Home

BitFonter 3 for Windows User Manual

1. Apply to all glyphs in the font 325 326 Set the following parameters of the operation Left sidebearing Use this option if you want to change the position of the left margin You can set the absolute or relative values in pixels or percents to the current value Right sidebearing Use this option if you want to change the position of the right margin You can set the absolute or relative values in pixels or percents to the current value You can view the preview of the glyph with its margins in the preview field of the dialog To see the original margins position press and hold down the CTRL key Switch on the Apply to all glyphs in the font option if you want the operation be applied to all glyphs Click on the OK button to apply the changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation You can use the Undo command to undo this operation Adjusting Glyph Advance Width The Adjust Width operation is a useful addition to the Adjust Sidebearings operation It allows you to automatically change the advance width of any number of font glyphs As the other operations the Adjust Width operation is applicable to the glyph in the Glyph window or to the selected glyphs when in the Font window When you select the Width command the Glyph gt Metrics menu or the Adjust Width command in the Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window the Adjust Width dialog appears Adjust Width Glyph Width set to a i110 Perce
2. maranana nanna nenna B 0 dadaran EL 100 150 as PETTTPTETTITIETII TTI iil 9 Choose the Edit gt Paste command twice to paste two copies of the hyphen image 10 Choose Tool Options Panel in the View menu Click on the Transparent button in the panel Select tool 29 11 Choose Tools gt Rotate gt 90 CW to rotate the selection and then drag the selection to adjust its position in the Glyph window at 100 150 12 To close the font select the Close command in the File menu or simply click on the close window button Answer Save in the dialog asking about saving changes to the font You have just edited the Construct72 font 30 Customizing BitFonter s User Interface As you may infer from the title of this section most of the BitFonter user interface which means menus toolbars and keyboard shortcuts is customizable We believe our default interface is the easiest to use but if for some reason you do not like it you are free to make any changes you want If you do not want to change anything in the BitFonter user interface you can fast forward to the next section The general idea of customization is simple there is a long list of commands that you can use and three kinds of controls menus toolbars and keyboard shortcuts Through customization you can assign any command to a menu item button on a toolbar or combination of keys pressed on a keyboard In addition you can organize co
3. 2 Position the mouse cursor on one of the lines representing metrics in the editing field The cursor will change to T op ED depending on what line horizontal or vertical you position it on 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the line to its new place 4 Release the left mouse button Note Dragging the baseline does not affect font metrics It moves the glyph s shape in the reverse direction adjusting its vertical position in the font To edit font metrics 1 Select the Edit Metrics tool amp in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on any font metrics line in the editing field The cursor will change to Hold down the left mouse button and drag the line to the new place Release the left mouse button Font metrics will change affecting all the font glyphs Holding down the Suirt key while the cursor is positioned over a metrics line which changes the cursor to A or Ea and clicking on the mouse will move the line to the edge of the glyph shape This works with both glyph and font metrics Tip To edit glyph and font metrics without selecting the Edit Metrics tool you can use controls represented by signed color rectangles next to each metrics line Tip You can also change glyph metrics with the help of the Width and Sidebearings commands in the Glyph gt Metrics menu Dragging font metrics lines does affect font metrics i e all the glyphs in the font 267 268 Zoom
4. E Project Sample fnp Opening a Font Project To open a font project for editing select the Open command in the File menu or click on the button on the Standard toolbar if available The standard Open File dialog appears You will see all the files including image files that can be opened by BitFonter If you want to list only files in a particular format select the format in the Files of type dropdown list at the bottom of the Open File dialog Select the project file you are going to edit and click on the Open button You can open the following types of file as a project 1 A S BitFonter native project format fnp extension Windows font set fon extension Windows OpenType SBIT font ttf extension Palm OS font pdb extension PhotoFont font phf extension Or you also can open these files by dragging and dropping their icons onto the BitFonter s main window 69 70 Working with Fonts in the Project Window As was mentioned above the project and its window contain a set of references to real fonts and their families stored separately or contain the fonts themselves So working with the Project window you can manage the font sets easily but carefully The Project Window Toolbar There is a Toolbar at the header of the Project window The Toolbar contains three buttons repeating main project related menu commands e Opens an Info dialog for the selected item Creates a new f
5. MS Windows 1252 Western CONST LRAT ibe Jo Fares Tb The Unicode indexes will be recalculated during this operation as well You will see the list of all the available Encoding Vectors in the dialog The text above the list contains the name of the source encoding of your font To start reencoding select the destination encoding from the list and click on the OK button The reencoding algorithm in this case is as follows BitFonter gets each glyph s name and changes it to the corresponding name from the destination encoding then BitFonter changes the Unicode codepoints of glyphs accordingly to the STANDARD nam file Reencoding a Font Family Reencoding a font family means reencoding all the bitmap fonts in the family with a few mouse clicks Only the Codepage algorithm can reencode a family of fonts Note that reencoding only one font in a family containing multiple fonts is useless To reencode the whole font family e g Windows font set 1 Select the family name or icon in the Project window and choose the Font Info command from the File menu The Family Info dialog appears Font Info for Family Symbol E Names and Copyright Basic set of font names GA Encoding and Unicode Famik Nane Symbol Weight Stale Plain wide wi Spacmg Propedional Sule Hame Font Hams Fill H an Menu Name Build All Names 2 Select the Encoding and Unicode page to see the encoding settings
6. Threshold B acity bs bad Apply to all glyphs in the font xK The threshold operation can be performed by one of the following parameters Luminosity The luminance countered from pixel s red green and blue channels Opacity Pixel s opacity transparency component for fonts with millions of colors Color Pixel s hue angle To see the original glyph press and hold down the Crrt key Before After This command cannot be applied to a glyph more than once X Note This operation does not work with black amp white fonts 283 Invert The Invert command inverts glyph pixels colors Only the selected part of the open glyph or glyphs in the Font window is inverted You can invert the whole glyph in the Glyph window by selecting it with any selection tool In the simplest case the white pixels become black and the black pixels that compose the glyph shape become white The surrounding background pixels become black The right border of the background is the glyph s right margin The left border of the background is the glyph s left margin or the left side of the bounding box Vertically the background is limited by the bounding box which becomes 2 pixels higher Before After Inverting a second time does not return to the original glyph Instead it becomes 2 pixels wider and 2 pixels higher Before After The red rectangle in the samples above represents the font bounding box
7. To confirm deletion click on the Yes button or press No to cancel the operation When you confirm deletion the font will be deleted from the project but remain open in its Font window You may choose to save it add it to another project or close it without saving to disk 2 To remove a font or fonts that are not open select them in the Project window and use the Cut or Delete command in the Edit menu or press the DEL key on the keyboard Important Notes Remember that removing the font from the native BitFonter format project does not affect the real font file that resides separately on the disk along with the project file Such a deletion removes a reference to that file only To dispose of the font forever move it to the Recycle Bin But on the other hand when you are working with a Windows font set or other font of the project type removing the font from the project will delete the real font entry from the composite file So be very careful when deleting fonts from projects 147 148 Duplicating a Font It may sometimes be useful to duplicate an open font You already know how to duplicate fonts that are part of a project But when the font you are editing does not belong to any project you may also duplicate it To make a copy of an open font select the Duplicate command from the Font menu The current font will be duplicated in memory and shown in a separate Font window You may edit it in any way and save it Thi
8. Encoding settings gt Encoding made Use table MS Windows Symbol Ww Default char FOBU Unicode 143 3 Inthe Use table dropdown list you see the current codepage of your font family Leave it unchanged or select another one this will be the source codepage during reencoding 4 Click on the Reencode button to the right of the Use table dropdown list The Reencode dialog with the list of all available codepages appears 5 To start reencoding select the destination codepage from the list and click on the OK button The reencoding algorithm in this case is the same as when you reencode a single font by codepages X Note It is important to note that BitFonter does nothing with outline fonts that might be the part of the font family The names and or Unicode codepoints in these fonts would not change 144 Reverting a Font Anytime you are working with an open font you can revert the font to the last saved version To do this select the Revert command in the File menu You will see the revert confirmation dialog BitFonter 3 A Revert command will discard all changes made since last sawe and reopen Arial Blue Plain 72 Pixels Millions Colors Do you want to discard the changes in document Click on the Yes button if you really want to discard all changes to the font since it was last saved The last saved version of the font will be read from the disk in this case Click on the No button if you change y
9. lt Ss ES 6 You can work with the text object as with any selection Use the Text tool like any other selection tool to move or copy a text object Refer to the Selecting on page 244 section for information about selection tools 7 Choose a transparent or opaque mode for the text object in the Tool Options panel 8 Click the left mouse button anywhere outside the selection to accept the position of the text object and begin entering a new one 265 266 Other Tools Eye Dropper Tool The Eye Dropper is a tool for quick color selection from the colors already used in the glyph drawing You can choose the Eye Dropper by selecting the tool in the Tools toolbar or by pressing and holding down the ALT key while another tool is active To make any color in the editing field the current color drag the lower edge of the mouse cursor lt to that color and click the left mouse button The color under the cursor becomes the current color for drawing tools If the Info panel is visible the digital RGB values of the current color appear in it You cannot undo this operation Edit Metrics Tool This tool is used for glyph and font metrics editing Glyph metrics include the left and right margins of the glyph Font metrics that can be edited in the Glyph window are the baseline font ascender font descender Caps height and x height To edit glyph metrics 1 Select the Edit Metrics tool in the Tools toolbar
10. 130 H BF The upper part of this panel contains color information for a pixel under the mouse cursor its RGB values and the opacity value 0 255 If you are editing a font that has no transparency layer less than with millions of colors the opacity value is replaced with the gray level in percents When black amp white font is edited RGB values are not shown The bottom part of the Info panel contains the horizontal x and vertical y coordinates of a pixel under the mouse cursor The glyph s origin point has zero values If you are in the Image window the pixels are counted from the top left corner of the image The next pair of values show the width w and the height h of a selection if any There is another way to open the Info panel position the mouse cursor over the Current Color box in the Glyph or Image window and hold down the left mouse button G Glyph three 0033 f1 fro The information panel for the current color appears Drag the mouse outside this panel and release the left mouse button The Info panel will appear on the screen where the mouse button was released 241 242 Context Menu Some commands available in the Glyph window can be selected from the context menu To open the context menu right click anywhere in the editing field Here is a sample of the Glyph window context menu 3 Copy Ctrl Paste Ctrl Delete Delete Select All Ctrl 4 Select Inverse Deselect Ctrl U F
11. 205 Saving in BDF Format Bitmap Distribution Font BDF format may contain any number of glyphs in any color mode of any size resolution with any names codes and Unicode codepoints or without them The fonts in this format may have custom color tables You may use the BDF format to save your intermediate results while working with your new fonts or font sets X Note The Outline layer cannot be stored in the BDF format Use the BitFonter Binary Font format if you want to preserve outlines When saving in BDF format the default export options are used These options are Generate When this option is on BitFonter will generate BDF files XFREE86_GLYPH_RANGES with special key words that define existing glyphs and fields their codes Usually this option need not be switched on Pad Cells When this option is on BitFonter will generate and save glyphs of equal size in BDF format Usually this option need not be switched on Write encoding When this option is on BitFonter writes 1 byte codes for codepoints instead of glyphs but not 2 byte Unicode codepoints This option is Unicode codepoints off by default Line terminator This dropdown list lets you define the end of line style in a BDF file You may choose among Mac DOS and Unix line terminators DOS EOL mark is the default value Use the Export gt BDF ABF page of the Tools gt Options dialog to change BDF export options if needed 206 Saving in HP Soft Font Format BitF
12. Fori_RB BitFonter EDITS CREATES TRANSFORMS CONVERTS ANY BITMAP FONT IN ANY FORMAT USER S MANUAL FOR WINDOWS BitFonter 3 for Windows User Manual BitFonter 3 user manual edition 3 0 28 05 2007 Copyright 1992 2007 by Fontlab Ltd All rights reserved Editors Sasha Petrov Adam Twardoch Ted Harrison Yuri Yarmola Cover illustration Pawet Jonca pejot com No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher Any software referred to herein is furnished under license and may only be used or copied in accordance with the terms of such license AsiaFont Studio BitFonter CompoCompiler FONmaker FogLamp FontFlasher FontLab ScanFont SigMaker TransType TypeTool FontAudit VectorPaint and the FontLab logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Fontlab Ltd in the United States and or other countries Apple the Apple Logo Mac Mac OS Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc registered in the United States and other countries Adobe PostScript Photoshop Type Manager Illustrator Macromedia Fontographer Flash and Freehand are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated which may be registered in certain jurisdictions OpenType Windows Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows XP and Windows NT a
13. Importing the Clipboard s contents into BitFonter 1 Run your image editing application open and select the image that you want to import into BitFonter and Copy it onto the Clipboard 2 Switch to BitFonter and select the Image command from the File gt New menu You will see the following dialog box Hew image width EE h Linked Height 50 Colors and grays Color Mode Color Create new image using Clipboard s contents 4 Check that the Create new image using Clipboard s contents check box is switched on If this option is not enabled it means that you do not have a proper image in the Clipboard In the New Image section you will see the size of the image that BitFonter will read from the Clipboard If you want you can change the image dimensions to resample the imported image In the Color Mode dropdown list select Black amp White Grayscale or Color for the font you are going to generate from the image Select the number of colors as well 5 Click on the OK button and you will see a new image window with the Clipboard contents Creating an Empty Image Sometimes you may not have an image ready only an idea You can create an image right in BitFonter using bitmap editing tools that are of the same quality as in the most well known image editing programs But first you have to create an empty image window To create an empty image 1 Select the Image command from the File gt New m
14. Reduce to fit Choose this option if you want the image to be pasted fitted Bounding Box to the height of the bounding box The image width will change proportionally If the image height is less than the height of the bounding box the image will not be scaled Reduce to fit Font Choose this option if you want the image to be pasted to the Ascent font ascent line The image width will change proportionally If the image height is less than the font ascent the image will not be scaled If you need to copy glyphs from other applications e g Photoshop adjust the image size in Photoshop and then use the copy paste method Tool active after image pasting This option affects pasting to the Glyph window with the Edit gt Paste command Do not change If this option is selected any pasting operation in the Glyph window will not change the currently selected tool Select If this option is selected any pasting operation in the Glyph window will change the current tool to the Select tool Select Region If this option is selected any pasting operation in the Glyph window will change the current tool to the Select Region tool Edit Metrics If this option is selected any pasting operation in the Glyph window will change the current tool to the Edit Metrics tool Import Options The Import page of the Tools gt Options dialog allows you to customize font Opening options Corect glyph metrics keep comments Omit warming messages qui
