Font Tester is a free online font comparison tool. It allows you to easily preview and compare different fonts side by side with various CSS font styles applied to them. It is very useful for web developers who are looking for just the right font/style/color to use in their pages. To use it all you have to do is simply enter the text you would like to preview, modify the various CSS properties until you find a style you like, and then click on the Get CSS Code button to generate all the necassary CSS code to reproduce those styles in your webpage.
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On-line font testing page, in Latin and Cyrillic.
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Font effect generator. The typophiles do not like software that deforms letters and is just plain ugly: For the true type masochist!. Referring to similar software such as Ares FontChameleon, Aldus Type Twister, TypeStyler, and Microsoft WordArt, the typophiles agree: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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"Font 2 BMP will create Windows BMP files from installed fonts." Shareware program by Webcatering LLC.
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35USD utility for Windows that makes all characters of a truetype font into individual "bmp" files. Free partially functional demo (numbers 0-9 only). By Webcatering in Stillwater, OK.
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Free open source code program for PC and Unix that can create 3-d text in any truetype font.
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DOS Windows font editor (bitmaps) by Ziff Communications/Michael J. Mefford.
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Over 1100 truetype fonts archived here by Abiel Reinhart. Contains a font utilities page with links to font software. And several font FAQs.
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Automatic font identification program by The Quick Brown Fox GmbH foundry run by Willi Welsch out of Koln, Germany. Costs 250DM.
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Automatic font identification program by The Quick Brown Fox GmbH foundry run by Willi Welsch out of Koln, Germany. Costs 250DM.
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Shareware font special effects generator for Windows 95 and NT.
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Commercial product by Club Type for computing the optimal letterspacing (sidebnearings) for a font. Mac OS and Windows.
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Raph Levien's high quality text rendering method, about to be patented by Artifex Software, Inc., the people behind the Ghostscript PDL engine.
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TeX macros for converting Adobe Font Metric files to TeX metric (TFM) and virtual font (VF) format. Fontinst is a program that helps with installing fonts for (La)TeX. Since it is written entirely in TeX macros, it is completely portable.
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Type solutions for SMS and messaging machines.
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From the FontLab Developers Group, a programmable generator of composite characters with batch option.
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Useful French archive offering 12 TrueType fonts each week. Offers also a bunch of font utilities.
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Package made in 2005 by Marc Penninga which includes these free UNIX tools written in Perl:
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Mizuki Takanashi's Japanese font software for Windows.
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For UNIX/X-Windows users: Fontconfig is a library designed to provide system-wide font configuration, customization and application access. Fontconfig contains two essential modules, the configuration module which builds an internal configuration from XML files and the matching module which accepts font patterns and returns the nearest matching font.
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Explanation on the use of fonts on Amiga systems.
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Dhomas Trenn's nice help file for fonts on Amiga.
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Commercial font rasterizer. "CurveSoft(tm) is pleased to announce the availability of FontScope-Omni(tm): A pair of high-performance portable rasterizer libraries for Type 1 and TrueType fonts. FontScope-Omni allows developers and programmers to build scalable font support for both major font formats directly into their applications thus providing a fast, efficient, high quality platform-independent solution to the problem of providing scalable font support. Tested on Linux(x86), SunOS(Sparc), and Windows NT(x86). Is claimed to be fast, anti-aliases, works with Java, TCL/TK, multiple master fonts. Distribution has the source code. You can download a free demo for the Linux(x86) and SunOS(SPARC) platforms. Demo can be used as a font browser." Full product only 50USD!
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FONTSELF
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Lausanne-based type site related to a project conceived and designed by two graphic designers, Franz Hoffman and Pierre Terrier from studio koilinen, and a software developer, Marc Escher. A quote: It provides the ability to create fonts that preserves the gestures of a given handwriting and the original look of the drawing appliance (ball-point pen, pencil, ink, paper, etc.) It appears that one can create, with their software (not downloadable, not for sale--go figure), a bitmap font. This, in turn can be used to simulate handwriting. Fonts (format unclear, not downloadable) include grunge faces (Agrotesk, Linexspray), handwriting (Psycho, Mascara, Meriem, Bic, Ehcadnarac, Manu, Signo, Manuscript), and scanned text faces (Baskerville, Garabig, Franklin Multi, Sabon, Gothique, Dido).
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FontStruct
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A nifty and elegant free service by FontShop to make, share and download modular fonts, peppered, of course, with FontShop ads. FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. Once you're done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application. You can keep your creations to yourself, but we encourage users to share their "FontStructions". Explore the Gallery of fonts made by other FontStruct users and download them or even copy them and make your own variations. Creation page. It is amazing how the 100 or so basic shapes can be combined in many beautiful typefaces---this is not just a simple generalization of a pixel font editor. I believe that FontStruct will see thousands of new fonts in the next few weeks. In fact, after only 3 weeks, they had over 21,000 registered users, and people had already made over 23,000 new fonts. FontStruct was made for FontShop by Robert Meek. List of all designers and fonts at FontStruct compiled by yours truly. My wishlist for them: to add all font designer names to their pages and inside the fonts, to organize a page by designer, to speed up their software or internet line (by a factor of ten), to fix the browser crashes reported by many (Allan Weiser and others; Mac OSX Leopard/Firefox has problems) and still crashes Firefox as late as July 2009) and to enable mass downloads and downloads per designer. Tutorial (video) by Rob Meek. Discussion and opinion by Jason Fagone. Daumen9 made by Crissov in 2009 exposes the fundamental flaw of all modular designs that work within the limitations of truetype or opentype or type 1---one can't achieve proper small circles. Not FontStruct's error---blame it on short-sightedness of the font format engineers.
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Jan Pazdziora's free Perl module allows you to read the TeX font metric (TFM) files and access the information stored in them.
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Gnu fontutils package patched up by Oliver Corff in 1998 so that it compiles on Linux.
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Based on research by Professor Horace H.S. Ip and Dr. Helena T.F. Wong at the Department of Computer Science of the City University of Hong Kong, two approaches are followed for the generation of Chinese (and other) calligraphic fonts. In the first approach, a truetype font's features are detected using fractals, and this permits generation of characters using calligraphic pens. In a second approach, a (physical) brush model is able to capture the physical effects of the writing process due to brush geometry, brush orientations and motions, ink absorption and depositing by the brush hairs. Resulting papers:
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Computer science student at the University of Hamburg, and supporter of open source code software. Creator of the Open Font Library fonts Tomson Talks (2008, comic lettering), Block Stencil (2008), Far Side (2008, sci-fi) and Futhaark hnias (2008, runes). Aka Skotan. Dark End is a hand-coded SVG font---check the source code to see what can be done with so little!
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The fonts installed in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) are:
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Free font tools listed at ZDNet.
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Annotated list of links to on-line font tools.
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Free font software links.
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Available for 200 dollars for students, it allows one to create fonts by freehand drawing. It is a Macromedia product for the Mac.
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"This is the (current) home of the (non-official) FreeType Java Port. FreeType is an excellent and highly competitively priced TrueType font library. FreeType is implemented in C." By rolandpj.
