[FM Discuss] font gurus?

[adam hyde]

On Sun, 2010-01-03 at 20:31 -0500, Edward Cherlin wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 13:04, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> > hey Ed, thanks...seems i sorted it. i asked for individual eps (1 for
> > each letter) and it worked :)
> 
> That's what I thought you did the first time. I couldn't imagine a
> font program figuring out that each piece of an EPS was meant to be a
> glyph. Glad you got it.


nono, it was more complex than that. the original EPS had all glyphs and
was created by illustrator. A few days ago when I cut the file up into
separate characters with Scribus (and I tried also many other free
software solutions but there are very few free softwares that work well
with EPS, Gimp for example rasterizes EPS) and exported each to an EPS,
and then imported each into fontforge, the results were ugly. Some
glyphs imported ok but many had extra garbage on the strokes and I had
issues with overlapping paths excluding areas.

so, i asked the designer to remove all overlapping paths with
illustrator, export each character to an EPS, and send them to me. each
of these would not import at all into fontforge (fontforge reported that
each EPS was 'too complex'), but when i opened each of these in Scribus
and exported with no changes again to an EPS, then fontforge imported
them and they looked as they should.

I also tried a lot of other possibilities (such as exporting to SVG,
processing EPS on the command line before importing etc etc etc ...),
but the above process is by far the best option.

this is the sort of thing that is difficult to solve as it doesnt really
make sense (ie I think Fontforge is behaving a little unexpectedly), i
looked around the web for info on it but found few people with the same
problem, the few people that reported something similar did not post
solutions (which is why I'm also posting this here), and the fontforge
docs did not help (although they are pretty good docs)...

anyways, I solved it eventually and we should be able to use the font
for the forthcoming Book Sprint about free culture (Jan 18-22)

adam




> 
> > adam
> >
> > On Sat, 2010-01-02 at 20:59 -0500, Edward Cherlin wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 10:59, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> >> > hi
> >> >
> >> > Any font gurus out there?
> >>
> >> I wouldn't make that claim, but I have worked on fonts and graphics
> >> file conversions.
> >>
> >> > I have an EPS (sent to me) & I want to convert
> >> > to a ttf to make a libre font which we can eventually use.
> >>
> >> Without seeing any of the files, I can't attempt to debug your
> >> results. Would you like to send me the file and have me test the
> >> process?
> >>
> >> > I am having a lot of trouble getting smooth glyphs as I am starting with
> >> > an EPS but I cant import nicely into fontforge. If I cut up the EPS with
> >> > scribus and export again to EPS and then import into fontforge then it
> >> > works BUT I get all kinds of weirdness caused by overlapping paths in
> >> > the original glyph. I have tried combining paths etc but it excludes
> >> > areas that overlap :((
> >> >
> >> > I have also tried different combinations of exporting to svg and eps,
> >> > importing into Inkscape, exporting to both EPS and SVG and then
> >> > importing into fontforge and the results look good on small scale but if
> >> > you zoom in there is all sorts of rubbish on the glyph
> >> >
> >> > i tired converting to png, pdf, ps...etc etc etc ... nada...
> >> >
> >> > anyone know a clean way to take a single EPS which contains all
> >> > characters for the font, and import it cleanly into fontforge?
> >> >
> >> > do we ever need a manual on how to make a font...eieieieie...
> >> >
> >> > adam
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Adam Hyde
> >> > Founder FLOSS Manuals
> >> > German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
> >> > Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> >> > irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
> >> >
> >> > "Free manuals for free software"
> >> > http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > Discuss mailing list
> >> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> >> > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Adam Hyde
> > Founder FLOSS Manuals
> > German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
> > Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> > irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
> >
> > "Free manuals for free software"
> > http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> >
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals

"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about