15. Use the Undo command to undo the operation Colorize The Colorize command is the opposite of the Threshold command in a sense It does not change the font s color mode either but it allows you to fill all black amp white glyphs with one color or even with a color grayscale pattern To colorize the glyphs select the Colorize command in the Tools gt Filter menu and select the options in the Colorize dialog Colorize Assign by Luminosity Assign mode Color Add noise Apply to m iW m Amount 10 Lor a 4pply to all glyphs in the Font Select a method of determining what pixels should be colorized in the Assign by dropdown list Select a mode of glyph colorizing color or picture If you choose Color select the color that will be applied to the glyph s shape in the standard Colors dialog Check the Add Noise option to add some noise to a solid color you have selected You may choose to add different amount of noise and apply it to this or that component of RGB 285 286 If you choose the Picture mode click on the Browse button and choose the PNG or TIFF image file to be applied to the glyph s shape Colorize Assign by Opacity Assign mode Picture Picture file C Program Files FontLab bitFonters Patternsgold png L Alignment whole Apply to al
16. 289 290 Smart Blur The Smart Blur command blurs the glyph It is similar to the Gaussian Blur command described later but it tries not to blur the glyph s edges To perform this operation select the Smart Blur command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Smart Blur dialog will appear Smart Blur Level pss e pe Apply to all glyphs in the font Use the Level slider to define the blur degree You can see the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort You can use this command several times but be careful to check the effect after every use Before After X Note This operation does not work with black amp white fonts Gaussian Blur The Gaussian Blur command blurs the glyph using the Gaussian algorithm To perform this operation select the Gaussian Blur command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Gaussian Blur dialog will appear Gaussian Blur a Radius 60 0 1 pixel ed Apply to all glyphs in the font OK Use the Radius slider to define the blur degree View the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort You may use this command several times but be ca
17. As medium grid Shows glyph transparency as medium grid As large grid Shows glyph transparency as large grid As color Shows glyph transparency as color background Select color Allows you to choose color for transparency Choose Transparency gt As grid if you want to see a transparent background in the Glyph window Select the size of the grid from the Small grid Medium grid or Large grid choices in the View gt Transparency menu The size of the grid affects only the view of the editing field not the glyph itself To view the glyph background as colored select the Transparency gt As color command in the View menu The default color for transparency is white but you can change it using the Select Color command which brings up the standard Windows Select Color dialog in the View gt Transparency menu Changing the view of transparency does not affect the real transparency of drawing colors It defines only how the transparency is shown in the glyph window You may choose to change other viewing options on the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog box described in the BitFonter Options on page 44 section With the View menu you can also show and hide toolbars rulers and panels 239 240 Info Panel When in the Glyph or Image window the Info panel may become useful To make it visible on the screen select the Info Panel command in the View menu A E103 Jt a 255 Ei E z5 k s z t 191
18. Operations on a Selection Selection is used to choose part of the glyph on which to apply transformations In this section we will discuss methods of transforming selected areas Moving a Selection To move a selected area 1 Choose a selection tool Select Select Region or Magic Wand 2 Move the mouse cursor inside the selection area 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the selection to the new place 4 Release the left mouse button to finish moving or press the Esc key on the keyboard to abort the operation To constrain movement to the horizontal or vertical direction hold down the Suirt key after pressing the left mouse button and drag the mouse You can move the selected area by one pixel using the arrow keys 249 250 Transparent and Opaque Modes There are two drawing modes you can use when moving selections Opaque mode you can move the entire selection including black and white areas that work together as an object In this case the whole selection overlaps the underlying image Transparent mode this only works on the black parts of the selection Only the black areas in the selection will obscure the underlying image and the white areas will be completely transparent With true color images all pixels overlap each other according to their transparency attributes Opaque mode Transparent mode To select the Transparent or Opaque mode you must use the mode selection buttons in the Tool Optio
19. a You can undo this operation using the Edit gt Undo command T PNTA R IN HERAA y Obviously this image is more useful for splitting into separate glyphs than the original one But you can continue to enhance the image by using other commands from the Tools menu 179 180 Splitting an Image After you edit an image and before you create a font you must split the image into separate shapes When characters appear on paper or in a computer stored bitmap image they are not characters anymore They are nothing more than a collection of black or color spots of various shapes To restore fonts from an image BitFonter must separate the image of each character from the images of other characters and put this character in the proper position in the collection of glyphs that is called a font Because there are differences between the shapes of the same character in different fonts BitFonter cannot automatically recognize characters like Optical Character Recognition OCR programs do OCR programs are oriented to recognize a limited number of fonts and use advanced lexical based algorithms to minimize recognition errors by trying to understand words not just separate characters In BitFonter we usually do not have words just a collection of characters in any order It is impossible for us to create a recognition algorithm that will understand characters in BitFonter But we have created tools that simplify manual spl
20. buttons between toolbars or toolbars and menus 43 44 BitFonter Options This section is very important since it is referenced from many other sections of the Manual Most of the features behavior import and export algorithms of BitFonter are customizable in the Options dialog box We encourage you to experiment with the settings and adapt them to your preferences However note that the authors have carefully chosen the factory settings so if you do not feel like poking around the Options in most cases you will be fine with the defaults To open the Options dialog box select the Options command in the Tools menu E Gar Interface options gt Font Wandor Giph and Fanga Widow create new document st startup Babs Pasting impt Export Pisga bo Pet Oirean ut ne Font Editor The dialog structure is quite simple There is a list of pages combined in categories on the left the contents of the currently selected page on the right and some buttons on the bottom You will notice that the structure of this dialog bears resemblance to the structure of the Font Info dialog To select a page use the list on the left General Font Window alyph and Image window Bitmap Pasting Import Export Image to Font Conversion Outline Font Editor E E Expand one of the categories to see all the pages H General B Font Window VIE Drag amp drop H Giph and Image Window Bitmap Fasting
21. gt Options dialog box to change the color and line thickness for contours in the Outline layer Outline contour Outline style 233 g Editing Glyph Properties To view or edit the glyph properties select the Properties command in the Edit menu or press ALT ENTER The Glyph Properties window will open Glyph Properties Mame B v P rh Unicode 0041 oO Body 9x17 piels Left o Right o width E a Scalable width 562 Vertical offset a gt You can view or edit the properties of all the existing glyphs in the font Browse the glyphs using the Previous and Next buttons located at the left bottom of the window 234 You can view and edit the following glyph attributes Name Unicode Body Left Sidebearing Right Sidebearing Width Scalable width Vertical offset The glyph s name from the standard name Unicode database Changing the name with the dropdown list to the right will change the Unicode codepoint automatically Unicode codepoint of the glyph linked to the glyph s name through the standard name Unicode database of BitFonter Changing the Unicode codepoint will not change the name automatically Width and height of the glyph s shape in pixels This is actually the glyph s bounding box which is not editable Horizontal offset of the glyph image from the glyph s origin point left margin Horizontal offset of the right margin from t
22. the current font Using this feature you can create metric and kerning information once and use it in several similar fonts To import a metrics file into BitFonter select the Metrics command in the File gt Import menu or the Import Metrics command in the Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window You will see the standard Open File dialog box Select the metrics file that you want to import in PFM or AFM format and click on the Open button The Import Metrics dialog box appears Import Metrics File Import results Import of metrics file C Test Fonts EUGARAM1 PFM was buccessful Wihak do vou want to do with metrics data Do nothing Allowed difference between metrics 10 he what do you wank to do with kerning data Do nothing The topmost control contains a legend describing the metrics file that you are importing and its compatibility with the current font 333 334 The options in the Parameters area let you select various metrics importing options What do you want to do with the metrics data Do nothing Replace all metrics in the current font Replace all metrics that are close to current Replace metrics that are thicker than in the current font Replace metrics that are wider than in the source font Do not import metrics data from this file Import all metrics data glyphs advance widths and sidebearings and replace the metrics data in the current font We recommend that y
23. 210 color mode 150 162 174 Color Palette 252 255 color Picker 253 color table 150 162 174 Colorize 285 Context Menu 116 242 313 copyright information 94 Creating a Font from an Image 305 Creating a New Font 197 Creating and Saving Fonts 73 83 84 Custom Filter 292 297 Cyrillic 121 134 default character 103 Define Cell Tool 185 demo version 12 descender 98 231 dithering 150 174 EBSC table 56 Edit Metrics Tool 308 Editing Family Properties 75 Editing Font Properties 75 88 89 148 Editing Fonts 75 273 Editing Glyph Properties 136 338 Editing Glyphs 87 113 126 135 136 148 151 152 173 175 308 324 Editing Metrics 126 158 Editing Metrics in the Glyph Window 232 Editing Style Properties 75 Ellipse tool 263 embedded bitmap 56 84 embedded fonts 71 84 Embedding Mark 145 Emboss 289 Encoding 22 102 120 encoding vector 119 120 140 Enhance 292 298 EPS 166 169 Eraser tool 261 export options 56 Exporting Outlines 233 304 Extended Latin 121 extra properties 111 Eye Dropper tool 253 family info 88 name 103 Fill tool 261 Find Edges 299 Find Glyph 28 130 Flip Horizontal 272 Flip Vertical 272 folders and paths 19 FOND ID 103 FOND resource 22 font adding to project 145 copying 74 creating 73 162 165 creating from image 165 deleting 74 dimensions 97 duplicating 74 147 exporting 212 importing 198
24. 255 256 Glyph Transparency You can create fonts and draw glyphs with transparent colors Transparency mode is available in true color 32 bit fonts only When you open a 32 bit Glyph window there is an element in it not found in other modes the Transparency Palette This new palette resides above the Color Palette at the top of the Glyph window i AN guestion HUIR from Tr E Jd pene BEERS IS Sr A The Transparency Palette can be used along with the Color Palette You can think of transparency opacity as an additional color attribute Every pixel in a glyph can be more or less transparent To set transparency for the current color move the mouse cursor to the Transparency Palette the cursor will change to the Eye Dropper and click the left mouse button on the amount of transparency opacity you want Or hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor left and right until the transparency you need is selected and then release the left mouse button The selected transparency will be marked in the palette with a small black line or rectangle If the Info panel is open you can see the numeric values of different pixels opacity Zero means the pixel is fully transparent 255 means it is fully opaque The transparency mode can be applied to all drawing tools used for glyph editing Even the Eraser tool can erase pixels partially gt Tip The Text tool can draw with white color in this mode Pencil Tool The Pe
25. 371 J 332 K 712 Left Right i 0 31 Bd 48 38 29 de 46 29 30 12 de 36 35 37 20 40 77 16 56 10 The table in the Metrics editing mode may contain 8 columns Name Width Left Right ScWidth Bottom BdWt BdHt The name of the glyph It is not editable here Glyph advance width the distance between the left and the right margins of the glyph in pixels Left sidebearing the horizontal offset of the glyph image from the glyph s left margin in pixels Right sidebearing horizontal offset of the right margin from the glyph image in pixels Width Left BdWt Scaled glyph advance width the distance between the left and the right margins of the glyph in Units Per eM 1000 Bottom sidebearing vertical offset of the glyph image from the baseline Body width the width of the glyph image in pixels This field is not editable Body height the height of the glyph image in pixels This field is not editable 321 322 You can customize the metrics table view To hide those columns that you do not need right click on the table header and select the item in the dropdown list Mame width Left Right Scwidth amp 4 Bottom Bd EdHt Repeat this operation to make the column reappear in the table To change the width of the column just drag its right boundary To edit a value in the table just click on it with the mouse cursor and enter the new value You have
26. 55 Importing a Font 233 Info Panel 240 253 Invert 284 italic angle 100 Kerning editing 328 329 keyboard shortcuts 185 243 customization 40 Knife tool 185 leading 97 Line tool 261 Macintosh 120 Magic Wand tool 248 Make Bold 278 Median Noise 294 menu customizing 35 Toolbars 66 View 66 metrics 97 231 editing 307 320 metrics window 309 Kerning mode 328 Metrics mode 319 Metrics Tools 309 modes 310 opening 158 Text mode 316 Metrics Window 232 Mouse 21 MS Charset 103 name table 119 120 140 340 names table 136 NeXT Step 122 Opaque mode 250 OpenType 22 26 67 69 73 217 OpenType TT 67 69 81 saving 84 operation adjust glyph metrics 325 327 Brightness Contrast 280 Colorize 285 Custom Filter 297 Emboss 289 Enhance 292 Find Edges 299 Flip Horizontal 272 Flip Vertical 272 Gaussian Blur 291 generate glyph metrics 323 generate kerning 330 Hue Saturation 281 Invert 284 Make Bold 278 Median Noise 294 Reduce Noise 293 Rotate 275 Scale 273 Sharpen 295 Shift 279 Slant 277 Smart Blur 290 Soften 296 Threshold 282 Operation menu 135 Operations 135 148 152 251 Operations toolbar 270 options 44 OS 2 122 outline 26 169 creating 300 deleting 300 filling with color 300 rasterizing 300 outline font editor 62 201 213 Outline Font Editor 213 outline fonts 26 outline layer 233 238 Outline Layer 200 Outline Opera
27. All BitFonter options are discussed here as well Font Project This chapter introduces one of the key concepts of BitFonter the font project The Font Project window will help you to manage the fonts you are working with Editing Fonts Here you will learn how to edit a new or existing font how to change its parameters and how to prepare it for saving in the appropriate format Creating and Saving Fonts This chapter describes the procedure of new font creation and export in full detail You will learn how to import fonts from different sources as well as how to export new or edited fonts to an image format or outline font format You can draw glyphs in a drawing application or right in BitFonter or scan them from your desktop scanner and then create screen or printer fonts using BitFonter s autosplitting algorithms Editing Glyphs This chapter will help you edit character shapes Everything you can do to the glyph s image is described here Editing Metrics This chapter describes the Metrics window interface glyph metrics and kerning editing 11 12 System Requirements The Windows version of BitFonter requires one of the following hardware and software configurations A PC computer capable of running one of the following versions of Windows Windows 98 Windows ME Windows NT 4 0 Windows 2000 or Windows XP with one of these operating systems installed At least 10Mb of free space on the hard disk drive an
28. BitFonter only and are used to help you work with the glyph Below is the list of all the layers that you can see in the Glyph and Image window Bitmap Main layer containing the glyph s bitmap image Grid Shows regular grid in the editing field in large zoom modes Outline Shows glyph outline layer it is usually empty i Glyph metrics Shows glyph metrics left and right sidebearings ann Baseline Shows baseline zm Font Metrics Shows vertical font metrics such as ascender descender or cap height Font Bounding Shows font bounding box rectangle in the editing field of box the glyph window Image Cells Shows cell rectangles in a split image Image window gs Contour Masks Shows cell contours in a split image Image window You can control the layers appearance and features with the View gt Show Layers menu If you frequently need to switch some layers on and off you can drag the View gt Show Layers menu and convert it to a toolbar View View Transparency gt Eg Transparency b ES Outline Toolbars al 7 i Glyph Metrics Toolbars gt Brushes Panel Brushes Panel Palette Panel Palette Panel Info Panel zz Font Metrics Info Panel lv Tool Options Panel fa Font Bounding Box v Tool Options Panel v Rulers v Rulers ZoomIn Ctrl Num ZoomIn Ctrl Num Zoom Out Ctrl C Zoom Out Ctrl The View gt Transparency menu contains the following options As small grid Shows glyph transparency as small grid
29. Dialog where you can define the new font parameters see the Creating and Saving Fonts on page 161 chapter for details on creating new fonts To create a new reference to a font which already exists in the project drag the font to another family or style holding down the CTRL and ALT keys Be careful this will copy the font s reference only but not the actual font So two lines in the project window will reference the same bitmap font The reference font entry will get the bl icon and the referenced font entry name will be marked bold A 12 Pixels This operation does not work with some types of projects like OpenType SBIT or PhotoFont format Note In fact when a font is referenced this means that only one real copy of the font is stored in the project BitFonter highlights the first appearance of the font as source and others as references If you remove the source appearance from the project another appearance will take its place To remove the real copy of the font from the project you must remove all its references 73 74 Duplicating copying and pasting fonts You can duplicate copy and paste any font or even a font set To duplicate fonts select them by shift clicking on their icons or names and then choose the Duplicate command in the Edit menu Font duplicates will appear in the corresponding styles of the family You may choose to copy fonts and paste copies to another style or another family Use the st