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Free software by Henry Maddock, who writes: FTGL is a free, open source library to enable developers to use arbitrary fonts in their OpenGL (www.opengl.org) applications. Unlike other OpenGL font libraries FTGL uses standard font file formats so doesn't need a preprocessing step to convert the high quality font data into a lesser quality, proprietary format. FTGL uses the Freetype (www.freetype.org) font library to open and 'decode' the fonts. It then takes that output and stores it in a format most efficient for OpenGL rendering.
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FyFont (2006-2007) is created by Martin Solli and Reiner Lenz at ITN, Linköping University, Sweden (contributions early in the project by Sandra Larsson). The search engine is included in ongoing research about Content Based Image Retrieval, and the purpose is to demonstrate research results. One can submit an image or an image URL to their web site, and FyFont will recognize the font from among those residing at Dafont.
[Google] | |
Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format "[Adobe]". Specs.
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Free source code in C by Thomas Boutell for creating GIF images directly: "gd is a graphics library. It allows your code to quickly draw images complete with lines, arcs, text, multiple colors, cut and paste from other images, and flood fills, and write out the result as a .GIF file. This is particularly useful in World Wide Web applications, where .GIF is the format used for inline images. " There is plenty of font support. For example, there are functions like gdImageString to draw multiple characters on the image.
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Free German font utility that generates fonts for PHP from system fonts.
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Genotyp
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Michael Schmitz at the Universität der Künste Berlin developed a tool, genotyp, that allows one to blend and marry various types, the way Font Chameleon used to do. Discussion at TypeForum.
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Diplom Engineer and painter from Hamburg who designed or digitized over 210 Fraktur fonts [see my compilation of his list]. He is heavily involved in the Bund für Deutsche Schrift und Sprache. Helzel is the designer at Delbanco-Frakturschriften of DS-DtWerkschrift (1997), DS-Fruehling (1996), DS-MaximilianGotisch (1994), DS-MaximilianTitel (1994), DS-Post-Fraktur (1997). He has hand-digitized over 200 Fraktur fonts, including
List of his fonts as of 2009: (Anker-)Schul-Fraktur, Accidenz-Gotisch, Akzidenz-Gotisch, Aldine, Albion-Gotisch, Alt-Fraktur, Alt-Gotisch (Bradley), Altdeutsch,7 · Alt-Deutsch, Alte Münchner Fraktur, Alte deutsche Schreibschrift, Alte Schwabacher, Amts-Fraktur, Andreas-Schrift, Angelsächsisch, Angelsächsisch, Verzierte, Antike Gotisch, Aramäische Quadratschrift, Astra, Bastard, Bernhard-Fraktur,6 · Bismarck-Gotisch, Breite deutsche Anzeigenschrift, Breite Kanzlei, Breitkopf-Fraktur, Britannia (Alt-Gotisch), Büxenstein-Antiqua, Büxenstein-Fraktur, Canzlei, Caxton, Caxton-Type, Claudius, Courante Gotisch, Danziger Fraktur, Derby, Deutsche Reichsschrift, Deutsche Schrägschrift, Deutsche Schreibschrift, Deutsche Schrift, Deutsche Werkschrift, Deutsche Zierschrift, Deutsch-Gotisch, Deutschland, Dresdner Amts-Fraktur, Eckmann-Schrift, Einfache Kanzlei, Elegant, Element, Enge Gotisch, Enge moderne Kanzlei, Enge König-Type, Enge Kanzlei, Englische Antiqua, Faust-Fraktur, Fette Gotisch, Fette Schwabacher, Fichte-Fraktur, Fractur, Französische Antiqua, Frühling, Garamond-Antiqua, Genzsch-Antiqua, Germanen-Fraktur, Germanisch, Goethe-Fraktur, Gotenburg, Graeca, Gronau-Gotisch, Gursch-Fraktur, Gutenberg-Fraktur, Gutenberg-Bibelschrift, Gutenberg-Gotisch, Haenel-Antiqua, Halbfette Aldine, Halbfette Kanzlei, Halbfette Normalfraktur, Halbfette Schwabacher-Flinsch, Halbfette Wallau, Hamburger Druckschrift, Hamburger Fraktur, Hamburger Schwabacher, Hammonia-Gotisch, Hansa-Fraktur, Hansa-Gotisch, Hebräisch, Hellenistische Antiqua "Graeca", Hölderlin, Holländische Gotisch, Hoyer-Fraktur, Humboldt-Fraktur, Hupp-Fraktur, Ideal-Fraktur, Jean-Paul-Fraktur, Jubiläumsfraktur, Kaiser-Gotisch, Kanzlei, Karl-May-Fehsenfeld-Fraktur, Karl-May-Radebeul, Kirchengotisch, Moderne, Kleist-Fraktur, Kleukens-Fraktur, Koch-Antiqua, Koch-Fraktur, König-Fraktur G14, König-Type, Kühne-Gotisch, Kühne-Schrift, Kurante Gotisch, Kurmark, Lichte National, Liebing-Type, Liturgisch, Logos, Ludlow-Wartburg-Fraktur, Magere Wallau, Mainzer Fraktur, Manuskript-Gotisch, Mars-Fraktur, Maximilian-Gotisch, Mediaeval-Gotisch, Leipziger Altfraktur, Midoline, Moderne Kanzlei, Moderne Kirchen-Gotisch, Mönchs-Gotisch, Morris-Gotisch (Uncial-Gotisch, Unzial-Gotisch), Münster-Gotisch, Neu-Gotisch klein, Neudeutsch(-Hupp), Neue (moderne) Fraktur, Neue Schwabacher, Nordisch-Antiqua, Normal-Fraktur, Normannia-Fraktur, Nürnberg, Offenbach, Post-Fraktur, Psalter-Gotisch, Ratdolt-Rotunda, Reklame-Fraktur halbfett, Renaissance-Fraktur, Renaissance-Kanzlei, Renata, Richard-Wagner-Fraktur, Rundgotisch, Russisch-Römisch, Salzmann-Fraktur, Schmale Accidenz-Gotisch, Schmale Haas-Gotisch, Schmale halbfette Fraktur, Schmale halbfette Gotisch, Schneidler-Schwabacher · Schraffierte Gotisch, Schreibschrift, Schul-Fraktur, Schwabacher, Sonderdruck-Antiqua, Stahl, Stella, Stempel-Fraktur, Straßburg, Tannenberg, Thannhaeuser-Fraktur, Tiemann-Fraktur, Tiemann-Gotisch, Tiemann-Mediaeval, Unger-Fraktur, Verzierte Angelsächsisch · Verzierte Musirte Gotisch, Victoria-Gotisch (Viktoria-Gotisch), Wallau,7 · Wartburg-Fraktur, Weber-Fraktur, Weiß-Fraktur, Werkschrift Germanisch, Wieynck-Gotisch, Wilhelm-Klingspor-Gotisch, Wohe-Kursive, Zeitungs-Fraktur, Zeitungs-Schwabacher (halbfette neue), Zentenar-Buchschrift. [Google] | |
Daniel Will-Harris provides an educational discussion of using GIF-coded letters in web pages. He also tells you how to go about getting them ready.
