From: Traitor Vic <traitorvic©gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:17:38 -0500
Subject: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

Hiya, folks!

I have recently been experimenting with ScanFont and FontLab and have 
created a few fonts that I would like to share with you so that I can 
get some feedback about any problems I might be having and don't know 
about.

The fonts I have created are based on designs of Display Fonts from the 
book "Special Effecs and Topical Alphabets" (1978, Dover Publications), 
by Dan X. Solo. They are as follows:

Chalkboard





I named Chinatown II as a secondary version because Solo has released 
this font previously. The one that appeared in the book, however, is 
slightly different.

Chalkboard is very similar to the font Bamboo.

Grog Caps is similar to Racankowski's Nitemare Caps.

All of these fonts contain only the characters that were used in the 
book and, therefore, have limited extended character sets.

Please let me know of any problems you notice with any of them or any 
advice you can give me for future projects.

Thanks!
- Traitor Vic

Attachment: TraitorVicFonts.zip     [See font download link below]

From: "meg99az" <marcg9addfour9s@a99o99l.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:47:33 -0700
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

You did a nice job.

You need to check how your newsreader is posting these - it looks like it 
tried to turn this into a split post, but only part 1 came through.  Usenet 
oldies will know what to do to recover three of the files in there, but 
casual users won't see your post.  So, you can rezip and repost them, or 
just post each file individually.

I would recommend adjusting your font names to include a distinct prefix. 
There are other fonts named Chinatown and Confucius.  There are in fact lots 
of font name duplicates out there.  There are several problems with this. 
First, the operating system can have just one so-named font at a time, 
understandably so.  Second, for users, if you have hundreds or thousands of 
fonts, duplicate names can get confusing.  Third, if you have old documents, 
or you lose or unload fonts, or if you take your work to a service bureau 
for production, and you then try to re-assemble all of your sources, you or 
the bureau might load the wrong Chalkboard and have an unholy mess.  With 
hundreds of thousands of digital fonts in circulation, this is a real 
problem.  You could and should adopt a "foundry name", such as "TraitorVic" 
or just "TV", and start all your font names that way:  TV Chalkboard, TV 
Chinatown, etc.  The OS can then use all of yours without conflict, users 
can keep it all straight in their minds, you will never load the wrong font 
by accident, and you get some good "marketing" or recognition by having some 
sort of brand on your titles.

Nice work.  Send the missing ones (Grog Caps and Ideograph).

- meg -

[....quoted text snipped....]

From: Character <Char@cters.bold.italic>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:03:49 -0700
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

[....quoted text snipped....]

Hi there -

Your post seems to have been truncated at a 400,000 byte (EXACTLY) 
attachment, resulting in what most will see as a corrupt attachment. 
Xnews isn't the best posting software, and posting in yEnc will result 
in many people not being able to, or not bothering to see your 
attachments at all.

I was able to extract the first three fonts by repairing the zip file 
with either winrar or pkfix (an old Phil Katz dos utility). So Grog 
Caps and Ideograph aren't there at all.

Just a quick look indicates that you've done a nice job with the 
fonts. In FontLab, when you save as an OTF, if you've left the 
copyright field blank, it puts in an Adobe copyright. I'm sure you 
don't want that!

   - Character

From: Traitor Vic <traitorvic©gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:06:29 -0500
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

Thanks for the Heads-Up on the posting problem, folks! It may take me a 
while to work that one out, but I'm working on it now.

As for the names currently attached to the fonts, I think I'll probably 
take Meg's suggestion and add a two- or three- character suffix to the 
names of all of the fonts that I create. I just need to figure out what 
that's going to be.

I've not done too much with the copyright notices yet because I'm not sure 
what I have the right to claim. I didn't actually design the fonts. I 
simply digitized them from the original source. Others have done this, 
though, and have copyrighted the results. Is there a standard that must be 
reached in order to claim ownership?

I'll try posting these files again (perhaps several different times if it 
takes it). Thanks for all the feedback.

-Traitor Vic

From: Dick Margulis <margulisd©comcast.net>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:27:56 -0400
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

Traitor Vic wrote:
> Thanks for the Heads-Up on the posting problem, folks! It may take me a 
> while to work that one out, but I'm working on it now.
> 
> As for the names currently attached to the fonts, I think I'll probably 
> take Meg's suggestion and add a two- or three- character suffix to the 
> names of all of the fonts that I create. I just need to figure out what 
> that's going to be.

Actually, Meg suggested a prefix, not a suffix. The difference is sort 
order. Think about how you would want your fonts to be found--by your 
name (if you develop a following) or by the underlying typeface name. 
It's your choice. Just something to think about before you do it.

> 
> I've not done too much with the copyright notices yet because I'm not sure 
> what I have the right to claim. I didn't actually design the fonts. I 
> simply digitized them from the original source. Others have done this, 
> though, and have copyrighted the results. Is there a standard that must be 
> reached in order to claim ownership?
> 

Under US law (it's different in Europe), you cannot copyright the 
design, but you can copyright the digital font, which is classified as a 
computer program. So the originals, as printed in a specimen book for 
example, are fair game. This stinks from the original designers' 
perspective, of course; and it was a boneheaded court decision. But 
that's the way it is in this country.

From: Character <Char@cters.bold.italic>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:29:02 -0700
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - 1 attachment
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

[....quoted text snipped....]

Re: Copyright notice - I won't (can't) get into the legalities of 
claiming copyright protection (has nothing to do with 'ownership'), 
but at the very least put SOMETHING there to avoid seeing the Adobe 
copyright. The Adobe notice gets put there because FontLab uses an 
Adobe applet for creating Opentype fonts; that applet looks at the © 
field and if there's nothing there it puts in its own notice.

For the time being, you can get around the posting problem by posting 
one font at a time, zipped or unzipped as you prefer. If you must post 
in yEnc, then part of the yEnc protocol is to have 'yEnc' in the 
subject line.

  - Character

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