30. MacOS Turkish MS Windows 1250 Central European MS Windows 1251 Cyrillic MS Windows 1252 Western TANSI 1 LRAT De den 4 IT ed Character names will be recalculated during this operation as well You can see the list of all the available codepages in the dialog The text above the list contains the source codepage of your font To start reencoding select the destination codepage from the list and click on the OK button The reencoding algorithm in this case is as follows BitFonter gets each glyph s Unicode codepoint and changes it to the corresponding codepoint from the destination codepage then BitFonter changes the name of each glyph to the name of its new Unicode codepoint by looking it up in the STANDARD NAM file 141 142 To reencode glyphs by Name Table switch the window to the Names editing mode using the Mode dropdown list at the bottom of the Font window and then select the Reencode command from the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu The Reencode dialog appears Reencode With this operation you can reassign names to characters of the current encoding to support another encoding The source encoding is MS Windows 1252 Western 4N50 Select an encoding to which you wank to reencode the current Font 150 8859 13 Latin 7 Baltic z 150 8859 14 Latin 6 Celtic Io 6859 15 Latin 9 S0 6659 16 Latin 10 50 Latin 1 MS Windows 1250 Central European MS Windows 1251 Cyrillic
31. Name Fidi Mane Menu Mane Build All Names ox Cc apply The Family Info dialog contains five pages Browse the pages using the list at the left or the buttons To apply new information to the font family click on the Apply button on any page To apply information and close the Family Info dialog click on OK To close the dialog without saving changes click on the Cancel button In the Editing Font Properties on page 90 section we will describe all the Info pages and give some recommendations for entering data properly Editing Style Properties The style properties are the font style information that can be applied to fonts in a very few cases Although BitFonter cannot edit outline fonts neither Type 1 fonts nor TrueType OpenType TT it can write an OpenType SBIT font in Windows format with embedded bitmap fonts in it In this case the style properties may be useful To view or edit the style properties select the style slot in the Project window and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the button located in the Project window toolbar The Style Info dialog will appear Font Info for Style Symbol Sm Names and Copyright Basic set of font names Copyright infonmation f Designer information Family Name Symbol version E Encoding and Unicode Weight Thin 100 Shae Plain Additional data Supparked codepages Unicode ranges Style Name 3 Format specific data TrueType Font Mann
32. OK button to apply the changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation X Note This operation does not work with black amp white fonts Hue Saturation This operation is also useful for retouching color glyphs As seen from the command name you can use it to change the hue and the saturation of a glyph s colors To edit the glyph s hue saturation or lightness select the Hue Saturation item in the Tools gt Adjust menu You will see the Hue Saturation dialog Hue Saturation Hue Saturation Lightness izd Apply to all glyphs in the font Use the Hue slider to change the color hue of the glyph Move the Saturation slider to the left to make the colors less saturated or to the right to make them more saturated Move the Lightness slider to the left to make the glyph darker or to the right to make it lighter You can preview the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation X Note This operation does not work with black amp white fonts 281 282 Threshold The Threshold command fills light pixels of the glyph image with white color and dark pixels with black Actually it turns color glyphs into black amp white glyphs but it does not change the font s color mode The boundary between light and dark can be defined in the Threshold dialog
33. Outline commands to paste only outlines when in the Font window 301 302 Trace Options Autotracing is used to create glyph outlines through the use of the Trace Bitmap command or when exporting glyphs to an outline font editing application Some drag and drop operations also need the autotracer for example when glyphs are converted to outlines when dragged from BitFonter s Font window to an Adobe Illustrator image The Trace Options dialog is used to customize the autotracing feature of BitFonter To open it when in the Glyph window select the Tools gt Outline gt Trace Bitmap command while holding down the Crrt key Trace Options Convert to black white picture Threshold by Luminosity T e G o Tracing options Tice preset Wer light Trace tolerance Curve FR guail D m Shaighben angle r There are two separate parts of options in the dialog Black amp White Conversion Options and Tracing Options If a grayscale or color font will be traced you must define the parameters of conversion of the glyphs to black amp white in the upper part of the dialog Choose the Threshold by conversion method in the dropdown list Use the slider to adjust the threshold level if needed See the Threshold on page 282 operation discussed earlier If a black amp white font is autotraced you will see the short version of the dialog without Black amp White Conversion Options After you define the conversion method you ca
34. Size Sometimes you may need to change the size of your image You can do this in two ways The first way is to scale the image 1 Select the Image Size command in the Image menu The Image Size dialog will appear Image Size New image dimensions width Height Resample 800 700 Pixels Pixels Proportional Simple Nearest Neighbor Bilinear Gaussian Hamming Blackman Cancel 2 Enter the new image Width and Height in pixels If the Proportional option is checked the Height will be updated while you enter the Width and vice versa 3 There are several predefined methods for scaling images included in the Resample dropdown list If any choice other than the Simple resampling method is selected you can tune it up with the slider to get the best result for your particular image Note that what is good for one image will not necessarily be good for another 4 Click on the OK button to scale the image or click on Cancel to abort The second way to resize an image is adding or removing work space around the image 1 Select the Canvas Size command in the Image menu The Canvas Size dialog will appear Canvas Size New canvas size width 1000 Pixels wt 3 as v Proportional Height 875 Pixels Anchor LJ LIN 2 Enter the new image Width and Height in pixels If the Proportional option is check
35. Tool Often the size of the glyph that you are editing is smaller than the size of the window You may need to see more details of an image Do this by using the Zoom in and Zoom out buttons in the Glyph window or the Zoom tool To change the zoom mode 1 Select the Zoom tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor or Ey by holding down the ALT key on one of the corners of the glyph region that you want to zoom in on or zoom out 3 Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse to select the region 4 Release the left mouse button The new zoom mode will be selected To change the zoom mode by one level simply click on or Att click somewhere in the editing field To get the Zoom tool temporarily while another tool is selected hold down CTRL SPACEBAR Or CTRL ALT SPACEBAR If the Zoom tool is selected the Tool Options panel includes some additional zoom buttons Zoom tool increases the zoom mode by one level decreases the zoom mode by one level Fit fits the editing field to the size of the Glyph window ra sets the view to 100 Bitmap Pasting While the Glyph window is open you can use the Clipboard for pasting graphics into your glyph Place the image onto the Clipboard in advance A wide range of possibilities becomes available Imagine a font that consists of your favorite icons for example You can build it in a few minutes by copy pasting icon images from your favorite image
36. White Conversion If you are going to make a black amp white font from a color or grayscale font you usually have to define the threshold parameter for conversion The threshold parameter tells BitFonter what pixels are light and what pixels are dark Light pixels of the glyph image are replaced with white color and dark pixels with black The boundary between light and dark can be defined here on the Black White Conversion page Black and white conversion defaults iy The conversion can be performed by one of the following parameters Luminosity The luminance countered from pixel s red green and blue channels Opacity Pixel s opacity transparency component for fonts with millions of colors Color Pixel s hue angle To see the original glyph in the preview press and hold down the CTRL key 113 Editing a Font Character Set When speaking about editing a character set we mean the process of editing font s glyphs attributes not editing glyph shapes Glyph editing techniques will be described later in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter 114 Font Window The Font window is used to display an entire font It opens automatically when you open an existing font by double clicking on its icon in the Project window or with the File gt Open command You can also create a new font with the New Font command in the File menu or with the Create New Project Font in the Project menu or by importing a fo
37. all glyphs at the same size Usually this option need not be switched on Write encoding When this option is on BitFonter writes 1 byte codes codepoints instead of for glyphs but not 2 byte Unicode codepoints This Unicode codepoints option is off by default Line terminator This dropdown list lets you define the end of line style in a BDF file You may choose among Mac DOS and Unix line terminators DOS EOL mark is the default value TrueType based OpenType SBIT export options Embed bitmaps only in existing outline glyphs _ Export bitmaps by glyphs order ignore Unicodes Always generate missing outline glyphs consisting of Generate bitmap scaling table From PPM to o PPM The next group of options is about saving fonts in OpenType SBIT format Generally BitFonter cannot make changes to outline fonts but when it saves a group of embedded bitmap fonts in Windows OpenType SBIT format it must make some necessary corrections For example if an opened project does not contain an outline component and is saved in OpenType SBIT ttf format BitFonter automatically generates dummy outlines Further you can choose what these generated glyphs will look like spaces dots or squares The Always generate missing outline glyphs option is always on The meaning of another option is illustrated in the following Embed bitmaps only in Embed bitmaps only in existing outline glyphs is ON existing outline glyphs is OFF table ith out
38. amp white fonts only To clear the contents of the outline layer select the Clear command in the Tools gt Outline menu The glyph contours will be removed To replace the bitmap contents of the glyph select the Rasterize command in the Tools gt Outline menu The glyph contours will be rasterized and the new glyph image will be created Note that color glyphs will be replaced with black amp white a To fill the glyph s outline with color pixels select the Fill command in the Tools gt Outline menu The Fill Outline dialog appears Fill Outline Fill color pixels C Cra Select color and opacity level enter the values of horizontal and or vertical shift if needed and click on the OK button The interior of the glyph s outline will be filled with the selected color with antialiasing This operation preserves the original pixels of the glyph image that lay outside of the contours All the above outline operations can be applied to the whole glyph in the Glyph window or to several glyphs when they are selected in the Font window Note The content of the outline layer can be saved to the disk only in BitFonter Binary Font bfb format or it can be exported to outline editing application There are two special commands in the Edit menu as well If copied with the common Copy command glyphs have outlines in their outline layer the glyph outlines can be pasted without bitmaps Use the Paste Outline and Append
39. are High quality easy to use bitmap editor with more than 15 tools and 20 filters Free hand drawing tools with digitizing tablet support Grayscale and color font support 100 or more levels of undo Support of almost all bitmap font formats Automatic detection of glyphs in image for import Export of glyphs or text to image format Rasterization of outline fonts and autotracing of bitmap fonts Glyph outline preview import and export Outline pixel fonts export Export of outlines to FontLab vfb format Easy to use drag and drop interface Context menus and property panels everywhere Easy glyph metrics editing Support for kerning in photofonts 10 About this Manual This manual covers the Windows version of BitFonter 3 The following chapters describe all of BitFonter s features in full detail They are organized to cover all the functions in their usual sequence If you are not well acquainted with fonts and font editing tools we recommend you start reading this manual beginning with the BitFonter User Interface on page 13 chapter It briefly covers the basic function of the program editing bitmap fonts BitFonter User Interface This chapter explains the difference between outline and bitmap fonts and illustrates the most basic tasks you can do with BitFonter It also covers the basic definitions of the BitFonter user interface and its customization and gives a short description of all the editing windows and panels
40. bottom of the Glyph window is in the locked position If the button is in the unlocked position pressing a keystroke on the keyboard will open the glyph for the character associated with that keystroke for editing in the current Glyph window 243 244 Selecting You can select the entire editing field of the Glyph window by the Select All command in the Edit menu If you want to deselect any previously selected area use the Deselect command in the Edit menu To deselect the selected area and select the unselected area simultaneously use the Select Inverse command Additionally there are three selecting tools in the Tools toolbar Select tool Select Region tool and Magic Wand Any selected part of the glyph can be moved around the editing field by dragging it It can be cut copied pasted and cleared by the corresponding choices in the Edit menu or buttons in the Standard toolbar All the selecting tools have common options which you can see in the Tool Options panel the View menu They are the Transparent selection and the Opaque selection You may need to switch between these options to make the selected part of a glyph transparent or opaque when it is moved around the editing field Click on the Transparent button in the Tool Options panel if you want the white area of the selection not to cover the underlying black dots when the selection moves Click on the Opaque button if you want the white area of the selection t
41. click creates empty glyph first When this option is checked double clicking on an empty cell in the Font Window creates the glyph but does not open it To open the glyph for editing you need to double click on it again By default this option is off and double clicking on an empty cell creates and opens the glyph Chart cells Default font mode Codepage Caption content Unicode Caption font Arial Show gph template images in empty cells Show outline if no bitmap is present Enlarge glyphs in cells beyond ther point size Max enlargement 2 1 Define the default font editing mode with the help of the Default Font Mode dropdown list Define the default cells caption content with the Caption content dropdown list Here you can choose the font and the font size for the caption Show glyph template images in empty cells Uncheck this option if you do not want the template glyphs to be shown in empty cells of the Font window Show outline if no bitmap is present Check this option if you want the cell show outlines if the glyph does not contain bitmap image If neither outline nor bitmap is present the cell will not contain any image Enlarge glyphs in cells beyond their point size This check box lets the glyph image zoom when the cell zooms The Max enlargement dropdown list allows you to limit glyph zooming in its cell Drag drop options keep replaced glyphs under new names Resample droppe
42. font can have glyphs names codes and Unicode codepoints in this format but may not Unicode codepoints are not written in this format The number of glyphs is not limited BitFonter limits the size of glyphs to 2048 by 2048 pixels Saving in Palm OS Font Format The Palm OS font format pdb has many restrictions as well Only black amp white fonts can be saved in this format The font cannot have glyphs with duplicate codes and the glyphs names and Unicode codepoints are not written in this format The font cannot have more than 256 glyphs and cannot have glyphs larger than 256x256 pixels Although you may save a project with multiple families in this format the font will contain only one family This font format contains less font information therefore saving in this format is an export with significant information loss Note that this format is of a project type in BitFonter Note The pixel size of any Palm OS font is always defined by the font ascender value Saving in PhotoFont Format A font in PhotoFont phf format contains glyphs as a set of true color bitmap images You can save any existing font of any bitmap format in this format A project containing an outline font or fonts of more than one style cannot be saved as a PhotoFont font There is only one restriction on the glyphs in this format a font of any color mode will be saved as a 32 bit true color font This is the reason the phf font file is 10 times bigge
43. font glyph a sample template glyph from one of the system fonts or from the BitFonter template font is shown in the empty cell You can switch off the templates on the Font Window gt View page of the Tools gt Options dialog box A gray cell caption means that the character is absent in the current encoding Characters matching the current encoding are shown with yellow captions and reside in the upper part of the font chart The cells with yellow captions form the so called yellow zone You can switch off the caption by choosing None in the Title dropdown list You can set the default title view mode and select a font for captions on the Font Window gt View page of the Tools gt Options dialog 119 120 Font Editing Modes BitFonter has four font window editing modes based on two major types of glyph identification identification by names and identification by numbers actually Unicode codepoints Historically name based encoding tables are called encoding vectors and Unicode based encoding tables are called codepages The Mode dropdown list located in the Font window footer lets you select one of the font editing modes Name Table Sets the Encoding Vector editing mode Unicode Range Sets the Unicode Range editing mode Codepage Sets the Codepage editing mode Glyph Index Sets the Index editing mode The different editing modes allow you to look at the font from different points of view But also the acts of crea
44. gt Encoding settings before saving the project or individual font How to Make a Codepage Definition File Codepage definition files extension CPG are text files that have the following structure FONTLAB CODEPAGE Oxff MacOS Cyrillic source http www unicode org Public MAPPINGS VENDORS APPLE CYRILLIC TXT Macintosh Script 7 Macintosh Languages 32 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 53 54 55 56 58 135 0x00 0x0000 0x01 0x0001 0x02 0x0002 0x03 0x0003 The first line of this file is an identification line that is used to set the codepage name and tell BitFonter that this file is a properly composed codepage definition file This line must be started by the text FONTLAB CODEPAGE OxFFFF The name of the codepage follows All other strings starting with are comments and are not interpreted by BitFonter The following strings are formed as pairs of two integer numbers in decimal or hex starting with Ox form The first number is the local code of the character and should be in the 0 255 range The second number is the Unicode codepoint of the character and should be in the 0 65535 O FFFFh range The special Unicode codepoint OxFFFF is used to define codes that are not mapped to any character All codepages are installed in the Shared default data folder Codepage typically C Program Files Common Files FontLab Codepage folder and are available to all programs of the FontLab family If you want to make a codepage
