Fonts

Factual Questions
1

Is there a way to convert BMP images to a font? I know that a lot of TTFs are done in vector and contours and such, but let’s say for example I’d like to put my handwriting into a font format. What’s the easiest way to go about doing this?

What about for the Macintosh platform?

2

Handwriting recognition is an open research problem in AI (a friend of mine did some work on it over the summer). So I don’t think you’ll find anything out there just yet.

3

Yup. There are lots of utilities on the market.

ScanFont from FontLab comes to mind. This is not a product plug, but FontLab is a leader in commercial font products. ScanFont fits the bill and will run you about $99. Yes, there’s a Mac version.

4

I stand corrected.

5

Fontographer has been pretty widely used, it’s a Mac app but I think there’s a PeeCee version too. The only problem with converting BMPs is that they’re low rez, and you are unlikely to get good results without serious tweaking.

6

Not a problem at all…

HiLogic’s Font Creator is damn easy to use (dunno about Mac versions, though), and relatively cheap at around 50 bucks.

Essentially, you just scan in your images and convert them to two color b&w images, run em through the progam, and you got yourself a ttf file. It took me all of an hour to get the hang of.

Chas:

BMPs can be any number of colors or resolutions… in fact, when working with font files, you want only two colors. Antialiasing should take care of smoothing out any rough edges.

I’m something of a dillettante, though, so maybe somebody with more experience should pick up the ball…

7
      • HiLogic’s Font Creator is easy to use, and it’s uncrippled shareware so you can try it before paying- everything it’s supposed to do works. The one problem you can run into is that it doesn’t have any method at all for hinting, so when viewed on-screen in smaller sizes (depending on your particular screen resolution settings) any fonts you made or modified look like crap. They print perfectly though, and they look fine on-screen at larger sizes. - MC
8

Thanks, guys! I’ll check out these programs ASAP!