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Daniel Hellerstein software for generating gif files from text. Nice to showcase certain fonts.
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Just van Rossum's Glif (Glyph Interchange Format) is a simple and clear description of one single letterform (glyph) in XML.
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GraphicFont 1.0 is a Java class that allows you to define and use different bitmap fonts in your Java programs. This idea comes from Paul Haeberli's WebFont. Developed by Kevin Hughes.
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Free software by Ralf S. Engelschall: "The gFONT program creates a GIF image for a given ASCII string by the use of an arbitrary TeX-available font (Postscript or METAFONT). The used font is converted from TeX's PK format to gFONT's own GdF format (Gd Font) and rendered into the resulting GIF image by the use of its own enhanced Gd library. The result is intended to be included into HTML pages with an IMG tag." Current version 1.0.3.
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A free Mac and PC tool by Underware in the Netherlands for manual antialiasing. From the same page, a free Mac type 1 family called Unibody.
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Herschey font format
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Herschey fonts by Jim Bizbee.
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Hinting and Japanese fonts
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Hiroshi Utumi states: Hinting is not good for square characters (Japanese, Chinese etc). Run kcontrol and disable hinting please. $ kcontrol Font -> Settings -> Hinting style -> Choose "None". His advice is for Linux users. Mire specifically: see here.
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The typophiles discuss the demise of hinting in fonts. Type designers can rejoice, because they can now concentrate on the artistic job of designing curves and white spaces. They should not have to deal with engineering tasks such as hinting. That task should be left to the font rendering software. The process should be automated at that level. Some passages from that discussion:
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Jigal van Hemert's hinting tutorial (PDF), posted on his behalf.
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Hinting Viewer
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Free Unix-based viewer of hinting in fonts, by Owen Taylor, 2005.
[Google] |
Type software link page, in Spanish.
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Igino Marini's kerning program, which is better than InDesign's Kernus according to the examples on Igino's page. He will even kern your fonts for you! The program was tested on a collection of revivals of Fell types developed by Igino, an Italian engineer.
[Google] | |
iKern
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Kerning service offered by Igino Marini.
[Google] |
A Forum for Multilingual / Multiscript Computing on the Mac.
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The Institute's software takes text strings in various languages, and returns a bitmap graphic for use on Web pages and computer interfaces.
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An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format: Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. People have used it as a first stage in drawing glyphs for fonts, importing the vector graphics into FontForge or FontLab. Tutorial by Tavmjong Bah.
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Installation help.
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Very interesting software development at Itoh Lab in Japan. Software includes the generation of scratched or brushed calligraphic bitmap images from truetype fonts. Some of the programs use fuzzy reasoning, fractals and "brush-touch" (sic) cursors.
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iType |
Dead link, which stated: Agfa Monotype Corporation, announced the release of iType, a highly compact, extremely portable font scaling technology. Designed particularly for smart Internet devices, iType gives OEMs the industry's fastest, highest quality solution for developing products that generate text for on-screen display.
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Agfa's rasterizing technology for truetype fonts and bitmaps that works well on environments (mobile phones, PDAs) that have restricted memory. It includes the possibility of describing fonts compactly based on strokes and should thus be useful for Asian languages. See also here. On July 16, 2002, it was licensed to HP for its OpenVMS Operating System, together with 14 fonts, 12 of which are clones of Arial, Courier and Times New Roman, called Albany[tm], Cumberland[tm] and Thorndale[tm]. The absurdities in naming fonts due to the excessive use of trademarking are polluting the font landscape like never before. By the way, I thought that geographical names (such as Albany) could not be trademarked.
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Software by Alexandr Shurenkov for 3D typefaces. Typer Tools: utility from this Moscow-based company for making fonts look like 3D fonts. Free trials. Also, six free 3D fonts.
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Great article by Ross Evans, president of Fontworks International Limited on Japanese font technology.
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Page on fonts in Java.
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Javascript/CSS Font Detector
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Free on-line software by Lalit Patel (from Orissa, India) for detecting fonts on one's system. See also Johan sundström's version.
[Google] |
John Durham gives a solid introduction on computer font technology. Well done.
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Karow Verlag |
Peter Karow's Hamburg-based type software company. Peter Karow has written extensively on the technical aspects of type design.
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Jared Benson's basic kerning pairs.
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URW++'s commercial letter spacing (kerning) tool: automatic creation of kerning tables, and a kerning pair editor. The program is also on the URW++ Typeworks CD.
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LaTeX Navigator
| General links on typography and fonts, compiled by Denis Roegel (with earlier contributions by Karl Tombre who is no longer involved). Very, very useful. This page contains, among other things:
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Laurence Penney (born Isleworth, London, 1969, based in Bristol) is a digital type specialist, who has his own blog, and who is involved in the development of MyFonts.com. Type chimerique (the link) has info on TrueType. Also, from that site: "TYPE*chimirique (formerly Kendrick Digital Typography) is a small organization dedicated to digital fontology. In other words, we specialize in everything to do with digital type. We design, hint and customize type to your requirements - avoiding automatic systems whenever there's a suspicion of inferior quality, writing our own tools where existing ones aren't enough. We're particularly into TrueType, and take commissions for writing custom TrueType (and OpenType) editing tools - for glyph outlines and other parts of the font file. We also design, adapt and hint and Type 1 fonts." At ATypI 2004 in Prague, Penney spoke about EULAs. He writes about himself: Laurence is a consultant in font technology and font marketing, based in Bristol, England. At university (computer science) he developed a weird and unusable font production system, proving to himself that over-automation of type design is a Bad Thing. He soon went freelance and divined the black art of TrueType hinting, tweaking fonts for Microsoft, Linotype and indie designers. In 1999 he became part of the initial MyFonts.com team, and helped create the site's unique balance between newbie appeal and an extensive typographic resource. He now develops MyFonts.com's in-house software, contributes editorial content, and co-manages the distributor's contacts with foundries and designers. Laurence also lectures on font technology at typographic conferences and is visiting lecturer at Reading University.
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Tartu, Estonia-based software specialist (b. 1971) whose main achievement is the vector drawing program Sodipdi.
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Utility for PCs by Scott Dillman that will turn any of your windows TrueType fonts into new LED Sign fonts.
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Simple utility and explanation for making LED sign fonts consisting of ascii symbols on terminal screens. By Darrick Brown. Default font. Alternate site. Yet another site.
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Letter Spirit
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LetterSetter is an on-line commercial font specimen layout piece of software, operated, developed and hosted by LettError and TypeSupply. With it, type foundries, designers, typographers, and design agencies can host their own fonts at lettersetter.net, and present them in customizable specimen layouts.
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Chris Gonnerman's page with font software links.
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The Font Technology Award has been introduced by Linotype to honor extraordinary efforts in the development and support of font technology. It is usually given at Linotype's TypoTechnica meetings. Past recipients:
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Rod Smith's informative page on the use of fonts in Linux Wordperfect by Corel.
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Kept by Jacci Howard Bear at Desktop Publishing.
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An automated web-based tool for the display of the fonts on your local system. Font support for Unicode characters with a list of the most common fonts that have Unicode support.