45. is pressed locked lah then pressing keys changes the current tool in the Tools toolbar Scrolling You can scroll the editing field using the Scroll Bars The same action can be done by the Hand tool which becomes available when you hold down the SPACEBAR key The top and left rulers can be switched on and off by using the Rulers command in the View menu Zooming You can define magnification or reduction of the editing field of a glyph with the Size dropdown list There are 26 zoom modes available in the menu The Zoom in and Zoom out buttons allow you to change the zoom mode of the editing field by one level at a time ou a The maximum zoom in is limited to 1600 magnification and the minimum reduction is 10 To magnify or reduce part of a glyph select the Zoom tool described later on page 268 in this chapter The physical size of the editing field is set to one and a half the size of the font bounding box by default When you edit the glyph you are limited by the size of the editing field To make the editing field larger draw outside the bounding box close and then open the glyph window once more The editing field will fit the size of the new bounding box You can set the fixed size of the editing field in the Canvas and Dimensions page of the Tools gt Options dialog 237 238 View Menu In BitFonter every glyph contains several editing layers Some of them are used when the font is exported others are
46. little difference between a menu and a toolbar so you can re arrange copy or remove menu items just like you did with toolbar buttons View Show Layers d Transparency d Toolbars d Brushes Panel Paletke Panel Info Panel Tool Option ae ca Rulers zoom In Ctrl hum zoom uk trl Fit bo Window Actual Pixels Auto Line Feed You can also drag a menu item onto a toolbar to add a toolbar button Hold the CTRL key to copy the item 33 34 To get access to all the BitFonter commands open the Commands page in the Customize dialog box Customize Commands Toolbars Tools Keyboard l ma em Sa seem ee m a a a eee e fees ee ee ee ee enu Options Categories Commands Sa C Edit Eo View _ Font Froject Pra Fort royect Image FileM ev mage Glyph pa Window Help New Menu Close Standard ieee e save Open Installed Description Open an existing document In the left list select a group of commands and use the list of commands in the right list as a source of menu items and toolbar buttons drag the commands from there Customizing Menus If you want to create a new menu select the New Menu group in the left menu and drag it onto the main menu bar or any of the toolbars A new menu appears and you can start adding commands to it using the drag drop technique described above With the Customize dialog not only can you customiz
47. mouse cursor on the line hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse Release the left mouse button when you are done To drag a glyph within the editing area position the mouse cursor on the glyph image hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to position the glyph inside its advance width Press and hold down the right mouse button while dragging the mouse to modify the glyph advance width You can also modify the vertical position of the glyph relative to its baseline Hold down the Surrt key on the keyboard while dragging the glyph Make sure the baseline is switched on in the View gt Show Layers menu Using the Keyboard When the glyph is active you can use the keyboard to adjust the metrics Left and right Moves to the previous and next glyph in the sample string arrow keys Ctri left and Moves the right sidebearing This changes the right sidebearing right arrow and the advance width Hold down the SHIFT key to move by 5 keys pixels at each key click on Any character Selects the glyph you have typed as the current glyph for editing or digit You can also enter the glyph name if you want to access glyphs that are not assigned to any key combination Ctri and Moves to the next and previous glyph in the sample string Ctrl Using the Metrics Table Use this button in the bottom control area of the Metrics window to open the Table Hame Width 743 B BED C 746 D 813 E B90 F 596 G 816 H 853
48. option is checked the Pixel Size will be updated while you enter the Point Size and vice versa If the Link option is not checked changing the Point or Pixel sizes will change the font resolution in the corresponding fields You can enter new font horizontal and vertical resolutions Check the Proportional option to keep horizontal and vertical resolution equal When the vertical font resolution changes the Pixel Size also changes while the Point Size of the font remains unchanged 149 150 a There are several predefined methodes for scaling font glyphs included in the Resample dropdown list If any choice other than the Simple resampling method is selected you can tune it up with the slider to get the best result for your particular font Note that what is good for one font will not necessarily be good for another Look at the preview in the preview field to the left to keep track of changes Use the zoom buttons to reduce or enlarge the preview You can view the original glyph shape by pressing and holding down the CTRL key on the keyboard When finished click on the OK button to scale your font or click on Cancel to abort When changing font size and resolution BitFonter automatically recalculates font metric information Note If the scaled font contains glyphs with an outline layer then the outlines are scaled proportionally Changing Font Color Mode While the Font window is open you can change the font color mode i e t
49. other things can be kept in tables in a font TIFF Tagged Image File Format An uncompressed image file format for PC and Macintosh Transparency additional information in color images allowing color pixels to be more or less transparent so the background becomes partially visible TrueType a font format using quadratic b spline mathematics to describe glyph outlines Developed and promulgated by Microsoft and Apple Computer We use the term Windows TrueType OpenType TT for Windows TrueType fonts here in the Manual Windows TrueType fonts containing embedded bitmaps are called OpenType SBIT fonts Type 1 Adobe Type 1 PostScript Type 1 a font format using cubic b spline mathematics to describe glyph outlines Developed and promulgated by Adobe Systems Unicode range the portion of Unicode dealing with a particular language or script E g the Hebrew range the Cyrillic range the extended Latin range A Unicode range is not limited to 256 characters It is usually a contiguous part of Unicode VFB format the internal outline font format of Fontlab products 25 26 Getting Started This section will explain the most basic tasks you can do with BitFonter If you are an advanced user and familiar with font design theory you could probably jump ahead to the next chapter Generally fonts are divided into two large classes bitmap and outline Bitmap fonts were originally constructed as grids of black and white dots that we
50. parameters View the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key The Threshold by parameters work the same way as the Threshold on page 282 operation Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort This operation can clean up the glyph image and even make it empty You may use the Reduce Noise command several times to achieve the best result 293 294 Median Noise The Median Noise operation makes the glyph more or less noisy by averaging the colors of neighbor pixels To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Median Noise command The Median Noise dialog will appear Median Noise Radius E pixels n 7 aan Apply to all glyphs in the font Enter the Radius value for pixel color averaging You will see the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph simply press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You can use the Median Noise command multiple times to achieve the result you need Sharpen This command makes the glyph image sharper and higher contrast It is the opposite of the Soften on page 296 command To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Sharpen command The Sharpen dialog will appe
51. part of the alphabet a letter a digit an ideogram a symbol Any image that can be recognized as having the same meaning represents the same character AAGAR All the images above represent the character A Please note that sometimes identical images represent different characters A Latin A A Cyrillic A A Greek Alpha Characters are abstract beings without a particular strictly defined image Computers store characters in their memory using numerical codes A text file contains sequences of such codes that represent strings of characters Glyph The basic atomic element of a font the particular image that is being shown on screen or printed The glyph repertoire of a font is a collection of all glyphs contained in this particular font Typically one glyph is a graphical representation of one character However the same font can include several glyphs that are different graphical representations of one and the same character Also one glyph can represent several characters for example in a ligature Characters are the abstract conceptual components of a text while glyphs are the particular visual components of a text fixed in some form In addition to the visual appearance the glyph image a glyph also has some digital representation A glyph can be represented by a bitmap capable of reproducing the glyph image only in one specific size More commonly a glyph consists of outlines that a
52. plain one To slant the glyph 1 Select the Slant command in the Tools menu You will see the Slant dialog Apply to outline layer too Apply to all glyphs in the font 2 Enter the angle for slanting 12 degrees by default and click on the OK button To abort the operation click on Cancel Before After You can see the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog while changing the slant angle To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key 277 Make Bold This is another special command that can help you build bold typefaces It uses the scaling algorithm to make the glyph fatter To make the glyph bold 1 De Select the Make Bold command in the Tools menu You will see the Make Bold dialog Make Bold Shift by 1 pixels izd Apply to all glyphs in the font Enter the Shift value in glyph pixels and click on the OK button The glyph will become fatter A Before After To see the original glyph in the preview field press and hold down the CTRL key Fine tune the glyph using the drawing tools if needed 278 Shift The Shift operation is used to move the whole glyph s shape or its selected part in vertical or horizontal direction relatively to glyph s and font metrics When you select the Shift command in the Tools menu the Shift dialog opens pixels Apply to all glyphs in the font The on
53. see the list of keyboard shortcuts currently defined for that command Current Keps The Remove command at the right of the list allows removal of one of the existing shortcuts To define a new keyboard shortcut select a command and position the cursor on the editing field below the Press New Shortcut Key label Press New Shortcut Rey nee When the caret is in position press the combination of keys that you want to assign A description of that combination will appear in the editing field and you can click on the Assign button to assign that combination to the currently selected command Click on the Reset All button to reset all changes back to BitFonter defaults 41 42 Links to External Programs Use the Tools page of the Customize dialog box to assign Windows programs to menu items in BitFonter s Tools menu Customize Commands Toolbars Tools Keyboard Menu Options Menu content axle n Command Arguments Initial directory There is a list of the assigned programs in the middle of the page and it is empty by default Click on this button to add a link Enter the name of the program as it will appear in the menu Then use the b button at the right of the Command editing field to locate the program to run Editing fields at the bottom of the Command field allow you to define arguments for the program you want to run from BitFonter s menu Use the L button at the top of the
54. swashes contextual forms ligatures etc These fonts are widely presented among system fonts in Mac OS X and are supported in Cocoa applications Advance width the distance between the left and right margins sidebearings of a glyph Sometimes it is called glyph width AFM ASCII Font Metrics file a text file that contains the metrics information for a PC Type 1 font Alphabet Script the collection of characters used to write a particular language The alphabet as North Americans and English know it is the script for the English language Latin script is the script for most European South American and some Asian languages Cyrillic script is used in all Slavonic languages Russian Ukrainian Serbian Bulgarian and many others Note that a script usually includes many more characters than necessary for the one language Latin script for example includes more than 200 characters ATSUI Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging Apple s technology and a set of routines that enable the rendering of Unicode encoded text with advanced typographic features It automatically handles many of the complexities inherent in text layout including the correct rendering of text in bidirectional and vertical script systems BFB the internal font format of BitFonter It has the same function as the VFB format in FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool BMP the standard graphics f
55. the BitFonter Options on page 44 section To save the font project in PhotoFont format 1 Save any of the project s fonts that have not already been saved Customize the PhotoFont export options in the Tools gt Options dialog if necessary 2 Make sure there are no outline fonts in the families 3 Select the Save As command in the File menu select PhotoFont in the Save as type dropdown list of the Save As dialog name the file select the destination and click on the Save button Editing Fonts Any font can be modified at four different levels They are 1 Font family and style properties level 2 Font properties level 3 Font character set level 4 Glyph level The first three levels are the subject of this chapter The last and the most complicated level will be described in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter First we are going to review font family and style properties editing then we will refer to individual font modifications 88 Editing Family Properties To view or edit font family properties select the family icon ail in the Project window and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the 4 button located in the Project window toolbar You will see the Family Info dialog Font Info for Family Symbol E Names and Copyright Basic set of font names fa Ercoding and Unicode Family Hame Symbol Weight Shae Plain width wl Spacing Propostional Style Name Font
56. the encoding you will see that the characters in the Font window are rearranged Some characters will move below the yellow zone This means that these characters actually their names are not covered by the selected encoding vector 121 122 Unicode Ranges In Unicode the standard character space is divided into planes defined by the first byte of the three byte codes Each plane codepoints 0 65 535 is divided into ranges Each range typically covers characters that belong to one alphabet or have common properties like the Cyrillic range or the Hebrew or the Extended Latin Ranges may be of various lengths from a few characters to several thousand characters in the case of Kanji characters In BitFonter you can select any Unicode range and view your font as organized by the range All characters with Unicode codepoints in the selected range will be arranged in order in the yellow zone at the top of the Font window In order to simplify working with Unicode ranges in BitFonter all the official ranges in the Unicode standard are subdivided into subranges You can work with the whole range or select one of the subranges For example you can select the whole Cyrillic range that includes all currently used and historic Cyrillic characters or you can select just the historic letters or only the Russian alphabet To switch the Font window to Unicode Range editing mode choose the Unicode Range command in the Mo
57. the project will be saved To save your font under a different name or in another format use the Save As command in the File menu When you select this command the standard Save As dialog appears You can select the font format in the Format dropdown list located at the bottom part of the dialog Enter the file name and select the destination where you want to save your font After saving the font with the Save As command this new font remains open in its window The range of available formats depends on the font s color mode See the Saving Color Fonts on page 210 section for details 203 204 a All the possible formats are BitFonter Binary Font bfb A special format for BitFonter 3 It has the same function as the vfb format in FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool BDF Font bdf The Adobe Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format BDF which is intended to be easily understood by both humans and computers BDF files are ASCII encoded and may be read as text BDF is the most universal bitmap format HP Soft Font sfp Hewlett Packard Soft Font format for use in the LaserJet family of printers Microsoft Windows Font fnt MS Windows screen font AFP Font Resource afp The format for font resource data to be loaded and managed by Advanced Function Printing AFP software This is one of the public font information interchange formats Palm OS font pdb A sp
58. they will be checked as embedded automatically during the save operation A project containing duplicate bitmap fonts two fonts of the same size and color mode cannot be saved as a Windows OpenType SBIT font Windows OpenType SBIT font may contain only embedded bitmap fonts and BitFonter will create an outline component automatically Every embedded font must meet the general requirements of a Microsoft Windows font See the Saving in Windows Font Format on page 207 section in the Creating and Saving Fonts on page 161 chapter for details Besides meeting the general requirements such a font must also have Unicode codepoints and may be of 4 or 16 levels of gray with the corresponding Windows color tables see the Saving Color Fonts on page 210 section Also refer to the Export gt OpenType SBIT page of the Tools gt Options dialog to customize the OpenType SBIT font export options described in the BitFonter Options on page 44 section Note When OpenType SBIT font with embedded bitmaps only is generated all the font metrics are taken from the font of the largest pixel size To save the font project in Windows OpenType SBIT format 1 Save any of the project s fonts that have not already been saved Customize the OpenType SBIT export options in the Tools gt Options dialog 2 Make sure there is only one family in the project that the bitmap fonts belong to one style and they are of the right color type Note that you do not h
