Any Free font creation programs?
Community Forums/Developer Stations/Any Free font creation programs?
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| I'm tired of using other peoples fonts and want to make some of my own. I'm not talking images but real fonts. Surly there has to be some program to make your own real fonts with? |
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| I remeber using the demo of Fontographer. I think it might be what you're looking for. Note that it's not free. http://www.fontlab.com/FontEditors/Fontographer/ |
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| Shoot I was hoping for freeware. Why do font creation tools demand such high prices? Really, it's comparable to CAD products. Is the saving/reading algorithem for font files so super 1337 that only a select few can break it? Probably not but it's crazy that there aren't more font editors. I could easly spend 2 hours on one 32x32 sprite for a game, so I do believe I have the patients for font making. |
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| There is a shareware tool ($25) called softy that I've used to create windows bitmap (*.fnt, *.fon) fonts. But it handles True Type and other vector font creation as well. It's a bit buggy and lacks some of the finer features of the commercial packages (automatic hinting etc.) But if you just want to start out trying to make your own fonts its pretty handy. It has no restrictions, but if you find it useful you should pay the license fee. Check it out on: Dave Emmett's Softy Support Page //PetBom |
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| well this looks horrible. |
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| Is the saving/reading algorithem for font files so super 1337 Just saving the vector paths for each glyph is actually pretty straight forward. But when you start to add the other parts of what makes up a good font, hinting, kerning etc. it gets really complicated, really fast. Typography is an art form i itself. It has been developed and refined for hundreds of years (Yes, since Gutenberg and onwards) and the realization of this long typography legacy on the computer is far from as simple as defining the vector paths for each character. There is a lot more to a font than that. But I agree font tools are expensive. I think this is a combination of the complex features needed and a small market. However, I would also really welcome an open source initiative to address font creation. |
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| If you use linux at all you can use fontforge. http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/ Edit: actualy, there seems to be a version for every OS :) |
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| Actually I just discovered FontForge when doing a search after i made my comment. Anyone used it? Is it any good? (Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I guess the originator could benefit from this as well...) |
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| it works, dunno if its the friendliest, but it allows you to create TTF etc. for free :) Ive never used another font creator so nothing to comapre it to. Needless to say, TTFs are probably more work than you first think regardless of the program :) |
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