Re: look and feel

[bug-gfe-admin]

Attached is a short document explaining a font design process. I've
used this way of working succesfully with an application called
GEMfont written by Sasha Blank.  However this application suffered a
lot from the fact that the platform was limited to 4!!! open windows
at a time of which one would need to be left unused in order to open
'desk-accessories' and from the fact that the most common screen
resolution was 640x400 in black&white. So, for GFE we should have a
good opportunities to make an even better application.

Appreciate any comments,

Erlend.

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Design process
==============

The first step is to consider what sort of font you want to design. Once you've 
done this and have got the inspiration, you can start with the first step:

1. Draw outlines/sketches of the main characters (e.g. a,e,f,g,n,s in western 
european languages).

For this the ideal environment would be a drawing environment like the Gimp 
offers, with a toolbox with drawing tools (line, arc, bezier curve, fill, 
eraser) and a canvas with 'help-lines' offering some guidance on dimensions.

Once you have/ while you draw the initial shapes, it is important to view how 
they look together. After all, characters are not meant to be used by 
themselves, but as part of a word or piece of text. So that brings us to the 
second step:

2. View characters in combinations.

Ideal for this would be a small editor, in which a couple of lines could be 
entered, and a viewer for these lines, so that the important characteristics 
can be seen. For example how well an e follows an f, what sort of line spacing 
the font needs, how well it fulls a small column etc.

Next the font will be completed, which brings us to the third step:

3. Complete the set of characters.

Ideal for this would be to have besides the drawing tools, powerful copy/paste 
function with the option to rotate/flip (pieces of) characters. E.g. the c 
cedille found for example in french could be created by copying the c and the 
comma and touching up the result.

By now we should have a (complete) font. Which unfortunately is not much use 
aside from being used in an XTerm. To have a useful font, we need to create a 
font family in different sizes, device resolutions and characteristics 
(blackness, condensedness, obliqueness etc.). This brings us to the fourth step:

4. Manipulate entire fonts.

The ideal for this is to have scaling/fattening/outlining/slanting etc. 
functions in a font way, so that a large part of the work would already have 
been done, and only (a lot of) touch up work is required.