59. window and click on the Append command in the context menu Width Ctrl c Clear Delete Edit metrics More Properties Alt Enter The Cyrillic glyphs will be appended to the font with their correct Unicode codepoints and names so you will not have to re map the font 135 136 Deleting Glyphs To remove glyphs from the font 1 Select the glyphs that you want to remove 2 Select the Delete command from the Edit menu or press the DEL key on the keyboard The deletion can be undone by using the Undo command in the Edit menu Transforming Glyphs Sometimes you need to transform a set of glyphs or the whole font The most efficient way to do this is to use the transformation commands from the Tools menu Note Some commands are not available in the Tools menu if you are editing a black amp white font The transformation commands are described in the Operations on page 270 section of the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter To transform a set of glyphs select glyphs and choose the appropriate command in the Tools menu If no cells were selected the operation will be applied to all glyphs in the font Renaming and Reencoding Glyphs Usually it is not necessary to manually rename or reencode glyphs because their names Unicode codepoints and codes are assigned automatically when you create glyphs in the Font window If you want to see the information for each separate glyph and correct it you can use the
60. 2 Agency FB Nomyrpea T Algerian Tt Arial Ariel Black Collar drial Narrow dors MiBlons 32 bk Arial Narrow Kypcne F Arial Marrow Tony HHPH Tt Arial Narrow NonyanpHen EypHe Arial Rounded MT Bold import as one project Import with outlines AbCabel23 Agency FE pa The Source Font list contains only outline fonts installed in Windows Choose any in the list and you will see the font preview in the Preview area of the dialog BitFonter can generate several bitmap fonts of different sizes at once Enter the desired sizes in the Point Sizes field and the resolution in pixels as in creating a new font Select the Color mode number of colors and the Color table if needed as you do when creating a new font If the Import as one project option is unchecked new fonts will open in separate Font windows To combine them in a new project check this option To make BitFonter import glyph outlines check the Import with outlines option The outline layer can be previewed while working with a glyph s bitmap Normally glyph outlines will not be imported if the Import as one project option was checked But you can change this select the BitFonter Binary Font format as the default storage format on the Export page of the Tools gt Options dialog box 199 200 Click on the Import button to start import or Cancel to abort the operation If the Import as one project option was checked you will be prom
61. 91 pixels images with thousands of colors cannot be wider than 16383 pixels images with 256 colors or grays cannot be wider than 32 K pixels etc Importing EPS BitFonter can import images in outline vector EPS format You can save outline images from Adobe Illustrator Macromedia FreeHand or other vector editors and then use them in BitFonter Sometimes you may need to change the default options for output in the application s preferences dialog For example in Illustrator you should switch on the AICB option in the Options Files amp Clipboard settings To import an EPS file into BitFonter 1 Select the Open command in the File menu 2 Inthe Open File dialog box that appears select the eps file that you want to open and press Open 3 Ifthe imported image contains outlines BitFonter will present the following dialog Open Image Hew image dimensions Linked Height 1303 This dialog allows you to control the final image dimensions on import You may but do not have to change the width and or the height of your image before it opens in the new Image window 169 170 Importing an Image from the Clipboard Various programs that deal with bitmap images can exchange information by using the Clipboard If you select and copy an image from such a program it can be imported into BitFonter As with image files BitFonter can import either black amp white or color images through the Clipboard
62. Automatically Reverting a Font Adding a Font to the Project Removing a Font from the Project Duplicating a Font Changing Font Size and or Resolution Changing Font Color Mode Blending Fonts Fonts to Blend Blend Options Blend Example Using the Window Menu CREATING AND SAVING FONTS Creating a New Font Creating a Font from an Image Preparing Images Working with an Image Splitting an Image Creating a Font Importing a Font Importing from an Installed Font Importing from Outlines Saving a Font Saving in BitFonter Binary Font Format Saving in BDF Format Saving in HP Soft Font Format Saving in Windows Font Format Saving in AFP Font Resource Saving in Palm OS Font Format Saving in PhotoFont Format 120 126 128 129 131 132 134 135 136 136 137 140 145 146 147 148 149 151 153 154 155 157 159 Saving as a FontLab Template Saving Color Fonts Exporting a Font Outline Font Editor Exporting Outlines Exporting to Outline Pixel Font Exporting to Image File Exporting as a Set of Images EDITING GLYPHS The Glyph Window Glyph Structure Units of Measurement Metrics Outline Layer Editing Glyph Properties Changing the View in the Glyph Window View Menu Info Panel Context Menu Tools Selecting Operations on a Selection Drawing Other Tools Bitmap Pasting Operations Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical Scale Rotate Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW Slant Make Bold Shift
63. C Test Fonts BF TEST FONTS PICTISAMPLE tif E B 200 300 900 500 600 z i ie SOS Me choral fort ot 129 ot P ae On y ar hai e pa i 7 z v lasanan Editing Splitting Data There are no perfect automatic algorithms Possible errors of the autosplit algorithm are 1 Iftwo glyphs touch or overlap each other too much they will be interpreted as a single glyph These cells must be split manually 2 Some multi part glyphs will be interpreted as being separate glyphs The split cells must be merged 3 The positions of some of the baselines may be inaccurate New baselines must be added or unnecessary baselines removed The tools for working with the split image are placed at the end of the Tools toolbar and have the following keyboard shortcuts EEF he e A Cell Tool The Cell tool oh is the main tool for working with the split image It is used to select and deselect cells for further operations on them Every cell in the split image will become a glyph in the font that is generated from that image To select a cell click on the Cell tool ch in the Tools toolbar and then click within the blue rectangle of the cell in the image Select more cells by shift clicking or dragging the mouse cursor while you hold down the left mouse button Use the Select All command in the Edit menu to select all the cells 185 186 To deselect the selected cells one by one click on the mouse cursor within the red rectangle o
64. Clear Bitmap Brightness Contrast Hue Saturation Threshold Invert Colorize Remove Background Emboss Smart Blur Gaussian Blur Enhance Reduce Noise 209 210 212 213 214 217 222 224 225 226 229 230 233 234 236 238 240 242 243 244 Median Noise 294 Sharpen 295 Soften 296 Custom Filter 297 Find Edges 299 Outline Operations 300 Example of Operations Usage 305 EDITING METRICS 307 Editing Metrics in the Glyph Window 308 Metrics Window 309 Editing Modes 310 Metrics Ruler 311 Metrics Table 312 Context Menu 313 Selecting a String for Previewing or Editing 314 Selecting Preview Size 317 Previewing Metrics Lines 317 Activating and Browsing Glyphs 318 Editing Metrics 319 Editing Kerning 328 Opening Metrics Files 333 Saving Metrics Files 335 INDEX 337 Introduction BitFonter is a powerful tool for creating and editing bitmap fonts of various formats With BitFonter you can make any font that you want And that s not all Have you ever dreamed of a real color font BitFonter will allow you to design grayscale and even full color fonts or to color your favorite black amp white fonts This opens a whole new world of possibilities Color fonts can be used in graphic and web design as well as for other purposes You can draw them right in BitFonter or in your favorite drawing application such as Painter or Photoshop and then paste them into BitFonter easily for final formatting The key features of BitFonter
65. Custom Filter is based on a predefined mathematical operation known as convolution where each pixel is reassigned a value based on the values of surrounding pixels This command selection will bring up the Custom Filter dialog Custom Filter Ly Apply to all glyphs in the font You will see ten text boxes in which to enter values They are arranged as a square 3 by 3 matrix plus a scale factor When you enter the Matrix values the Scale factor will automatically change reflecting the matrix values sum Use the Scale slider to change the factor examine the preview to the left then click on OK to apply the filter or Cancel to dispose of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the Crri key Surely you can undo this operation by using the Undo command 297 Take some time to experiment with this filter We will show you some examples here Original glyph Filter values applied Result glyph Matic 1 1 0 ha 2 1 i 1 0 100 Oo 100 LRS l O i 1 1 1 Oe aF Ye I Soak cmc q k en 400 a 100 i r Pa Pil do Sir Ji j a Mate T 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 sca E T 100 0 100 As you can see the parameters in the last example allow you to perfect the glyph by removing unwanted black pixels outside and white holes inside the glyph s shape This is a more general case of the Enhance on page 292 operation 298 Find Edges This com
66. Fill Selection command Line Tool This tool draws straight lines with the brush that you select in the Brushes panel To draw a straight line 1 Select the Line tool in the toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Position the mouse cursor at the beginning of the line 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to define a line 4 Hold down the Suirr key to constrain the line direction to 45 degree increments 5 Release the left mouse button to finish drawing the line or press the Esc key to abort 261 262 Polygon Tool This tool can be used to draw closed polygons with the interior filled or empty As with all the other tools you can choose the current color in the Color Palette To draw a polygon 1 ae 6 Select the Polygon tool Ix in the Tools toolbar Position the mouse cursor on the first point of the polygon To add a straight line segment to a polygon click the left mouse button Then move the mouse to define the line segment and click the left mouse button again To add a freehand segment to a polygon press down the left mouse button but do not release it and drag the mouse to draw the freehand segment Release the left mouse button to accept it To finish drawing a polygon double click the left mouse button at the last point to be added To abort drawing press the Esc key The polygon will be filled with the current color if the Fill interior check box in the Tool Op
67. Fonts By blending fonts we mean the special operation on two fonts when each glyph from the foreground font overlaps the corresponding glyph of the background font forming a new glyph Combined with other operations see the Operations on page 270 section in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter this special operation adds tremendous possibilities to PhotoFont editing techniques To combine the glyphs of two open fonts select the Blend command in the Font menu The Blend Fonts dialog will appear Blend Fonts Fonts to blend Background Arial Black Shadow Plain 72 Pixels Millions Colors Foreground Arial Blue Plain 72 Pixels Millions Colors Match glyphs by Name Unicode codepoint Blend into Current Font Ww Options Blend mode Normal we Foreground opacity 0 255 Shift background amp 5 You will see two groups of options in the dialog 153 154 Fonts to Blend Select the two fonts that you want to blend here Select the background font in the first dropdown list and the foreground font in the second dropdown list The menus contain the names of open fonts only The glyphs from the foreground font will overlap i e obscure the glyphs from the background font The glyphs can be matched by their names or Unicode codepoints Select the corresponding attribute for matching glyphs in the two fonts Match glphs by Name Unicode codepoint you wi
68. Glyph Properties window described in the Editing Glyph Properties on page 234 section of the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter But if you want to work with a set of glyphs or the whole font the commands from the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu become useful To clear names or Unicode codepoints of glyphs use the Clear Names and the Clear Unicode commands from the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu To name glyphs by their Unicode codepoints select the Generate Names command in the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu The Generate Names dialog will appear Generate Mames Get names from standard names table gt Name is a hexadecimal Unicode codepoint Pretis uri Apply to all glyphs in the font There are two ways of naming glyphs You may choose that names be generated from Unicode numbers or that they be retrieved from the table of standard names Select the Name is a hexadecimal Unicode codepoint option for the first way Enter a prefix for the glyph name for example 0x and click on OK The glyphs will get names identical to their Unicode codepoints with a 0x prefix For example the glyph having a Unicode codepoint 0040 will get the name 0x0040 137 138 Select the Get names from standard names table option to generate standard glyph names BitFonter will find the name for each glyph by its Unicode codepoint in the STANDARD nam file located in the Shared data Mapping fo
69. Green Copy Blue Copy Opacity Looks at the color information and selects the background or foreground color whichever is darker as the result color Pixels lighter than the foreground color are replaced and pixels darker than the foreground color do not change Looks at the color information and selects the background or foreground color whichever is lighter as the result color Pixels darker than the foreground color are replaced and pixels lighter than the foreground color do not change Looks at the color information and subtracts either the foreground color from the background color or the background color from the foreground color depending on which has the greater brightness value Blending with white inverts the background color values blending with black produces no change Creates a color with the luminance and saturation of the background color and the hue of the foreground color Creates a color with the luminance and hue of the background color and the saturation of the foreground color Creates a color with the hue and saturation of the background color and the luminance of the foreground color Creates a color by copying the foreground red channel to the background Other foreground channels are not used Creates a color by copying the foreground green channel to the background Other foreground channels are not used Creates a color by copying the foreground blue channel to the background Other foreground ch
70. Import H Export Image to Font Conversion Outline Font Editor Select a page and you will see its contents appear at the right of the list Chart cells gt Default font mode Codepage Caption content Unicode Caption font Arial Show glyph template images in empty cells Show outline if no bitmap is present Enlarge glyphs in cells beyond ther point size Max enlargement 2 1 You can browse pages continuously by clicking on buttons 45 46 Other buttons and their meaning are described in the table Import options Export options x Reset options Apply Cancel OK Allows you to select a profile file that holds a particular configuration of all options and loads that profile You can create different profiles for different occasions and load them when needed for example separately for each format or foundry that you work with Exports current options to a profile file In a workgroup environment you can export a profile file and give it to your colleague who then can load it and generate fonts in the same environment When sending technical problem reports to Fontlab Ltd please always export your options into a profile file and attach that file with your report Resets all options to the factory defaults Applies the changes without closing the dialog box Many interface changes become visible immediately in the corresponding windows Closes the dialog box without applying ch
71. In Metrics mode you will see the right and left handles that allow you to change the sidebearings and in Kerning mode you will see a pair handle that highlights a position between the first and second glyphs in the pair After you activate a glyph you can browse glyphs in the string Use the previous glyph and next glyph shortcuts By default they are CTRL and CTRL respectively In Metrics and Kerning modes you can change a glyph in the string by pressing the related key on the keyboards or by quickly entering its name Editing Metrics This section discusses horizontal glyph metrics the advance width and the sidebearings jointly referred to as just metrics In BitFonter you can modify this information either manually or automatically To modify glyph metrics switch the Metrics window to the Metrics mode click on the Metrics Mode button in the Metrics Tools toolbar or select the Metrics command in mode selection menu on the bottom command area Preview Text w Metrics kerning You can also right click on the editing area and select the Metrics Mode command in the context menu Make sure the glyph metrics are switched on in the View gt Show Layers menu 319 320 Manual Metrics Editing To modify a glyph s metrics you can use several methods 1 Drag the sidebearings lines 2 Drag the glyph within the editing area 3 Edit the values in the Table To drag the sidebearings lines position the
72. Metrics window for the current Font window select the Metrics Window command in the Window menu Every open Font window may have its own Metrics window We will describe this later in the Editing Metrics on page 307 chapter Choose the Windows command and you will see a dialog box Select window F Font 64 Pixels 16 Colors CT TF Aboses 6 th F Font 9 Pixels 0 4 FON amp FNTSFREESETC FON F Font Construct200 Plain 200 Pixels Millions Colors C 4 45 amples 7 Glyph 0043 from 64 Pixels 16 Colors E Glyph five 0035 from 9 Pisels oi Glyph parenlett 0028 from 9 Pixels M Metrics Construct200 Plain 200 Pixels Millions Colors F Project boxest6 tth lt LA Project FREESETC FON 159 160 Most of the dialog box is covered by the list of open windows Select one of the windows in the list and click on the Activate button to activate that window and move it to the top To close one or more windows select them in the list and click on the Close Window s button Select two or more windows in the list and click on Cascade Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically to perform one of the operations only with the selected windows All other windows will be automatically minimized Use the Minimize button to minimize selected windows Creating and Saving Fonts Proper font creation and saving as well as importing and exporting are impor
73. Nun zoom Gut Ctrl Not all menus have this feature but you may find it really useful OK that is almost all about customizing toolbars and menus A few more things To reset changes you have made in toolbars use the Reset All button on the Toolbars page in the Customize dialog box Customize Commands Toolbars Toole Keyboard Menu o ptions Toolbars mere H Metrics ia Operations Reset All V Show Layers V Standard ic Tools OO ape E dea e anma test labels Cloze Use the New command on the same page to create a new toolbar After doing this add commands to it by the drag drop method described earlier in this section 39 40 Customization of the Keyboard Open the Keyboard page of the Customize dialog box Customize Commands Toolbars Tools Keyboard Menu Options Category File x Commands Current Keys ACquire A ChrlbAlt F Close zm Exit FileE xportl mage FileE xporthetrics Filelmporthd etrics Reset All FileM ew mage a E Fress Hew Shortcut Kep Description i Shows the info In the left area of the page you can select the command which you want to customize Choose the commands category in the top list and the command itself in the list below On the right part of the page you will
