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chemoelectric In reply to fluke101 [2011-02-04 01:16:57 +0000 UTC]

Thank you.

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chemoelectric In reply to nymphont [2009-09-01 18:48:29 +0000 UTC]

It’s great. The copyright status of the graphic may be iffy, I’m not sure.

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nymphont In reply to chemoelectric [2009-09-01 22:36:45 +0000 UTC]

Okay, thanks I wasn't sure. I'll work on making my own for it then I suppose

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chemoelectric In reply to nymphont [2009-09-02 09:46:54 +0000 UTC]

That particular stock photo is by Jack Hollingsworth, I believe. Good stuff, I really like his work. For some reason, it is my favorite type of photography. But using the commercial stock perhaps causes me more trouble than it is worth; it’s been an issue on several occasions (though in one case I had the impression that the people using my font were simply going to license the stock for themselves).

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nymphont In reply to chemoelectric [2009-09-02 11:08:57 +0000 UTC]

No worries I completely understand, and since I do not wish to license the stock I will make my own sample as I have done with a few others on the list. I just prefer using a font designer's image over my own as they are generally more interesting, making a "more interesting" post for my would be visitors to read! Yours with the couple as the Goudy's being a particularly creative presentation for the font. I agree, it is good stuff But in the scheme of things, having a "more interesting," preview image in my post is of the least importance, being an "artist" myself I have no desire or intention of utilizing someone else's work in any manner that would not be in accordance with their wishes. Very shortly here I will replace the graphic with one that I will create using the font, with the credit to you and return link here remaining the same of course. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate all the wonderful work you do. You make beautiful serifs I will send you a note as soon as the new image is up Have a great day.

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chemoelectric In reply to nymphont [2009-09-02 22:51:23 +0000 UTC]

They are nice in this one, aren’t they? Thanks.

How to make serifs is a problem I think about day and night. Serifs seem to be the hardest things to interpret from scans, due to ink spread, and so some approach to the problem is needed. Also serifs are very easy to make so that they are rendered terribly by a PostScript or PDF interpreter, and that fact requires a lot of thought in each case. (How these things work in TrueType I don’t really know.)

Serifs are very hard to make with Spiro, which is just one reason I went back to editing with cubic beziers. My use of Spiro likely is responsible for a lot of my dissatisfaction with (the current version of) Juvelo, and in particular with its serifs, which are too ‘cold’ for this typeface.

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nymphont In reply to chemoelectric [2009-09-03 02:59:48 +0000 UTC]

Yes, I think you have done a really nice job interpreting and creating the serifs on both Oldstyle and Italic. Definitly mad props on your meticulous work!

I can imagine the effort that would go into creating an accurate, or even decent looking font for that matter, with the additional requirements of interpreting and deciphering the best representations for the serifs curves and angles.

And then optimizing them for print, how do you even learn about that? And How fonts render when printed trial and error, experience or actual study/education if I may ask? I'm not concerned about learning that for my fonts as they are primarily for screen, but I am curious as much of font design is learned from trial and error/experience.

And as for Juvelo, that is another one of your works I am particularly fond of. I am sure that any improvements you could make in the future might be nice, but I kind of like it's more sharply angled serifs and curves. Might be a *bit cold, but they can't all be Goudy

Still, again I don't doubt your eye on type, if you ever did rework the serifs so they are less "cold" it would most definitly be an amazing transformation

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chemoelectric In reply to nymphont [2009-09-03 06:56:58 +0000 UTC]

Check it out, a Goudy text face with sharp angles: [link]

Making outline fonts work on the screen for lengthy reading text is the hardest of all.

The way it is handled in TrueType is entirely different from the way it is done with a PostScript font. (An OpenType font can be either TrueType or PostScript; it can be a mixture, actually, but nobody does that.) In TrueType, there are "instructions": little programs saying how points should be moved around in different situations. The primary goal is to put stems on pixel boundaries, so that can be rendered cleanly instead of using fuzzy antialiasing. Instructing a TrueType font is a big task and I'm not sure why there are people who do it. Theoretically it is a very powerful approach, but to me it is less sensible than the PostScript approach. In a PostScript font the rendering program has the smarts in it, and what the font has in it are "hints" that tell the program which points represent the outlines of stems or long curves, or the ends of letters such as a sans serif "I", so they can be snapped to pixel boundaries; there also are "blue zones" along the baseline, the x height, the cap height, ascender height, and descender height. The renderer tries to line up horizontal stems and curves that go through the same blue zone. It's much more complicated than that, actually, but not in ways that I can fully explain; what I do while developing is repeatedly render text in Adobe Reader (which is very powerful) and see what works and what doesn't, at many different sizes; so it is largely a trial and error task. Apparently even for Adobe's people it is that way: [link]

A problem that arises is that serifs in metal typefaces often are irregular in shape, orientation, height above the baseline, etc., so in digital type it is common to even out some of that. Hinting is much easier if the serifs all are alike; Linden Hill is going to have that done, and Juvelo has that; but in the redraw of GB1911 I am trying to let the serifs go all over the place as in the original, which takes longer to draw and is much more challenging to hint so that Reader (and hopefully printers and other, wimpier programs) can make serifs into little, lined-up blobs at small sizes, even if at a jillion dots per inch they would look like octopuses and come nowhere near lining up.

The Goudy Oldstyle is somewhere in the middle between those approaches.

What I always do with GIMP is to turn off hinting support (including autohinting) and let it use simple antialiasing, but not all software lets you turn off all stem snapping, and also the text looks fuzzy and faded and so not great for something like an e-book. Probably a completely unhinted font would look perfectly alright at very high printing resolutions; and my own "kompostilo" software lets me embed fonts stripped of their hints (for instance when I want to use GIMP to render the outputted PDF for something like the Goudy graphic).

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nymphont In reply to chemoelectric [2009-09-03 10:32:12 +0000 UTC]

Aah ha, I see. I know some about hinting though my font software fontcreator unfortunately does not allow the font designer to input any hinting data though it will preserve any hinting done w. diff software, i wish it could though. Thank you very much for the info

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chemoelectric In reply to sheepolata [2009-07-13 00:22:25 +0000 UTC]

You're welcome.

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chemoelectric In reply to Carlosmaster1234 [2009-07-13 00:23:58 +0000 UTC]

You're welcome.

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