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25 USD software by Blue Line Studios: "LogotypeMaker displays a string of text using all your currently installed fonts--one font face per line--with just a single click. This is a great tool for graphics professionals who create logotypes, taking away the hassle of searching for an appropriate font in the first step of the process."
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Mac font FAQ.
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Marco Giardini's UNIX shell script for batch transformation of truetype to type 1.
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An old discussion of a wonderful discontinued piece of software: " Metamorphosis was the premiere font conversion utility for the Macintosh and has only gotten better now that it has metamorphosed into Metamorphosis Professional. It's a fine utility from a fine company. (Altsys's portfolio also boasts Freehand (marketed by Aldus), Art Importer, and Fontographer.) Metamorphosis converts fonts and does it well. It currently boasts the ability to convert between seven outline formats: Type 1 fonts for the Mac, PC, and NeXT; Type 3 fonts for the Mac and PC; and TrueType for the Mac and PC. In addition, it can also convert any of the above formats to a PICT file containing smooth-polygon versions of the text, an EPS file containing the PostScript outlines, or a Fontographer file for editing with Fontographer. Metamorphosis Professional does its translations in one of two ways, either outline-to-outline or outline-to-PostScript-printer-to-outline. In most cases, Metamorphosis Professional will read in the outline file of one format and transform it into the new format. For a few Type 3 fonts with unknown formats, it will instead download the font to an attached PostScript printer and then have the printer send back the outlines. As an added perk, Metamorphosis Professional will allow you to convert fonts stored in a PostScript printer's RAM or ROM. Altsys is also supposed to send you a DA which will duplicate the conversion functions of the application when you register your version, though I've yet to receive mine. "
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Born and raised in Tennessee, Michael Paul Young currently calls Bangkok, Thailand home. He founded, managed and directs daily the online design shop YouWorkForThem. Home page. Creator of "Apply", a free texture tool that allows you to customize any font you wish with an array of inky splatters and sprays.
[Google] | |
Microgetics Font effects (MFE) is a commercial font effects application. Comes with 24 truetype fonts.
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Monotype Imaging's patented MicroType Express font compression technology for fonts is used within embedded applications. From the company blurb: The technology minimizes memory usage for font data storage in resource-constrained environments, where both ROM and RAM savings are critical. Small font files are built without sacrificing the qualities, features and capabilities of OpenType and TrueType fonts. They say that different tables have different statistical properties and thus call for separate compression approaches. Ordinary zipping reduces truetype fonts by about 35 to 50 percent in size. I guess MicroType bites off a bit more, but since zipping is already almost optimal, it will be interesting to see how much more MicroType can achieve.
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Mike Doughty's great font site, with particularly interesting subpages on the following:
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Font tips by Mike Doughty. Explains about font installation on Mac and PC, font conversions between Mac and PC, font browsers, font editors and font software.
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Mike Doughty's huge web site with information about porting fonts from one platform to another (Mac, PC) using various pieces of software.
[Google] | |
Mitsubishi's Saffron Type System
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An effort by Mitsubishi to represent Asian types (Chinese, Japanese) in termns of basic strokes: 330 fundamental strokes can cover over 8000 glyphs, for example. Each stroke in turn is gently decomposed in pieces based on a center stroke and endings. The motivation is to be able to store these large fonts on mobile devices. The article "An improved representation for stroke-based fonts" (2006) is by Elena Jakubiak and Sarah Frisken of Tufts and Ronald Perry of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories.
[Google] |
Ozzie site with a free copy of Fontmonger, and a couple of TrueType fonts.
[Google] | |
Free handwriting creation utility for Windows, created in 2004 by Philip Lanier, of Washington, DC. Fonts created with the software are posted here. Direct download. Commentary.
[Google] | |
Font manipulation tool for etching and effects.
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Many font utilities at this Chinese site.
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Tips on NewDeal's font format, in essence the Geoworks .FNT format.
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Free Mac program for converting from Mac NFNT format to BDF (Adobe Bitmap Distribution Format). Written by George Williams. Now also a BDF 2 NFNT converter.
[Google] | |
Free Mac program by George Williams for converting NFNT resources to Adobe bitmap format (BDF), used by X and PCs.
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NOAM stands for Notes on Apple Macintosh. Discussion on fonts.
[Google] | |
Commercial font software jump page.
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Useful notes on hinting for typographers who use FontLab. By Victor Gaultney, 2003.
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Russian type and type tools site.
[Google] | |
Learn about Mac OS X and fonts.
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"Page Technology Marketing, Inc. (PageTech) specializes in HP PCL page description language, Intellifont, TrueType[tm] and PostScript typeface conversion utilities and related technology. Our original AllType (150USD), "Universal Typeface Converter" will evolve into a Web-based typeface conversion service. Until we are completely automated with a trialware converter, E-Commerce front-end, etc., we will only accept orders for custom typeface conversion projects with a minimum order amount of US$300. We plan to launch a fully automated service by March 2001."
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This commercial program can make 3-d bevelled text with drop-shadow, mirror-text, slime-text, and more.
[Google] | |
Paint Shop Pro is popular shareware. Can make 3d text.
[Google] | |
"Paint Shop Pro is a full-featured graphics program for image creation, viewing and manipulation. Features include painting tools, photo retouching, image enhancements and editing, color adjustment, an image browser, batch file conversion, a screen capture utility, TWAIN scanner support, flexible image viewing and support for over 30 different file formats. " By JASC Software, shareware. Useful for creating special effects with fonts.
[Google] | |
Russian company with an office in California, specializing in pen software. Calligrapher recognizes handwritten text. And Morphink animates text characters. And "ParaGraph PerfectDraw technology smoothes and shades lines drawn on pen tablets using anti-aliasing technology, producing Web animation that is more pleasing to the eye."
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Tutorial by Laurence Penney about parametric fonts. The title "parametric truetype fonts" is a misnomer. Laurence surveys Knuth's Metafont system, FontWorks by ElseWare. Infinifont by Hewlett-Packard, Ares FontChameleon, LiveType (by Ariel Shamir and Ari Rappoport), and "abcdefg" (by Debra Adams).