74. O lI 309 310 Editing Modes The Metrics window may work in four different modes Text mode Is used to enter and edit text in the main editing area Works very similarly to any standard text editor such as Notepad Preview mode This mode is used to preview text with kerning applied and check it at different sizes Also the position and width of the underline line can be previewed in this mode Metrics mode This mode is used to adjust the metrics of individual glyphs Kerning is not visible in the Metrics mode Kerning mode In this mode you can edit pair kerning Other things that appear in the Metrics window are the Ruler and Table Metrics Ruler The Metrics Ruler is a narrow bar located above the editing area ee ws F F e d e Its purpose is very simple to provide an overview of metrics and kerning data for the current line of text in the editing area The Metrics Ruler shows the advance width of the glyphs in the middle of the glyph cell and kerning Kerning data appears on a light blue background if kerning is negative as in the AV pair and on a yellow background when kerning is positive Of course kerning information appears on the ruler only when the Metrics window is in kerning text or preview mode You can control the appearance of the ruler using the Ruler command in the Options menu w Table Auto Line Feed 311 Metrics Table Use this button
75. Paths Recent applications from Fontlab Ltd use a new folder structure for storing their data files such as encoding or codepage definitions glyph generation recipes text samples for metrics and kerning mapping tables etc BitFonter 3 looks for data files in four different folders Shared default data folder typically C Program Files Common Files FontLab This folder holds files that are commonly used by all recent Fontlab Ltd applications BitFonter 3 FontLab Studio TransType SE Pro TypeTool SigMaker with more to come In each respective subfolder codepage definitions encoding definitions glyph to Unicode mapping files and some special data files are stored Only Fontlab Ltd applications and applications from registered Fontlab Ltd developer partners should place their files there This is to rule out conflicts between the user s customized files and default files Shared user data folder typically C Documents and Settings Your Username My Documents FontLab Shared This folder has exactly the same structure as the folder discussed above and can store any files customized by the user Any file placed in the respective location within that folder will override the corresponding file placed in the Shared default data folder Please put your customized files in this folder Application default data folder typically C Program Files FontLab BitFonter3 This folder holds files that are used only by BitFonter In each respect
76. Tools list to remove the reference to the program and the L and buttons to change the order of the commands You may use special parameters to run external programs with the currently opened font as an argument When BitFonter recognizes this argument it will replace it with the file name of the currently active font or with some other parameters Suppose that current font was last saved into file named C fonts sample vfb Special arguments are p Full path of the current font C fonts sample vfb f Name ofthe file with extension sample vfb n File name only sample x File name extension vfb d Folder where file was saved C fonts a Folder of BitFonter installation usually it is C Program Files FontLab BitFonter3 Now you know everything about the customization of menus toolbars and the keyboard so you can click on the Close button at the bottom of the Customize dialog box to exit the customization mode Important note in the following manual we will describe all commands buttons and keyboard shortcuts as they come with BitFonter without any customization If you changed the interface but want to follow the manual reset all changes with the Reset buttons on the Toolbars Keyboard and Menu pages of the Customize dialog box Faster Method to Customize Commands You can customize toolbars and menus without opening the Customize dialog box by holding down the Axr key on the keyboard and dragging
77. ack amp white conversion defaults page of the Font Info dialog box described in the Black White Conversion on page 113 section Threshold is used here to help BitFonter find the glyph image boundaries if the font is not black amp white Finding the image boundaries is important for the algorithm Also see the description of this parameter in the Threshold on page 282 section in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter Switch on the Apply to all glyphs in the font option if you want new metrics be generated for all glyphs and click on OK Otherwise the operation will be applied to the current glyph selected in the Metrics window only You can use the Undo command to undo this operation Adjusting Glyph Sidebearings The Adjust Sidebearings operation is a useful addition to the Edit Metrics tool and the Generate Metrics operation It allows you to automatically change the left and right margins of any number of font glyphs As the other operations the Adjust Sidebearings operation is applicable to the glyph in the Glyph window or to the selected glyphs when in the Font window When you select the Sidebearings command the Glyph gt Metrics menu or the Adjust Sidebearings command in the Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window the Adjust Sidebearings dialog appears Adjust Sidebearings Lett Sidebearing Set to v 1 Pixels Right Sidebearing Set to
78. an edit the string of glyphs here as you edit text in a text editor You can delete characters with the Backspace key Choose the Image command in the File gt Export menu name the image file select the file format BMP JPEG TIFF or PNG image and a destination for it in the standard Save As dialog The glyphs you have placed in the Metrics window will be saved as a table in an image file Alternatively choose the Export Preview as image command in the local Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window The glyphs you have placed in the Metrics window will be saved as a string in an image file 223 224 Exporting as a Set of Images You may choose to save your font glyphs as a set of separate image files To do this select the font or fonts in the Project window or select the glyphs in the open Font window and then choose the File gt Export gt Set of Images command This procedure is a little more complicated than the export to a single file The Export a Set of Images dialog will appear Export a Set of Images Image file format Portable Network Graphics PNG v Name tiles by E nicode inden of the i Lett sidebearing o Fight sidebearing 1 Export entire fort You can define the following export parameters before clicking on the Export button Image file format Select the image format for export Portable Network Graphics PNG format or BMP format Name files by Select the file naming princip
79. andard Copy and Paste commands in the Edit menu or the corresponding buttons in the Standard toolbar To paste a font to the particular style select the style folder icon before pasting Tip It is possible to copy selected font s to another style or family by dragging while holding down the Axr key Deleting fonts and font families There are two ways to delete selected items in the Project window The first is to use the Cut or Delete command in the Edit menu or simply press the DEL key on the keyboard The second way is to select the Remove from Project command in the Font menu when the font is open in its Font window See the Removing a Font from the Project on page 147 section for details Note Be very careful when deleting fonts because this operation is not undoable The only way to return the deleted font is to revert the whole project Viewing and editing family and font properties To view and edit the font family properties select the family and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the button located in the Project window toolbar The Family Info window will open see the Editing Family Properties on page 88 section in the Editing Fonts on page 87 chapter for details To view and edit the font style properties select the style slot and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the button located in the Project window toolbar The Style Info window will open see the E
80. anges Applies the changes and closes the dialog box General Options General Options pages are used to customize some interface option and the number of Undo levels Interface options Create new document at startup To make the program open the new font creation dialog at startup check the Create New Document at Startup option The New font dialog will open every time the program starts Other options Undo levels Constrain the Scale bar alignment to vertical direction Use the Undo levels edit box to enter the number of undo levels The default value is 101 undoes Note that the more undo levels you want to use the more memory the program will require Switch the Constrain the Scale bar alignment option on to prevent the Scale bar from being slanted By default this option is off and you must hold down the Sutrt key on the keyboard to keep the Scale bar vertically or horizontally 47 Font Window Options The next page of the Tools gt Options dialog is used to customize the view in the Font window Font window Open glyph in new window Double click creates empty glyph first Open glyph in new window When checked this option tells BitFonter to open a double clicked glyph in a new Glyph window If this option is off all glyphs are opened in the same Glyph window for editing Holding down the CTRL key when double clicking on the glyph in the Font window reverts the meaning of this option Double
81. annels are not used Applies the opacity of the foreground color to the background color White is treated as 100 transparent Use the Foreground Opacity slider to define the opacity of the foreground glyphs Move it to the left to make foreground glyphs transparent or set the value to 255 to make the foreground fully opaque Enter the values for horizontal and vertical shift of the background glyph shapes relative to the foreground glyph shapes The positive values move the background right and down while the negative values move it left and up Blend Example Take a look at the following example font result and the algorithm to create it 0123456789ABCDE FGHIJKLMabcedefe hijk J O lt gt To make this font follow these 5 steps 1 Select the Open Installed command in the File menu Choose the font Times New Roman Bold as the source font for import in the dialog Set the destination font size to 64 points set the color mode to color and the number of colors to Millions 32 bits and click on the Import button Now you have a font named Times New Roman Plain 64 Pixels Millions Colors 2 Select the Duplicate command in the Font menu to make another copy of this font in memory 3 Select the Gaussian Blur command in the Tools gt Filter menu type 40 as the radius check the Apply to all glyphs in the font option and click on OK Now you have the background font You can give it a
82. ar Sharpen Level bo Apply to all glyphs in the font Enter the Level value of sharpness View the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You may use the Sharpen operation several times to achieve the best result 295 296 Soften This command makes the glyph image less sharp and lower contrast It blurs the image It is the opposite of the Sharpen on page 295 command To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Soften command The Soften dialog will appear Soften Level Ed Apply to all glyphs in the font l Enter the Level value of softness View the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply the transformation or Cancel to abort Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation You may use the Soften operation several times to achieve the best result Custom Filter The Custom Filter command will allow you to make many transformations that are not included in the Tools gt Filter menu as individual commands It is harder to use than the commands described before but it can produce very interesting effects on glyphs The
83. at may vary depending on the command you use for saving The native format project may contain one or several families of fonts These families may contain aliases both to the separate fonts on the disk and to whole families or font sets If you choose the File gt Save As command to save in native project format only the project file with aliases inside will be written to the disk The real fonts referred to by the aliases will remain at their old locations wherever they were They are linked to the project So be attentive when saving with the Save As command If you want to transfer your work to another computer it is better to use the File gt Save A Copy As command When you choose the Save A Copy As command all the fonts that reside in e g TrueType OpenType TT fonts or Windows font sets and that are referred to by the project will be saved separately in the default font storage format along with their project file Initially the default font storage format is BFB BitFonter Document format but you can change it in the Tools gt Options dialog described in the BitFonter Options on page 44 section The fonts that have not been combined into sets and reside separately somewhere on the disk will be saved along with their project file too As a result you will get a project file with all its fonts gathered in one place The original project remains open in its window This command is similar for example to the Collect for Output
84. at you want to edit Position the mouse cursor on the right glyph of the pair in the editing string and click the left mouse button You will see the kerning line and handle appear in the editing area Drag it to the left closer to the first glyph in the pair There is now a blue area in the metrics ruler at the top part of the editing area This means that kerning exists for that pair of glyphs and it is negative The positive kerning values are marked with yellow a You also can edit kerning with arrow keys while holding down the CTRL key The Suirt key allows you to change kerning value by 5 pixels at a click Clicking on Arrows without CrRL will change the current glyph Note The kerning data can be saved only in BitFonter documents BDF and PhF fonts Other bitmap font formats do not support kerning Using the Metrics Table If the metrics table is visible if not use the button on the bottom panel to show it in Kerning mode it will have three columns end Value 15 73 23 3 54 2 27 4 i 12 12 12 5 12 3 3 4 L Mw rr PrRrFrPPrP Perera TTF hoo re ae Ode The first two columns contain the names of the first and second glyphs of the pair The third column contains the kerning value You can easily change the kerning for a pair click on the number in the right column and enter the new value Click on ENTER to accept or Esc to cancel To delete a kerning pair select it in the Metrics
85. ave to check bitmap fonts as embedded when saving into OpenType SBIT format all bitmap fonts are embedded into an OpenType SBIT font by default 3 Select the Save As command in the File menu select OpenType SBIT Font in the Save as type dropdown list of the Save As dialog name the file select the destination and click on the Save button a a Saving a Palm OS Font A project containing only black amp white bitmap fonts can be saved as a Palm OS font If the project contains at least one outline font it cannot be saved as a Palm OS font file Every bitmap font must meet the following requirements of a Palm OS font it cannot have more than 256 glyphs it cannot have glyphs with duplicate codes and it cannot have glyphs larger than 256x256 pixels The glyphs names and Unicode codepoints are not written in this format Nor is any general font information saved Saving in this format entails a great loss of information So you might want to save in another format first To save the font project in Palm OS font format 1 Save any of the project s fonts that have not already been saved with the File gt Save command 2 Make sure there are no outline fonts in the families and that the bitmap fonts are of the right color type black amp white 3 Select the Save As command in the File menu select Palm OS Font in the Save as type dropdown list of the Save As dialog name the file select the destination and click on t
86. breaks for word wrapping and word spacing justification in FON and FNT fonts It is the space character 0x0020 usually AFP Data IBM AFP settings gt meene o O OB The IBM Face Name is used in AFP files only You cannot automatically generate this name in BitFonter but you may enter it manually if needed 111 Extra Properties and Font Note Pages The Extra Properties page is usually empty In future versions it may contain some additional font information The Font Note page can be used for adding any text information you want while working with your font But note that this information will be written to BDF format file only File Location and Links The File Location and Links page includes the following font information Resource BitFonter names bitmap fonts on the basis of their pixel size You can Name change the font name in the name field Type any name you want but note that this name has nothing in common with the family name and will be written in the native BitFonter project format file only Where This field shows you the font or its container location on the disk Format The format of the font or its container File locations and links Resource name 300 Fisels Millions Colors Where C Program Files Fontlab bitFontersS amples Construct200 pht Format Phototont Also Known As In Project If the font belongs to a project or projects you can see this in the project list 112 Black
87. by the foreground color The result color is always a darker color Multiplying any color with black produces black Multiplying any color with white leaves the color unchanged Looks at the color information and multiplies the inverse of the background and foreground colors The result color is always a lighter color Screening with black leaves the color unchanged Screening with white produces white Darkens or lightens the colors depending on the background color The effect is similar to shining a diffused spotlight on the image If the background color light source is lighter than 50 gray the image is lightened as if it were dodged If the background color is darker than 50 gray the image is darkened as if it were burned Multiplies or screens the colors depending on the background color The effect is similar to shining a harsh spotlight on the image If the background color light source is lighter than 50 gray the image is lightened as if it were screened If the background color is darker than 50 gray the image is darkened as if it were multiplied Looks at the color information and brightens the background color to reflect the foreground color Blending with black produces no change Looks at the color information and darkens the background color to reflect the foreground color Blending with white produces no change 155 156 Darken Lighten Difference Hue Saturation Luminosity Copy Red Copy
