@heyitsal Sure! I don't know what your background is, though. You familiar with vector illustration tools (Illustrator? Inkscape?) if so, it's really just a matter of using those skills with some new software. Glyphs appears to be the 'industry standard' these days but it's not cheap. Fontforge is the long standing open source option but it's a bit dated/clunky. I've been using Fontra which is relatively new, but also open source. And though a small dev team, they seem to be pumping out updates regularly. I'd be glad to lend a hand/walk you through it if interested.
I'm a daily user of Illustrator. I often import into Animate for programatic output. Can you import vectors/svg into Glyph/Fontra/etc or must you create it on the app.
I appreciate the offer of help! I'll try to barrel through Fontra first.
@heyitsal i started with cutting and pasting from Inkscape (my preferred tool). It mostly works tho I ran into a few issues building a multi-axis font with the two extremes being mismatched. So I began to do more of the actual drawing in Fontra and just got used to that. The real power in Fontra (for me) is components. You can do some really crazy/global stuff if you’re willing to break your glyphs down into separate elements which you can then use across multiple glyphs. I’m not fully leveraging that yet but a simple example is ‘ñ’. Instead of drawing that, I just link the ‘n’ and ‘~’ components. So if I decide to change the n later, the ñ also gets updated. There are some good Youtube tutorials for Fontra too.
@homerj I'm going to try outlining and existing font and C/P that just to learn how the interface works without getting neck deep futzing with design.
Components will be amazing. After I figure out the interface, I'm going to try my handwriting (which I assume is the proper rookie move). Gonna need components to help with alt characters for sure.
If a designer is interested, there are spreadsheet users out there who want a font that ALWAYS shows spaces with a visible character (just a little dot or something). Also needed are visible characters for some ASCII codes that get used in spreadsheets, like for line feeds and carriage returns.
@heyitsal I only run FontForge because it's the only font design package that runs on Linux. It has an incredibly opaque UX which unfortunately scares many users off its powerful features. You can add combining accents to all characters with one command.
Starting from scanned bitmaps can be frustrating as they typically end up with too many control points
@homerj only seems to be supplied as x86_64 though, and it's huge. It also doesn't support SFDs, so I can't edit the source files of my fonts. I also don't like running things in a browser
@scruss That's all good to know. When I try my handwriting, I'll start with high-quality smooth drawing paper and ink. I'll simplify the control points in Illustrator after scanning and see where I land.
@scruss @homerj ...could I please have more advice on how to start my road to making my own fonts?
I appreciate the offer of help! I'll try to barrel through Fontra first.
Components will be amazing. After I figure out the interface, I'm going to try my handwriting (which I assume is the proper rookie move). Gonna need components to help with alt characters for sure.
Starting from scanned bitmaps can be frustrating as they typically end up with too many control points
I wouldn't say Fontra has a spit-polished UI either, but for what it is, it's pretty good. And they seem to be working to make quick improvements.