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The main digital type foundry from Russia. It also develops and distributes font oriented and localization software. Products include FastFont, a simple TrueType builder, ParaNoise, a builder for PostScript fonts with random contours, FontLab, a universal font editor and ScanFont, a font editor with scanning module. Random, customized fonts. Multilingual fonts including, Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Georgian and Hebrew fonts for Macintosh and Windows. Catalog. Designers. Alternate URL. In the ParaType Store, you can buy Academy, Pragmatica, Newton, Courier, Futura, Petersburg, Jakob, ITC Studio Script, ITC Zapf Chancery, Karolla, Inform, Hafiz (Arabic), Kolheti (Georgian), Benzion (Hebrew). Most are Unicode fonts. Free ParaType fonts include Courier Cyrillic, Pushkin (handwriting font), and a complete font set for Cyrillic (KOI8, DOS, ISO8859-5 and Mac encodings). Type designers include Vladimir Yefimov, Tagir Safayev, Lyubov Kuznetsova, Manvel Schmavonyan and Alexander Tarbeev. The history of the foundry as told by MyFonts: "ParaType was established as a font department of ParaGraph International in 1989 in Moscow, Russia. At that time in the Soviet Union all typeface development was concentrated in one rather small group which belonged to a state research institute, Polygraphmash. It had the most complete and in fact the only one collection of Cyrillic typefaces. The collection included revivals of Cyrillic typefaces developed by Berthold and Lehmann type foundries established at the end of 19th century in St. Petersburg and artworks of Vadim Lazurski, Galina Bannikova, Nikolay Kudryashov and other masters of type and graphic design of Soviet time. ParaType became the first privately-owned type foundry in many years. A license agreement with Polygraphmash allows ParaType to manufacture and distribute their typefaces. Most of Polygraphmash staff designers soon moved to ParaType. In the beginning of 1998 ParaType was separated from the parent company and established two companies: ParaType Inc. in California and ParaType, Ltd. in Russia that inherited typefaces and font software from ParaGraph. Both companies are directed by Emil Yakupov, former head of the font department of ParaGraph. The main directions of ParaType design are: i) new original typefaces for the Russian design and publishing community; ii) revivals of historical Russian typefaces; iii) Cyrillic extensions of the best of Latin typefaces." They continue with this description of the 370+ library: " The Russian constructivist and avant garde movements of the early 20th century inspired many ParaType typefaces, including Rodchenko, Quadrat Grotesk, Ariergard, Unovis, Tauern, Dublon and Stroganov. The ParaType library also includes many excellent book and newspaper typefaces such as Octava, Lazurski, Bannikova, Neva or Petersburg. On the other hand, if you need a pretty face to knock your clients dead, meet the ParaType girls: Tatiana, Betina, Hortensia, Irina, Liana, Nataliscript, Nina, Olga and Vesna (also check Zhikharev who is not a girl but still very pretty). ParaType also excels in adding Cyrillic characters to existing Latin typefaces -- if your company is ever going to do business with Eastern Europe, you should make them part of your corporate identity! ParaType created CE and Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces licensed from other foundries, including Bell Gothic, Caslon, English 157, Futura, Original Garamond, Gothic 725, Humanist 531, Kis, Raleigh, and Zapf Elliptical 711."
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Free tool by Ganaware for turning a PCF bitmap font into a BDF bitmap font.
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Slovakian type designer (b. 1973), who lives in The Netherlands. Bio at FontFont. Designed: FF Atlanta, FF Craft (Kafkaesque), Champollion, Collapse, Didot Sans (unpublished), Decoratica (great display font, unpublished), Desthetica (grunge, but nice!), FF Eureka, FF Eureka Sans (2000), FF Eureka Mono (2001, FontFont), FF Eureka SansCond, FF Eureka Symbols (2002), FF Eureka CE, FF Eureka Sans CE, Fountain Pen (free fountain pen nib dingbat font), FF Masterpiece (wacky), FF Orbital, Fedra Sans (2001, a de-protestantised version of Univers, originally a corporate font for Bayerische Rück, a German insurance company), Fedra Bitmap (2002), Euroface (1996, Typerware, a scribbly font allegedly more legible than Helvetica at 80km/h), HolyCow and The Case. Essays on typography and design. Editor of dot dot dot. He also made AccentKernMaker, a font utility. Peter Bilak now lives in The Hague, The Netherlands, at the same address as Paul van der Laan. Free dingbat font FountainPen (Mac). At ATypI 2004 in Prague, he spoke about white spaces in typography. Speaker at ATypI 2005 in Helsinki.
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Type 1 to CFN font converter (CFN is the Calamus font format for Atari) by Matthew Carey from FaST Club in Nottingham.
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PFR stands for Portable Font Resource. It is a dynamic font format supported in Netscape 4.0 and above. It permits an author's font to be used in an html page without explicit downloading. Developed and marketed by Bitstream/Netscape/Truedoc, the format can be obtained from a truetype file by using tools provided by truedoc.
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Fontlab's type format designed for web site use. Fonts are described in the human-readable XML language, and the glyphs are just bitmap pictures, typically in PNG format. The format is non-proprietary. Editing can be done in a standard editor, or via the (proprietary) BitFonter. Web pages using these fonts must have the photofont plug-in installed, but from there, with the appropriate tags, the screen fonts behave like standard fonts in text. Text is searchable, indexable, and so forth. Photofont Start is a free Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter and Macromedia Fireworks plug-in released in 2005. In 2008, Photofont WebReady was released by the FontLab people---with the help of sIFR, text on web pages is replaced by embedded text-searchable Flash.
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A new type format described by Theodore E. Harrison, the founder of Fontlab US, at the ATypI in Rome in 2002. From the web site: Photofont is an exciting new technology that allows you to create and use full-color bitmap type with transparency. Photofonts are files with the extension .phf. With our free Photofont Start plugin, they can be used in the most popular bitmap-editing applications: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, Macromedia Fireworks and applications that accept Photoshop plugins, for both Mac OS and Windows. The Photofont file format specification is publicly available. It is based on open standards like XML and PNG. You can create and edit Photofonts using our professional bitmap font editor BitFonter for Mac OS X. Photofonts can also be included on Web pages and viewed with our ActivePHF free plugin for Internet Explorer for Windows. Specs. Free software. I tried installing it on Mac OSX 10.3, but failed, so some work remains to be done.
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Commercial Russian software for making pixel fonts from truetype and type 1 fonts. Windows only.
[Google] | |
Polygon-shaped outline font format.
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GNU license open code to render Truetype or X11 fonts to pixmaps. By Peter J. Holzer.
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This page has free downloads of the Adobe OpenType Converter (type 1 to OpenType), Bitmap Font Writer, Bmap2AFM (for Mac), and Mike Gibbard's character replacement utility, Characteristica. This page carries the free type 1 editor Noah, the free truetype font editor, Softy, and the utilities Unicode Viewer and The Font Thing.
[Google] | |
Quantum Enterprises
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Run by Andrew Hunt. Handwriting font service in Somerset, UK, at 16USD a shot. Free sample truetype fonts made in 2003: QEAndySully2, QEAshleySmith-1, QEDawnKing, QEHandSerif, QESteveColes. Other faces that can be found on the web include JF_Arc_De_Triomphe, JF_Butterfly_1, JF_Liberty, JF_Playing_Cards, JF_Tower_Of_Westminster, all made in 2004. In 2006, there was a more extensive list of free handwriting fonts, dated 2004-2006: QEAmyDrake, QEAndyHamment, QEAndySully2, QEAshleighLowery, QEAshleySmith-1, QEBenjaminMerritt, QEBobGellatly, QECarlMorris, QECarolRobertson, QECaroleHall, QEChristopherTodd, QECliveCounsell, QEConnorGilmore, QEDSFont, QEDanaJOliver, QEDawnKing, QEDenisWilson, QEDonaldRoss, QEDotWilliams, QEDrewAngell, QEDunk, QEGerryHughes, QEGrahamGrover, QEHandSerif, QEJANMackenzie, QEJGS, QEJerryJohns, QEJessicurl, QEJohnCaplin, QEJohnChivers, QEJohnMoir, QEJonasVasey, QEJonathanTucker, QEJulietteCule, QEKraid1, QELisaHuntPU, QELocalGirlUneven, QELoriWollmann, QEMamasAndPapas, QEMarciaBein, QEMarekHill, QEMarionMitchell, QEMichaelBourne, QENormanMorgan, QEPamelaPeake, QEPattiButche, QEPeteLister, QERicoRomano, QERobFeltner, QERobertaLapointe, QERogerBrown, QERogerKilner, QERogerLaw, QERoseMcCullagh, QESaraWiseman, QESteveColes, QEStuartDurrant, QESusanHunting, QESusanZelie, QEValerieMorris-Cook, QEVernKits, QEWillows, QEgeeKzoid. Jig Font turns any image sent to them into a "jig font" which you can use in a word processor to reconstruct the image as a jigsaw puzzle. A free JF Liberty font, as well as JF Arc de Triomphe, JF Playing Cards, JOF Butterfly and JF Tower of Westminster are freely provided as examples. In 2007, a custom logo font service was added.