88. cally assign dropdown list you make the program assign Unicode indexes to new glyphs It is also useful to enter the start value in the Start from field Note that you must enter the start value in hexadecimal format BitFonter will automatically assign names to glyphs by the assigned Unicode codepoints By choosing the Name template option in the Automatically assign dropdown list you can control the naming of exported glyphs Sometimes it may be useful to enter the prefix and suffix values in the corresponding fields Note that you can see the sample name at the right Automatically assign Hame template vO Start from Sample unil cap Prefix Digits 1 Suffix By choosing the Names option you can assign names using the ranges from the dropdown list Automatically assign Choose Nothing in the Automatically assign dropdown list if you do not want BitFonter automatically assign names and or Unicode codepoints to glyphs Leave the New Font item in the Place Into dropdown list to create a new font or select the font from those available in the menu Only open fonts will appear in the Place Into dropdown list Check the Place all cells option to place all the defined cells of the image If no cells were selected this option is not available and all the defined cells will be placed into the font Note Define the order of placement of the image cells and some other options in the Tools gt Options dialog described in the BitFo
89. case 22 341 superscript 99 X supported codepages 104 105 x height 98 231 Tablet Options 258 template characters 127 Zoom tool 268 Text tool 264 Zoom Tool 237 Threshold 151 175 181 282 293 303 324 TIFF 166 222 285 Tool Options panel 244 248 250 258 268 toolbar Metrics Tools 309 319 Operations 270 Standard 66 Tools 185 243 Tools toolbar 243 Trace Options 215 Tracing Options 214 302 transparency 22 238 250 284 Transparent mode 250 TrueType 22 26 108 saving 56 81 84 TWAIN 166 Type 1 26 217 TypeTool 26 213 219 underline 98 Unicode 115 121 131 136 196 assigning 136 Unicode range 22 119 121 View Menu 238 View mode selecting a string 314 Window menu 158 Windows 122 Windows Font Set 69 81 83 Working with an Image 288 342
90. ch as AsiaFont Studio FontLab Studio or Type ool i required if you want to export scalable fonts Export outline font into VFB file The Trace outlines dropdown list allows you to control situations when your bitmap glyphs already contain an outline layer If Always is selected BitFonter will ignore existing outlines If Never is selected BitFonter will not trace but use only the existing outline layer The default setting If no outlines means that only glyphs not having outlines will be autotraced but existing outlines will be placed into the output font without change If Export outline font into VFB file is not checked the outline editor will be brought to the foreground after each Export Outline Font operation Check this option if you want to save the output in the FontLab font format vfb file Switch on the Ask me every time option to make BitFonter present the following dialog during each Export Outline Font operation if any outlines present Export as Outline Font Trace outlines if they re missing gt Always trace outlines Trace options Export existing outlines only Always apply these settings For current document IF this option is on hold down the Control key while choosing the menu command to open this dialog Check the appropriate check box and proceed by pressing the Export button Pressing Cancel will stop the Export Outline Font operation You can make these options permanent for the c
91. command in QuarkXPress Saving a Windows Font Set A Windows font set may contain one or several families of fonts Usually one font set file contains one family but this is not necessary The fonts are classified in the family by style and size There cannot be two fonts of the same size and style in one family These fonts will be treated as duplicates and the project will not be saved Every font in a font set must meet the general requirements of a Microsoft Windows font See the Saving in Windows Font Format on page 207 section in the Creating and Saving Fonts on page 161 chapter for details You will not be able to save the whole font set if you have not saved the enclosed fonts properly first The Windows font set cannot contain outline fonts To save a font project in Windows Font Set format 1 Save any of the project s fonts that have not already been saved 2 Make sure there are no outline fonts in the project and that there are no duplicate bitmap fonts that are of the same size and style 3 Select the Save As command in the File menu select Windows Font Set in the Save as type dropdown list of the Save As dialog name the file select the destination and click on the Save button 83 84 Saving a Windows OpenType SBIT Font A project containing only one family can be saved as a Windows OpenType SBIT font All bitmap fonts in the project must refer to the one style If the project contains non embedded bitmap fonts
92. copy paste feature of the text tool is compatible with Unicode so if you paste some Unicode text it will appear unchanged if characters of that text are present in this font Using Drag Drop The easiest way to fill a sample string is using the drag drop method You can simply drag any glyph from the Font window and drop it in the Metrics window and it will be inserted in a position highlighted by the caret Selecting Preview Size In the local command area you can see a Size menu and two buttons to the right of it a Use these menu and buttons to decrease or increase the size of the sample string If the sample text becomes too large to fit in the window a vertical scroll bar will appear allowing you to view all the editing areas of the Metrics window You can change the sample string behavior switch on the Auto Line Feed option in the Options menu at the bottom of the Metrics window to not let the string expand outside the visible area of the window w Table w Ruler Auto Line Feed Previewing Metrics Lines Some commands in the View gt Show Layers menu work when the Metrics window is active Glyph metrics Glyph left and right sidebearings are visible in the current line Baseline Font baseline is visible ssn Font metrics Font vertical metrics are visible in the current line 317 318 Activating and Browsing Glyphs Click on any glyph in the Editing area and it will be selected for further editing
93. criptions with examples to illustrate the differences Table one ars ba Be aic ai OE oir The image has an explicit with i table structure with cells of borders equal size separated by vertical and horizontal lines These lines are treated as the boundaries between the glyphs but will not be added to the glyphs shapes Table b E amp E Oirli ilAl j The image is the same as without above but without vertical borders B F o U I O amp DZ and horizontal lines All the BF OUD 16 R D7 cells are of equal size 6 Gayl JU le Book The cells with separated simple ab C d e f glyphs are of the same height but have different advance widths The cells produced 7 by this algorithm cannot O r S u overlap each other so p q overlapping shapes will occupy one cell which will need to be cut manually later Book ii An advanced heuristic smart dq h W v f J algorithm producing cells C Som that can overlap and have kam different heights and i wags 4 aod advance widths It is based D ST L on the principle of the l ol magic wand areas selection 182 4 Check the Skip spots that are less than option and enter the value if needed This option when checked does not treat spots that are below the limit that you enter as glyph shapes or their parts Such spots are ignored by the algorithm helping you to avoid speckles of noise that cannot be removed by other operations 5 Check the Automatically dete
94. ct global baselines option if needed The autosplit algorithm will locate all the strings and determine the baseline s position in each string automatically If outlines are present the baseline s position is calculated according to the outlines 6 Click on the OK button to let BitFonter autosplit the image into cells using the selected algorithm If you are not satisfied with the autosplitting results repeat the steps with another algorithm 183 184 Customizing Autosplit The Book smart algorithm is customizable You can change its parameters by clicking on the More Options button in the Separate Shapes dialog The Separate Shapes Options dialog will open Separate Shapes Options Activate Smart Split feature Automatically merge overlapping cells anr if overlapping area is Te than 50 Ea Only it length of common projection it greater than 50 B The Automatically merge overlapping cells option allows you to combine cells that form glyphs like when checked The value in the editable field defines how much the cells must overlap to be combined into a single cell The Automatically merge stacked cells option allows you to combine cells that sit on top of other cells when checked The value in the editable field defines the length of the most common projection in relation to the projection of a smaller cell Here is how our sample image looks after autosplitting it with all the default options E Image
95. ction button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to F Only the common area of the new and previous selection will be selected To deselect the area Crrt click inside the area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu 247 248 Magic Wand Tool The easiest selection tool is the Magic Wand It automatically detects the area to select by its color attributes and creates a freehand selection It is very useful in selecting a glyph shape To select a non white area of the glyph 1 Select the Magic Wand A tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Move the mouse cursor over the black area of the glyph that you want to select 3 Click the left mouse button to select the glyph Hold down the Suirt key to add a new selection to the current selection or hold down the ALT or ALT SHIFT key to subtract from the selection To deselect the area Crri click inside the selected area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu The Magic Wand tool has one additional option in the Tool Options panel Tolerance It is called Tolerance Its value can be changed in the range from 0 to 100 When tolerance is equal to 0 the Magic Wand will select pixels precisely of one color only The greater the tolerance value is the larger the area that will be selected by the Magic Wand This option is of course not useful with black amp white glyphs All values except 100 will lead to selection of only the black pixels in this case
96. d at least 64 MB RAM BitFonter will start on 32 MB RAM but you will need more RAM to open bigger fonts Installation Notes BitFonter 3 DEMO is fully functional when opening importing and working with fonts and images but has the following restrictions 1 When saving fonts in any format it distorts 50 of glyphs 2 When exporting outlines to vfb format or outline font editing application it distorts 50 of glyphs BitFonter User Interface Before talking about fonts and the BitFonter font editing features let s spend some time learning the BitFonter user interface For the most part it is similar to the user interface of your operating system If you know how to navigate in Windows and in Microsoft Office you will feel comfortable with BitFonter Some other parts of the user interface are unique that is what we will focus on The user interface of BitFonter is highly customizable This chapter discusses how you can custom tailor the BitFonter interface so it fits your needs best Note that throughout the book we will refer to menu commands toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts as they appear in the default user interface settings of BitFonter so keep this in mind if you have customized their location or appearance 14 Basic Terms First let us define some terms that are critical to understanding BitFonter and fonts in general Character The minimal atomic unit of writing with a clearly defined identity a
97. d glyphs to match destination point size The Keep replaced glyphs under new names option when checked allows you to keep old glyphs after pasting the new ones Replaced glyphs will get their new names The Resample dropped glyphs option when checked tells BitFonter to resize the dropped in glyph images to fit the current font point size The resampling method can be defined in the dropdown list Simple Nearest Neighbor Bilinear Gaussian Hamming Blackman 49 50 Glyph Window Options The Glyph and Image Window page is used to customize the view and behavior of the Glyph window as well as some elements of the Image window View Options Yiew options gt Grid Starting from zoom Glyph metrics Font metrics Font bounding box Outline contour Outline style Show nodes Cell Selected cell Cell mask You can change colors for some elements of the Glyph and Image windows Click on the corresponding color rectangles to change the color for grid glyph metrics lines font metrics lines outlines cells and the font bounding box rectangle Grid The gridlines are not part of the transparency grid They delimit pixels in all color modes when large zooming is selected nme ee See Red grid lines Select the starting zoom mode when the grid becomes visible Outline contour Besides the color of outline contours you can choose to Show nodes and or to show outline Thin or Thick dN Thin ou
98. d use the Color Mode command from the Font menu described in the Changing Font Color Mode on page 151 section of the previous chapter Creating a Font from an Image BitFonter allows you to create a font from bitmap images The process of converting an image to a font is as follows 1 Prepare the source image with image editing applications or scan it from within BitFonter Edit the image with BitFonter Autosplit the image Manually correct the autosplitting results eS oe Place the glyphs into a new or open font 165 166 Preparing Images In BitFonter you can use the following sources of images e An image of a font or of individual glyphs printed or written on paper and placed in a scanner e An image file in TIFF PNG BMP or JPEG format e An image file in vector EPS format e An image ina format supported by ScanFont http www fontlab com scanfont sfd sf e The Windows Clipboard e The image editor window where you can draw directly in BitFonter The easiest way to get an image into BitFonter is to have a scanner connected to your computer Working in Windows Place the paper with the image into the scanner and scan it using BitFonter BitFonter supports the TWAIN interface so it can work with almost all scanners Refer to your scanner s documentation to see whether it will work with the TWAIN interface If your scanner cannot work through TWAIN you can use the program that comes with your scan
99. de dropdown list in the Font window footer To select the current range or subrange use the Encoding dropdown list to the right Ranges names are aligned to the left of the list box and the subranges names are indented to the right When you select the range or subrange that you want to work with you will see the Font window change so that only glyphs from the selected range are in the yellow area Of course all the glyphs must have Unicode codepoints Codepages Codepages are the tables that map local character codes one byte long to the Unicode codepoints These tables have 256 records one for each possible character code Codepages are necessary because we need to somehow encode text written in different languages in the one byte code space Because the Unicode character identification standard covers most languages it is usually used as the destination information in the codepage tables Here is an example of fragments from two different codepages that map the same codes to different Unicode codepoints MS Windows 1252 Latin 1 MS Windows 1251 Cyrillic OxCO0 0x00C0 OxCO0 0x0410 OxCl 0x00C1 OxCl 0x0411 OxC2 0x00C2 OxC2 0x0412 OxC3 0x00C3 OxC3 0x0413 OxC4 0x00C4 OxC4 0x0414 0xC5 0x00C5 0xC5 0x0415 0xC6 0x00C6 0xC6 0x0416 0xC7 0x00C7 0xC7 0x0417 0xC8 0x00C8 0xC8 0x0418 0xC9 0x00C9 0xC9 0x0419 0xCA 0x00CA 0xCA 0x041A 0xCB 0x00CB 0xCB 0x041B Many different codepages have been defined for many languages and different o
100. diting Style Properties on page 89 section for details To view and edit the font properties select the font and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the button located in the Project window toolbar The Font Info window will open see the Editing Font Properties on page 90 section for details 75 76 Font Project Info While the Project window is open you may edit the project information Choose the Properties command in the Edit menu The Project Info dialog containing four pages will open Properties of Project Allegro BT 10 General verson ee Project Name Allegro BT 10 Extra properties a Created bye Copyright Holice Descnplicns Browse the pages using the list at the left or buttons To add new information to the project click on the Apply button on any page To apply information and close the Project Info dialog click on OK To close the dialog without saving changes click on the Cancel button The Project Info fields are General page Project name Project title which was filled in by BitFonter when the project was created It must not be the same as the project file name Created by Name of the company or person that created the font project If you are creating a new font project enter your name or the name of your company here Copyright Copyright message May include sign or the word Copyright the name of the company or person that owns the copyrig
101. down the Sutrt key Selecting family or style selects all the enclosed fonts You may also choose to select all the project fonts by the Select All command in the Edit menu You can move fonts from one style to another and even from one family to another by dragging their icons as you do with your files in Windows The Project Window context menu If you right click on the font in the Project window you will see the Project window context menu Create New Family Create Mew Font Font Info CErl Alk F Veriry Delete Delete The menu contains several project related commands anil Creates a new font family in the project Create Creates a new font and adds it to the selected style of the New Font project Font Info Opens the Font Info dialog for the selected font Verify Verifies the project for errors Delete Deletes selected fonts or families from the project Creating new font families To create a new font family select the Create New Family command in the Project menu or click on the E5 button located in the Project window toolbar An empty font family named Untitled will be created You can change the family name by editing its properties The next new font family will get the name Untitled2 etc Creating new fonts and font references To create a new font select the Create New Project Font command in the Project menu or click on the L button located in the Project window toolbar You will see the New Font
102. e wide Mammal Spacmg Propedional Full Manne Menu Mane FP Bwll Names Filter All target Formats Es cancel apy The Style Info dialog is a subset of the Font Info dialog and contains only pages with fields relevant for styles and families Browse the pages using the list at the left or buttons To apply new information to the style click on the Apply button on any page To apply information and close the Style Info dialog click on OK To close the dialog without saving changes click on the Cancel button In the Editing Font Properties on page 90 section we will describe all the Info pages and give some recommendations for entering data properly Note The Style Info dialog always includes the Family Info pages 89 90 Editing Font Properties Font properties is a collection of information that defines a font The best example of this information is the Font Name or Font Style Font Info data also includes copyright information identification information font dimensions and other data Much of this information can be applied to families and styles When you open an existing font the Font Info fields are filled by the information from the font file Missing information is automatically calculated where possible When you create a new font you must provide some information in the New Font dialog BitFonter fills in other font information automatically To get an accurate font that will work e
