From: Traitor Vic <traitorvic©gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 02:26:13 -0400
Subject: Subject: My First Fonts - One More and Then I'll Shut Up. I Promise.
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

Alrighty, then!

I've gotten some great feedback on the first pile. Thanks, Guys & Gals! This 
has been a wonderful experience. I'm gonna end it now with a final blowout!

Several of the fonts that I've created and shared up to this point are 
already available as freeware fonts. I knew of several of them going in, but 
I built these fonts as a learning experience and not as anything I ever 
expected to receive praise or monetary compensation for, so you get what you 
get and anything you give back is greatly appreciated.

This one, though, is one I've never seen made available before. I'm sure 
that Character can correct me (and hope that he will) if I'm wrong, but I've 
searched around and can't find it. Too band most Font Sites don't list a 
category Fonts Shaped Like Bugs.

This is also from the afformentioned Solotype catalogue. It was run through 
ScanFont5 and FontLab5 and this is what came out.

I named it "Wedding of the Bugs" after a song by Robbie Fulks. He Rocks (in 
a very Countryfied, Twangy way) and should be paid attention to.

Any forthcoming fonts from Traitor Vic's TV Fonts will, I promise, be 
Original Designs or (at least) stolen from far less common and well known 
source materials. Unless I feel like doin' a quickie or something.

Thanks for everything, folks! I'll see ya 'round!


Attachment: Wedding of the Bugs TV.otf     [See font download link below]

From: Character <Char@cters.bold.italic>
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:11:42 -0700
Subject: Re: My First Fonts - One More and Then I'll Shut Up. I Promise.
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.fonts

[....parts of message snipped....]

> This is also from the afformentioned Solotype catalogue.

What you previously mentioned was one of the many Dan Solo/Dover 
alphabet books, which are mostly topical collections of images of 
relatively full alphabets.

The VERY useful "Solotype Catalog" is a compendium of 4,147 typefaces 
(at least that's the count given on the cover) mostly with one-line 
samples. Check it (and become addicted) here - make sure you use the 
'look inside this book' feature:

http://www.amazon.com/Solotype-Catalog-Display-Typefaces-Pictorial/dp/0486271692


> It was run through
> ScanFont5 and FontLab5 and this is what came out.

Time to get a little technical.

Take one of your fonts back into FontLab, open a glyph, and turn on 
the Font Audit (icon is a yin-yang symbol, or press Ctrl-Shift-F)

You may not like what you see ...  compare with an existing font.

Autotracers like ScanFont work reasonably well with simple designs. 
There are two kinds of outlines that ScanFont can produce: Too tight 
and detailed, and Too loose. Depending on your scan settings, they can 
produce many useless artifacts - extra nodes, invisibly small 
features, missing parts, unconnected outlines, and more. Manual 
editing is always required, although it often depends on what size the 
font is used at whether these have any visible effects. Fonts made 
from extremely complex tracings can create so many nodes that opening 
them can crash Windows! That's the voice of experience talking :)

Scanfont also plays fast and loose with metrics and sizing unless 
closely monitored; particularly the newer versions of ScanFont (which 
version are you using?). If you look at your Wedding Bugs, the UPM 
size (click on font properties/metrics) is properly 1000, but the caps 
height is 1063 and the ascenders (large lower case) reach 990. Caps 
should normally be about 70-80% of the UPM size with similar ascender 
heights. Except for flourishy scripts and swashes, individual glyphs 
shouldn't approach the UPM in size. If you look at your font in 
FontLab's preview metrics window, you'll see that the tops of the 
characters in the first row are cut off. This may not happen when the 
font is used.

Also take a look, for example, at the ¢ (cents) sign, which inherited 
some extremely wrong sizing.

> I named it "Wedding of the Bugs" after a song by Robbie Fulks. He Rocks (in 
> a very Countryfied, Twangy way) and should be paid attention to.

Renaming is good; This name is a great name!! It would be a nice touch 
if when you posted (or maybe even somewhere inside the font) you 
mentioned what the fonts' origins are. In this case, it's 'based on 
Tarantella from the Solotype Catalog'

> Any forthcoming fonts from Traitor Vic's TV Fonts will, I promise, be 
> Original Designs or (at least) stolen from far less common and well known 
> source materials. Unless I feel like doin' a quickie or something.

You're right. The more common source materials have generally been 
digitized - for better or worse, but there are some significant 
exceptions. I had done quite a few myself before I discovered that 
they'd already been done, and far better than my attempts - mostly. It 
takes some serious hunting to find the ones that haven't been done.

In a separate thread, if he agrees, I'm going to post an excel 
spreadsheet produced by "Fontana" last October that indexes the 
Solotype Catalog and gives information about which of the Catalog 
entries exist as digitized fonts, with the fonts' names and sources.

I don't have the Alphabet book(s?) of 100 alphabets each that you 
have, and don't know how many of them use the same names for the same 
faces. What's the actual name of the book you're using that has these 
alphabets in it?

I do have all or most of the Dover/Solo 24-font books with CD that 
were produced more recently. They include fonts digitized by Solo. If 
you search for 'solotype' at Myfonts, you'll find more of his 
digitizations - many of those have different names than in the 
catalogs. Just to keep things confused!

> Thanks for everything, folks! I'll see ya 'round!

I certainly hope so!!

    - Character

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