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Publishers of Quark XPress.
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Typography professor R.K. Joshi's pages (obsolete now, since he left the Industrial Design Centre of IIT Bombay). He was born in 1936 and died in San Francisco in 2008. He was a poet, calligrapher, designer, researcher, teacher and type specialist. Above all, he was respected and influential. From 1952-1956, he studied at the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai. From 1956-1960, he was an artist at D.J. Keymer, and from 1961-1983 he was art director at Ulka Advertising in Mumbai. But his best years were still to come. From 1983-1996, he was Professor of visual communications at the Industrial Design Center of IIT, Mumbai, and he was with CDAC, Mumbai, formerly NCST, from 1997 until his death. Radio interview. Obituary at TDC. His contributions to the type world:
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Rendering SVG font definitions using dojox.gfx
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The Dojo Toolkit is software to help open up the web. Tom Trenka posts a discussion of web fonts, and proposes a Dojo-specific solution that uses rendering SVG font definbitions.
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A program that allows one to build fonts up from multilines and concentric circles. It is an editor for this sort of look. The software is written in "Processing" (www.processing.org), a language and development environment designed to make visual software development simple and easy to learn. Concept by Hudson-Powell, and implemented by Julien Gachadoat, Michael Chang, Brian Cort and Michael Zancan.
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Developed by Letterror, RoboFab is a library of code and objects written in python for all Python-supported platforms (MacOS X and 9, Windows, Linux, etc). RoboFab is a toolkit for font and glyph data. It works together with FontTools and FontLab, but it can be used seperately. The basic version is free. " The toolkit offers a new and improved approach to working with type development projects, and it implements a brand new XML-based font data source file format called Unified Font Objects (UFO). This enables easy exchange of font source data between applications, it stores Cubic ("PostScript") as well Quadratic ("TrueType") contour data and it is application and operating system independent. Individual characters from a project can be distributed, checked into databases and manipulated with standard text tools and version control software. The UFO format contains glyphs, Unicode data, metrics, kerning, names, and many forms of data – which would not normally be associated with a final font format like TrueType or PosScript. Several new tools based on RoboFab and UFO are in development, MetricsMachine, for example, is a powerful spacing and kerning editor for MacOS X making use of the development tools that ship with Apple's OS."
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Useful page for installing fonts for WordPerfect.
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Gone. It used to have these font utilities: 30.07Advancedfontsv, Font Creator, Font Doctor, Font Reserve v2.6, Font Wrangler v2.0j, FontAgent9, FontExpert 2004 v6.0, FontExpert2004, FontRenamer122, Font_Xplorer_Lite, Fontlab Transtype v2, Suitcase, X-Fonter, Fontographer, Safefont.
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Font software.
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Useful Dutch guidelines for the installation of fonts (truetype and type 1) in Windows. By Sander Trooster. This subpage contains Corel's Memorandum font.
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Microsoft program for bitmap font conversions.
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Hartmut Pilch's tour of tools for truetype and type 1 fonts. In German.
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Windows software reviews.
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Yuri Yarmola writes: "Use it to add your signature, company logo or any other symbol (Euro symbol, for example) into any TrueType font installed in your system. SigMaker includes autotracer, so it can accept bitmap images (TIFF or BMP) as well as EPS outlines. This version works for 14 days and allows to export up to 3 fonts. Online register/purchase module comes with the program." The software is part of FontLab. Joz's Sharewares has a shareware copy. Download safari.
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A commercial piece of software by Andrew Gourvelos' company, A Signs, from Carlton, NSW, Australia. It works with CorelDraw, and has about 30 special effects, some of them on fonts (such as making outline fonts, making bold fonts, shading).
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Reprise is a utility to convert legacy-encoded fonts (e.g., SIL Encore fonts) into Unicode fonts so they can be used in Unicode-based applications. The goal is to produce a Unicode font that renders your Unicode data exactly as the legacy font renders your legacy data.
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A commercial piece of Mac software by FreeSoft (Limal, Belgium) for converting bitmaps and images into vecor format, and for editing figures and outlines. It exports EPS files. This could be used to make the outlines for glyphs of a font, assuming one has a font editor that imports EPS files. A few free trials when you download. Developers: Jean-Christophe Goddart and Renaud Pattyn.
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British computer scientist who offers free software and fonts. "mkwinfont" is a small program that generates Windows bitmap fonts from a text description. Also supplied is dewinfont, which generates the text description files from the source fonts. The programs are written in Python. Tektite is a 9x15-pixel bitmap font, in the style of Tekton. Tatham provides PCF, BDF and FON format bitmap fonts.
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SING is an Adobe proposal format for font files that contain glyphlets, single characters that are not in given fonts (also called supplemental characters or gaiji by Adobe), so that they can be used as if they were incorporated in an existing font. For example, this is a useful thing to have for many oriental languages. It can only work, of course, if the application recognizes it. Since 2004, the Japanese version of InDesign does. Jim DeLaHunt of Adobe explains the format: A glyphlet is like a very small OpenType font that contains one glyph. It contains the glyph outline data for one glyph (plus a one or two alternate glyphs for different writing directions, if appropriate). This outline data is in the TrueType or CFF formats supported by OpenType. The glyphlet also contains meta-information, data that describes the character and glyph properties of the glyphlet. It omits several OpenType tables, so that an OpenType system will not accidentally interpret a glyphlet as an OpenType font. The glyphlet is typically 1 to 2k in size and is supposed to travel with a document in which it is used. Glyphlets are either bought or made in editors, and are then managed by a Glyphlet Management Tool. Glyphlets can also be described in XML, and there is a one-to-one correspondence with the binary format.
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Dutch description by Rein Bakhuizen van den Brink of the font formats on Atari: Calamus, type 1 and Speedo are the vector fonts. Bitmap formats include GDOS/GEM, Signum2 and Signum3.
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Specs.
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Archive with some font viewers and font managers.
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Fantastic on-line font tool that shows all fonts active on one's system. Direct access to this wonderful tool.
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Essay By Joel Breckinridge on stroke font technology for Japanese fonts. Link has died.
