[RULE] Re: fonts & font formats

[Vadim Plessky]

On Thursday 19 December 2002 04:55, Martin Stricker wrote:
|  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > So, I have a chance to work on fonts & icons (and those are two
|  > areas where Linux/*BSD should improve, IMHO).
|
|  Agreed absolutely!
|
|  > I was in font development/DTP business in 1991-1993, and haven't
|  > had a chance to work on this since 1993. Last year I re-started
|  > those efforts, and I hope to release good-looking fonts In a
|  > couple of months, speaking realistically.
|
|  How do you create the fonts, and which kind of fonts do you create? I
|  walways wanted to meddle with fonts (TrueType, so they're scalable), but
|  I never found good software for a reasonable price...

The right way to go is PostScript Type1 fonts, with path for migration to 
OpenType (Adobe CFF/type2) fonts formta in the future.
Believe me, I have tested different formats, and OpenType *with Adobe CFF/type 
2* outlines (do not mix it with TrueType fonts bumdled with OpenType layout 
tables) has most compact font size (reduction can be up to 50%, comparing to 
TrueType outline!) and excelelnt hinting model (derived from PS Type 1 fonts)

I am working on replacement for Times/Times New Roman and Helvetica/Arial, as 
those are the fonts people use.
I plan to releasr those fonts under BSD or MIT/X11 license.
I also considering re-work of several URW fonts (Nimbus Sans, Nimbus Roman), 
but as originals are under GPL, those reworked fonts would be GPL'ed, too.

As about tools: I started about 1.5 years ago with FontLab, but later migrated 
to PfaEdit (http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net)
George Williams (PfaEdit author) was very kind to offer his support & fix many 
*major* bugs, and I think currnet PfaEdit is in quite usable state.

|
|  Best regards,
|  Martin Stricker

-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons * BlueSphere Icons 0.3.0 released
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net