| I am not sure what is being asked here, I have no background working
with or knowledge of fonts. I found Softy back when it was first made
available and like you, I never picked it up because the information in regards
to how you can use it were sparce. Speaking for a majority of one, I like pictures, this way I know what I am supposed to be seeing or see the next thing that I will have to contend with. This is to help you to use Softy from "Scratch" although, I would wonder why you would want to. |
 The beginning remains the same as you
would do to create a dingbat, However, I altered the Window that you see
on the left. Instead of leaving the Character set set for Symbols, I changed
it to the ANSI, When I completed the glyph and saved it it displayed as Western
font instead of as a Symbol font. That is the only difference that I observed.
I then continued to the point of opening the Windows. |
 You have now reached the point where
you have to enter the blank space in order to go on, Enter the blank glyph
and you are ready to start making your own font from "Scratch" |
 OK, you Now are ready to create a font,
but hey!, Look at the work area, It is nothing but a blank area without any
markers for help, how do you keep your perspective?, How do you know when
to make a curve?. This is a little to empty for me, Mind you, You can do
it, but I prefer some kind of grid so I made a grid for me to use. |
 These are just some samples of the type of
Templates you can create for your use here.You see, since you are
going to draw the character "Freehand" You do not use the Outline
Template feature |
 This allows you to create the template
in multicolors if you wish but the main thing it does is help to guide you
in the construction of the glyph. To use it, you just copy and paste into
the Template on the main menu.... Now back to the construction of a glyph
from Scratch |
 With the Work Area a blank screen go
to Glyph and select New Now here comes the tricky part, Move
your mouse into the Work Area and click it at the beginning of the character
you want to map. It is very important that you have this spot well lodged
in your memory because the only way to succesfully complete the glyph is
to make the Last click right where you started. If you fail, or double
click the mouse you will not end the placing of points and probablly have
to start over again. This seems to be critical, I had a device of a time
making the "Ends Meet". If you get this done properly, you have made your
first glyph freehand and you must now 1- Center, 2- Update, 3- Map
Having done this, you can now move on to the next character, Not forgetting
the prompts about saving the glyph information. |
 While you are constructing your glyph,
you will glide about the Work Area using your mouse to lay down the points
and the on/off curves. The most easiest way is with the mouse buttons. On
the left is a picture showing which is assigned to which of the buttons.
To change a Point to a circle, Highlight the point and go to the menu and
select ON/OFF Curve. This will have the effect of switching between
the two. |
|
| I would suggest that you use some form of a graph while you do fonts, This will help in the control of the uniformity of your glyphs. However, If you make fonts that are very technical, Then I think it better to be done on drafting paper and scanned into the program. I think this would maintain the precision you wish best. |
| In conclusion, I found this to be very similar to what you set up for
doing Dingbats. Using ANSI on the Attributes Dialog box, only changed the
discription in PSP from Symbol font to Western font. In all fairness, I just
made the one glyph, the letter E the rest of what I did was just pure
junk since I had nothing to guide me in the laying down of the points. I
will say this, I did not crash my computer which I did expect to happen,
I kept the number within the 2048em's and It went well, Will I try it again?,Why
Not?, Someone with a lot of patience and a good idea can certinly create
a font using Softy. I have since found that for a font, you need much less EM spacing, I set it down around 650 and still changed the spacing manually to what I considered was normal for the way I write. |
| file: /Techref/member/softy-font/grumpy/freehand.htm, 6KB, , updated: 2003/6/4 11:58, local time: 2025/2/6 22:41,
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