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Creator of a font, dubbed CSS Font (2004), entirely achieved by using CSS instructions. His font is based on ideas from Proof of concept to throw off the bots, an article by Eric Smith.
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SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, allows for simple definitions of curves in editable text files. They can be used to define scalable fonts (without kerning and hinting or any other bells and whistles though). It is a a modularized language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML.
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SVGFont is a Java application that generates SVG font definitions from TrueType fonts. Free, by Steady State Software Limited.
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Specs for SWF, Swecoin Font Format and PKT, Swecoin Packet Format for Kiosk applications. Format designed by Jonathan Hunt.
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The Peripheral Systems Laboratory develops new software and hardware technology for advanced displays, printing devices, phototypesetters and information servers. They have several pages relating to smooth font technology.
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Windows truetype font utility.
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TEX font utilities, including accfonts, adjkerns, afmtopl, ega2mf, fontinst, fontload, freetype, gsftopk, macfont, makefonts, mathinst, mathkit, mf2ps, mf2pt3, mff-29, mkpkfontdir, mm, mmtools, pbmtogf, pf2afm, pfm2afm, pkbbox, ps2afm, ps2mf, ps2pk, ps4mf, psposter, qdtexvpl, t1install, t1tools, t1utils, tfmpk, tfmpktest, ttf2pfb, ttf2pk, ttf2pt1, unadobe, vfinst, vplutils.
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Specs.
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Specs.
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Create text effects with this Windows shareware utility.
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TeX font metrics file format specs.
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A free perl utility by Dominique Larchey, Denis Roegel and Christian Rossi at LORIA in Nancy, france, that can be used to generate a TFM file from a metafont file (note: this is useful when one likes toi use mftrace). It can also be used to check PK and TFM files.
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Specs of CFF, a new format by Adobe.
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Commercial software (free demo): "Creates text as geometry (curves/splines, solids in engraved or embossed form) on any surface along any guide-curve."
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Commercial Windows software for creating text geometrically laid out, starting from a truetype font. Demo available.
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Wonderful essay by Nicolas Fabian about the history of font editors and font creation systems.
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Type Generator
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Very interesting software project by Dutchman Sibe Kokke. It generates fonts based upon a set of parameters such as contrast, x-height, point positioning and curves, a bit in the style of metafont, and was developed with the help of tools like Drawbot and Robofab. Sibe Kokke is also the designer of experimental typefaces such as The King (pixel family), Mullerpier (grunge), Glue Print (grunge) and Arab (Arab type simulation in Latin handwriting).
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Founded in 1989 by Sampo Kaasila. Based in Plaisted, New Hampshire, the contacts of this typography outfit are Ed Edman and Amy Hensiek. They offer font engines and type software. It markets type software, and has fantastic web presentations, such as this page showing Gothic Kanji output in small type. On December 2, 1998 Bitstream bought Type Solutions, Inc. for $600,000 US. There are some occasional fonts by them out in cyberspace, but they stopped making fonts.
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By Xaos Tools: "MacOS & Win95/NT. TypeCaster turns ordinary type into 3D titles with depth, texture, and contours that lift off the page. The only 3D type program that works inside Photoshop, TypeCaster offers 30 built-in project looks you can use to create eye-popping type quickly and easily, even if you've never used a 3D program before. "
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Typeface.js
| David Chester's open source tool that allows one to embed fonts in html pages via some javascript code. An on-line truetype to "js" font converter is available, as well as a few already-converted fonts. This is work in progress (started in 2008). Here's what it takes to get going: load the typeface.js library and some typeface.js fonts, and proceed like this: <script type="text/javascript" src="typeface-0.10.js"></script>[Google] |
TypeMyType
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Frederik Berlaen (TypeMyType) is a Flemish type designer, b. 1981, Ghent, Belgium. He studied graphic design at Sint-Lucas in Antwerp, Belgium. Then he worked for one year as freelance type designer before moving to The Hague to study TypeMedia at the KABK. Currently, he freelances as a type designer in Ghent, Belgium. His projects include KalliCulator: a pen and nib simulator for drawing strokes around a skeleton glyph. He also wrote the simple font editor and manipulator Font Constructor (2007). RoundingUFO is a 100 Euro Mac-only application that converts the corners of the glyphs in fonts according to user-defined parameters; it requires a conversion between UFO and SFD formats, which is achievable in FontForge. His typefaces thus far: Theneut (rounded sans), Nana Broadnib and Nana Pointed. With Christina Bee, he is part of Type Destroyers.
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Type archive with over 6000 free fonts and thousands of links to commercial fonts. Many pages on typography. Glossary. Articles. Type books. Foreign language archive covering all Indic languages, Tibetan, Thai, Lao and all European languages. Dingbat archive. Font applications and editors. TV and movie fonts.
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Javascript-selectable typefaces, based on David Chester's Typeface.js.
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TypeShow
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Software for testing typefaces and showing them on web sites. Developed by Frank Rausch at LucasFonts in Berlin.
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Typestry |
Old Windows type rendering program that does great special effects (such as metal).
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3d and other effects for fonts. Works well with Adobe Illustrator. By Strider Software Inc.
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On-line screen font tester, wriiten by Marko Dugonjic (Croatia).
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Typotheque
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Creators of the free Windows font software products Typolizer (truetype font quality checker) and Authentic Type (for font embedding regardless of the font permissions).
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UFO QuickLook
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Free Mac OS X Leopard tool by Georg Seifert. It works with UFO format font files.
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A new XML-based font format designed in 2003 by Just van Rossum, Tal Leming and Erik van Blokland. This text-based format is a first step in the right direction. The choice of XML (copyright Apple) and the absence of OpenSource or GNU-like licensing may be an impediment to its popularity. Glyphs are stored as .glif files. Other data is stored in XML-based plist files. The plist format is developed by Apple, has a DTD, but is platform independent.The UFO is a new file format for font and type design related data. Glyphs are stored as .glif files. Other data is stored in XML-based plist files. The plist format is developed by Apple, has a DTD, but is platform independent." Glif is Just van Rossum's description of one single letterform (glyph) in XML. UFO enables easy exchange of font source data between applications, it stores Cubic ("PostScript") as well Quadratic ("TrueType") contour data and it is application and operating system independent. Individual characters from a project can be distributed, checked into databases and manipulated with standard text tools and version control software. The UFO format contains glyphs, Unicode data, metrics, kerning, names, and many forms of data which would not normally be associated with a final font format like TrueType or PosScript." In 2004 they write: "RoboFab has a new, standardised object model for font, glyph, contour and friends. RoboFab supports a new, future-proof XML based file format for font source data, the Unified Font Objects or UFO. This allows scripts based on RoboFab to work the same in FontLab as in plain Python environments, cross platform, cross application. This new format is not a contender in the TrueType, Type 1 or OpenType race, it is a format to store **sources**: all data related to type design in an application independent and standardised XML way. UFO files can be used to exchange font and glyph data between applications. RoboFab is free for end users, well documented, and downloadable from http://www.letterror.com.
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Agfa's announcement of "Universal Font Scaling Technology 4.0 and a PostScriptTM3 Compatible Font Solution."
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Archive with bitmap utilities such as bdftofon (BDF to FON conversion), PBM to BDF, PBM to PK.
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Some older font utilities, many bitmap fonts, and some fonts.
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UPM
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A discussion by yours truly about UPM, or "units per em", a quantity that matters in the design of fonts. I argue of course for larger values of the UPM than are normally used in fonts today. But just to make a point, I designed two fonts that have an UPM of one.
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A free on-line raster image to vector image tool published in 2007. Input: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF. Output: EPS, SVG, PNG. Based on a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda. In principle, one should be able to use it for converting scanned images to fonts by importing the EPS or SVG files into FontForge or other tools. I can see this as a nice free alternative to ScanFont for making glyphs out of complicated scanned images. The only downside for now is that the tool is on-line and a bit slow. But the quality of the generated output is excellent.
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Commercial product fore Mac OS X for creating and printing type specimen sheets/books of a font collection.
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"Produces two plug-in products that are Mac/Win and allow for easy creation and manipulation of 3D text from TT and PS fonts. Vertigo 3D Words (for Illustrator) and Vertigo 3D Hottext (for Photoshop)." A commercial product.
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Free cod to subset truetype fonts before inclusion on web pages via Web Fonts.
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Links and introduction regarding fonts on web sites.
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Dave Hyatt talks about the WebKit feature of safari, introduced in 2007: WebKit now supports CSS @font-face rules. With font face rules you can specify downloadable custom fonts on your Web pages or alias one font to another. This article on A List Apart describes the feature in detail. All of the examples linked to in that article work in WebKit now. Stephen Coles reacts: For the uninitiated, this means any TrueType font can be called by a style sheet and then downloaded by the web browser. This reopens the legal can of worms that falls off the shelf every time we talk about font embedding. Good fonts cost money. Like most software, each user or CPU must be licensed to use a commercial font. When you start talking about every visitor of a web page downloading the font well you enter very sticky territory indeed. John Gruber: The fonts youre allowed to embed legally aren't worth using; the fonts that are worth using aren't embeddable.
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Text banner generation software.
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Specs. Format owned by Microsoft.
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Font utilities: great links page.
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Windows: beating the font limit |
Stuart Harrison explains how one can beat the idiotic Windows font limit. In summary, he recommends keeping only the most used fonts installed on the system. The other fonts should be kept in a folder somewhere. If one of these fonts is needed, navigate in Windows Explorer to the font in that folder, right click and select Open. One can view a little sample sheet of any font using this method: the viewing program (Fontview) is part of Windows. Once the sample sheets of the font are open on screen, open the application you wish to use the font in (e.g., Photoshop, Word, Corel Draw). The font will be dsplayed in the font drop down box. Be careful, you have to open the fontviewer before launching the application. This way, you have an unlimited amount of fonts to use, and you don't even have to have them on your hard-drive. You can use them from CD, or floppy, or even the web!
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Font utility archive. In Polish.
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Windows/Linux directories for fonts on PCs |
Include C:\windows\fonts (where one finds the system or core fonts). Linux applications on PCs can use the directory .fonts (which, if missing, any user can create) in one's home directory. Place fonts in the latter directory and most standard (Linux on PC) applications will find them.
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Rod Smith's pages on fonts in Word Perfect.
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Includes info on most internal formats. Compiled by Paul Oliver. Very useful link page.
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Info on most font formats, including metafont, truetype, opentype, bitmap formats, AFM, BDF.
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Info on most font formats, including metafont, truetype, opentype, bitmap formats, AFM, BDF.
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Info (in Japanese) on using scalable fonts with X Windows. With lots of links to GIMP and Japanese GIMP.
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3D application to create 3D effects with TrueType fonts. Three free 3d fonts, Balthazar, Dayton and GeoType (by Gary David Bouton).
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XBfe (X Bitmap Font Editor) allows you to hand-edit a bitmap font--both the shapes (i.e., the pixels) and the metric information (set widths, side bearings, and kerning tables). The input is both a bitmap (GF or PK) font and a corresponding TFM file. Part of the GNU font utilities package.
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A working group consisting of people from Apple, Microsoft and Adobe will try to set an XML standard for describing fonts. Some of these people created the truetype and opentype monsters, so don't expect anything "simple"--simple is not in their vocabulary.
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This free package configures TrueType fonts and CID fonts (as well as CMaps) for X. It generates .scale file and .alias file from TrueType and CID fonts registered to Defoma, and calls mkfontdir (and mkcfm). Both xtt and freetype backends which are used to handle TrueType fonts in X are supported.
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This site compares all font issues (formats, availability, aliasing, etc.) for Mac OSX and Windows XP. It reaches the following conclusion: Mac OS X bests Windows XP in these areas. OS X supports more font formats than XP, and also gives the user more control over when font smoothing should be used. OS X also uses anti-aliasing in conjunction with sub-pixel rendering to reduce color fringing.
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Metafont/TEX font and font software developer, specializing in non-Latin fonts and their integration in TEX. Ran Atelier Fluxus Virus in Lille, France. Codeveloper of the Omega typesetting system which includes the Omega Font Family (type 1). Since 2001, professor of Computer Science at the École Nationale Supérieure des Telecommunications de Bretagne in Brest. He is the author of the 1000+-page text Fontes et codages (O'Reilly, 2004). See also here. Also author of Keeping Greek Typorgaphy Alive, an article presenyed at the 1st International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication held in Thessaloniki in June 2002.
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Robert Maxwell Case on rasterizing and anti-aliasing. Lots of links on halftoning, imaging and rendering.
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Yummy |
Font software expert, genuinely nice person, helpful, thoughtful, and very informed.
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Yuri Yarmola |
FontLab co-developer (in 1991), and font software guru. He lives and works in St Petersburg, Russia, as Vice President Research & Development of FontLab Ltd. At ATypI 2008 in St. Petersburg, he spoke about letter fitting in FontLab Studio, and about glyph metrics and kerning. He spoke again at ATypI 2009 in Mexico City, as well as at countless type tech meetings all over the world.
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Luc Devroye 
Russian artist and software specialist who was written an on-line HTML creator called Typograph. 
Type and technology blog by Benicia, CA-based computer scientist Raph Levien, who is totally committed to free and open software. Software guru who was a lead developer for Gfonted, and helped out with Gimp, among many other things. Raph is working on a revival of 
An initiative of Peter Bilak and ui42 out of Bratislava (Slovakia): "Typotheque is an Internet-based independent type foundry. It offers quality fonts for PC and Macintosh platforms in standard European character set and in CE (central european) character set. All fonts have full (european) character sets, are thoroughly tested and manually kerned. Typotheque also offers its own type utilities: AccentKernMaker and FontAgent." Free fonts: Remix Typotheque and RaumSüd. Commercial fonts: Fedra Sans (2001, 30 weights), Holy Cow (2000), Champollion (2000), Eureka (2000), Eureka Phonetik (2000), Eureka Arrows (2000), Eureka Glyphs (2000), Jigsaw (Light and Stencil, 2000, by Johanna Balusikova), Fedra Mono (2002), Fedra Bitmaps (2002)i, 