103. e i e the number of available colors This operation is the same as changing the font color mode described in the Changing Font Color Mode on page 151 section Select the Color Mode command in the Image menu and you will see the Change Color Mode dialog Change Color Mode Black te white Threshold by Luminosity Select a new Color Mode Number of Colors and Color Table for the image you are editing in the corresponding dropdown lists You may want BitFonter to generate a custom color table for your image This is possible in 4 16 and 256 color modes only when you change the number of colors in the image Select one of the available Adaptive color tables 256 Colors 56 Colors Adaptive poor gu gt it Color T able Matte colar If you are going to make a black amp white image from a color or grayscale image you must define the threshold parameter for conversion Color Mode See the description of this parameter in the Threshold on page 282 section in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter You can view the preview of the image in the preview field of the dialog box To see the original image sample simply press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to finish the operation or Cancel to leave the image color mode unchanged You can undo this operation using the Edit gt Undo command 175 176 Changing Image
104. e button to open the Info panel instantly A M103 J a 255 Bf m3 k M2 tw 191 130 H BF Note that the Info panel shows the color information for the image pixel under the mouse cursor not the current color You can hide show the Info Panel at any time by the command in the View menu Color Palettes Sometimes it is useful to have the color palette in a separate floating window To open this window select the Palette Panel command in the View menu The Palette panel will appear with the default color palette Tip You can drag this window out right from the Color Palette bar of the Glyph window Now you can use the Palette panel along with the Color Palette in the Glyph window You can drag it around the screen to find the most convenient place To resize the panel click on and drag its right bottom corner There are two small controls at the bottom left corner of the Palette panel that are used to change the palettes in the window To change the color palette in the panel use the Select Palette dropdown list w Default Black hite Grayscale fa Spectrum To view and use the standard color palette click on the button if available The Palette panel view changes EERE ZEN aa _ i 4 J BEER EES E Laces oot 1 The LJ button is not available when thousands or millions of colors are used The contents of the Palette panel when the E button is pressed depend on the current font color mode
105. e current font or the project to disk Cuts the selection Copies the selection Pastes the content of the Clipboard Undoes the previous operation a Redoes the previously undone operation If you want you may choose to hide the Standard and other toolbars with the help of the Toolbars hierarchical menu in the View menu of the program Creating a New Project Font projects in BitFonter for Windows are of five types 1 BitFonter native project format fnp extension Windows font set fon extension Windows OpenType SBIT font ttf extension Palm OS font pdb extension Co oS a PhotoFont font phf extension Before you create a new font project you must know what type of fonts you are going to manage If you are not sure create the project in the native BitFonter format To create a new project 1 Select the Project command in the New submenu in the File menu The standard Save File dialog will open Save new project as Save in aa BF TEST FONTS i JAF Projects ce op biy Rece CE core Documents j 3 Template E Thomas gs shit TIFF es Orr New Folder Panos My Documents pfr Ph f COPHF Pictures ig hy Computes crne C fere EEE o My Network Save as hype BitFonber Fort Project Emp 67 68 2 Name your project select the project format and destination and click on Save We recommend you save the project in a new empty folder 3 Anew empty Project window will open
106. e the main menu but also most of the context menus which appear when you right click on BitFonter windows Open the Menu page in the Customize dialog box and choose a context menu in the right dropdown list Select context menu Chart Context Menu Glyph Context Menu Image Context Menu Image Selection Menu ering Context Menu Metrics Context Menu Preview Contest Menu Project Context Menu Text Context Menu A menu appears on screen and you can customize it by dragging commands from the toolbar other menus or the list of the commands on the Commands page To reset changes you have made in menus use the Reset buttons on the Menu page of the Customize dialog box Use the left Reset command to reset changes in the main menu and the right Reset button to reset changes in the context menus 35 36 Customizing Individual Items You can customize the appearance of any menu item or toolbar button The following appearances are available for most items Image 4 Text New Font Image and Text i New Font To change the appearance of the menu item or toolbar button position the mouse cursor on the button and click the right mouse button Select the new appearance method in the context menu Reset to Default Copy Button Image Delete Button 4ppearance w Image Text Image and Text Start Group Most commands in BitFonter have pre designed images but you can easily create your own images for any toolbar button or
107. ecial font format for use in Palm pocket computers Fonts in this format are always opened as a project PhotoFont phf A special font format where every glyph is represented by an image Unlimited font color mode makes this format useful for clipart purposes in web and similar design A font in this format is always opened as a project FontLab Template dat The template font file used when working in FontLab Note Glyph outlines that were imported or created manually can be saved only in BitFonter Binary Font bfb format Saving in BitFonter Binary Font Format BitFonter Binary Font bfb format was developed especially for BitFonter This bitmap format is the most universal since it may contain any number of glyphs in any color mode of any size resolution with any names codes and Unicode codepoints or without them The Outline layer can also be stored in files of this format You can use the BitFonter Binary Font format to save your intermediate results while working with any bitmap font regardless of the final font format BFB format was chosen as the main BitFonter format When saving the project in a fnp file BitFonter saves all the fonts included in the project in the BFB format this can be changed on the Export page of the Tools gt Options dialog The bfb format in BitFonter has the same function as the vfb format in FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool
108. ed the Height will be updated while you enter the Width and vice versa 3 For Anchor click on a square to indicate where to position the existing image on the new canvas 4 Click on the OK button to scale the image or Cancel to abort You can undo both operations using the Edit gt Undo command X Note If the image was separated into cells the separation information will be lost when resizing the image 177 178 Removing Background Sometimes it may be useful to clean up the color background of an image with glyph shapes For example you could scan a very old manuscript with a yellow or even brown background In order to get a font from this image all the glyph shapes have to be separated from their background To make this process easier try using the Remove Background command from the Tools gt Filter menu Remove Background Quality pam Fine Foor Treshold background removal mapping Use the Mode dropdown list to select the base algorithm of the operation You can remove background By luminosity or By color You can try them all looking at the preview at the left to choose the best one The more contrast in the preview the better splitting result you will get There is also a special tool in color mode Click on this button and then click on the background in the preview box to pick up a background color Use the threshold control for better results Treshold Black and white mapping e r
109. ed glyphs 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the selection to the new position 4 Release the left mouse button to finish moving If you move glyphs over existing glyphs the existing glyphs will be saved at the end of the table If you do not want to save existing glyphs uncheck the Keep replaced glyphs under new names check box in the Font Window gt Drag amp Drop page of the Tools gt Options dialog The existing glyphs will be overwritten When moving glyphs their names and Unicode codepoints change according to their position in the current encoding or codepage When glyphs are moved in the Index mode they do not replace other glyphs but just change their position in the font file 133 134 Copying and Pasting Glyphs To copy selected glyphs select the Copy command from the Edit menu The selected glyphs will be placed on the Clipboard and can be pasted into the same font or into another font by the Paste command To paste copied glyphs over existing glyphs select the cell where you want the pasting to start and select the Paste command in the Edit menu Glyphs from the Clipboard will replace the glyphs starting with the selected cell and the replaced glyphs will be saved at the end of the font table If you do not want to save the replaced glyphs uncheck the Keep replaced glyphs under new names check box in the Font Window gt Drag amp Drop page of the Tools gt Options dialog The replaced glyphs will be o
110. elect all the glyphs of the font use the Select All command in the Edit menu 129 130 To cancel your selection click the left mouse button in the area between the rightmost cell and the scroll bar or choose the Deselect command in the Edit menu You can use the Select Glyphs hierarchical menu in the Edit menu to select cells by their attributes Selects all the cells with glyphs having Unicode Encoded Symbols codepoints represented in the font s codepage Selects all glyphs having Unicode codepoints not Unencoded Symbols represented in the font s codepage Named Symbols Selects all cells with glyphs having names Unnamed Symbols Selects all cells with glyphs not having names Selects all cells with glyphs having a Unicode Symbols with Unicodes codepoint Selects all cells with glyphs not having a Unicode Symbols without Unicodes codepoint Please note that the range of encoded glyphs does not depend on the editing mode or the Encoding dropdown list selection Encoded glyphs are those with Unicode codepoints represented in the codepage that is set in the Font Info gt Encoding settings dialog Searching for Glyphs Sometimes you need to find a particular glyph in your font Select the Find Glyph command in the Edit menu You will see a dialog begins with a ampersand 0076 A asterisk 002A ak OO40 asciicircum 005E a O61 asciitilde 007E ow mmm To find a glyph 1 Inthe top dropdown
111. elines of the selected cells to the position of the lowest baseline Auto Align This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the automatically calculated position Other Cell Commands To create a new cell based on the selected area of your image 1 Using one of the Selection tools select the image portion 2 Choose the Make Cell from Selection command in the Image menu To select the glyph s shape of a cell 1 Using the Cell tool select the cell 2 Choose the Make Selection from Cell command in the Image menu To set the cell size to the size of the glyph s shape 1 Using the Cell tool select the cell 2 Select the Detect Bounding Boxes command from the Image menu 195 196 Creating a Font The last operation in creating a font from an image is to place the split glyphs into the font Select those cells that you want to be placed into the font and choose the Place into Font command in the Image menu You need not select the cells for placing if you are going to place all the cells defined in the image You may simply double click on any cell in this case The Place into Font dialog will appear Place into Font Automatically assign Unicode indexes hex Stark from Glyoh names will be automatically generated from Unicode codepoints Place into Mew font Skip empty cells Place all cells By choosing the Unicode codepoints option in the Automati
112. en in your outline font editing application Note that BitFonter does not export the font in TrueType or Type 1 format this is done in TypeTool FontLab Studio AsiaFont Studio 221 Exporting to Image File To export all the font glyphs or selected glyphs only to a single image file 1 Select the font or fonts in the Project window or select the glyphs in the open Font window 2 Choose the Image command in the File gt Export menu Name the file choose image format and select its destination in the standard Save File As dialog box Save File As iy Diete PI Test mage PRG maga pra PHG Imsa l oral You can choose among PNG JPEG TIFF or BMP image in the Save as type dropdown list FNG Image prng JPEG Image jpo Picture Windows BMP file bmp TIFF File tif Click on Save when ready 3 If glyphs were not selected you will be asked whether you want to export the whole font Press Yes to start exporting or No to stop the procedure X Note The fonts selected in the Project window will be exported as separate images 222 There is another way to get an image of your font 1 3a 3b Make sure only glyphs that you are going to export are selected in the Font window Choose the Metrics Window command in the Window menu You will see the Metrics window containing the selected glyphs only i Metrics Trees Plain 137 Pixels Millions Colors Sele 122 112 133 You c
113. ended vertical offset in pixels to the Y origin of synthetic subscript text The recommended body size of synthetic subscripts to be used with this font in pixels The recommended horizontal offset in pixels to the X origin of synthetic superscript text The recommended vertical offset in pixels to the Y origin of synthetic superscript text The recommended body size of synthetic superscripts to be used with this font in pixels The recommended vertical offset in pixels from the baseline to the top of the strikeout line 99 Thickness This is the thickness of the strikeout line in pixels Small capital The recommended body size of synthetic small capitals to be used size with this font in pixels Small capitals are generally imaged from a smaller font 100 Additional Horizontal Metrics The Additional Horizontal Metrics page contains horizontal font metrics information Additional horizontal metrics gt Space widths Mormal jo Min 0 Mao End 0 Quad j0 Dther widths Figure width 0 Capital width 0 Lowercase width OQ P Recalculate Most programs do not use this information so it may be undefined in your font Click on the L Recalculate button to get the default automatically calculated values 101 102 Here is the short description of the fields Normal space The recommended normal word space value to be used with this Minimum space Maximum space End space Quad space F
114. enerate kerning for all the pairs located in a special list file The list files are stored in the Shared default data Kerning folder typically C Program Files Common Files FontLab Kerning You can create your own kerning pair files or use one of the files placed there at the time of BitFonter s installation The Parameters area lets you customize the autokerning algorithm The most used option is How much white space do you want to leave between glyphs This controls how close the glyphs will be moved together while computing kerning in the pair The Allow for positive kerning check box lets the autokerning algorithm produce positive kerning in pairs Positive kerning moves glyphs apart from each other Positive kerning is usually not recommended but there may be occasional circumstances where it is needed If you want to save the existing kerning the dropdown list lets you control the disposition of the existing imported or manually created kerning pairs You can replace existing pairs by automatically generating new ones keep them unchanged or select the condition mode The Maximum number of generated pairs and Smallest allowable kern options control the possible number of automatically created pairs and the minimal normal negative or positive kerning value 331 332 Resetting Kerning To remove the kerning information for some glyphs or for the entire font you must use the Remove Kerning feature To open the Remove Kern
115. ent Color box e Scroll Bars e Zoom dropdown list e Zoom in and Zoom out buttons e Lock Unlock button 227 228 The Tools toolbar becomes active when the Glyph window is open The tools are divided into four groups e selection tools e drawing tools e tools for working with cells in an Image window not available when in the Glyph window e others including the Eye Dropper tool Metrics tool and Zoom tool The Tool Options panel also becomes available Select tool x g a oju a The panel s title depends on the currently selected tool You can switch toolbars and panels on and off using the commands in the View menu Glyph Structure All glyphs consist of three information groups 1 Information about the glyph shape or bitmap layer 2 Information about the glyph and font metrics 3 Information about the glyph outline layer All this information may be changed in the Editing Field 229 230 Units of Measurement The top and left rulers of the Glyph window are measured in pixels The pixel is the minimal unit of a bitmap font All font measurements are done in this unit In Mac OS bitmap fonts are created as screen fonts at 72 pixels per inch resolution 96 pixels on Windows and in this case and only in this case we may speak about a font pixel as a screen pixel In other cases e g on Windows a pixel in the glyph shape and a screen pixel are not the same Similarly the glyph pixel is eq
116. enu 2 Inthe dialog box that appears switch off the Create new image using Clipboard contents check box if it is enabled 3 Enter the dimensions of the new image in pixels in the edit boxes in the New image area Be sure to create the image area big enough to include all the glyphs you want to draw If you create the image area too small and later during editing you find that you have no place to include all your drawings use the Canvas Size command in the Image menu 4 Select the color characteristics of the new image as described in the previous section and click on the OK button The Untitled Image window will open Note BitFonter has certain limits for the size of an image The image width cannot exceed 32 Kb This means true color images with millions of colors cannot be wider than 8191 pixels images with thousands of colors cannot be wider than 16383 pixels images with 256 colors or grays cannot be wider than 32 K pixels etc 171 172 Working with an Image After you scan or import an image from a file or the Clipboard the image will be read and shown in the Image window E3 Image C Samples SAMPLE png f ma 1 ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz A e te N Y Ne e The Image window helps you to preview edit and define those glyphs that will be placed into your font It consists of the image area Color palette rulers scroll bars the Zoom dropdown list and Zoom in and Z
117. er fonts A Analyzing the vertical positions of the glyphs in an image to restore information about the glyphs vertical position that is necessary to align the glyphs in strings B Analyzing the glyph s horizontal positions to restore metric information Step A Usually glyphs are aligned in strings in the source image BitFonter uses this data to restore information about a glyph s vertical positioning In the string glyphs are aligned to a baseline the zero level of the string Some glyphs lie above the baseline some of them intersect the baseline and some are below Ag _ The definition of a baseline is the zero point of the vertical coordinates 193 194 In BitFonter you can set baselines for every line of text or even for every glyph cell When the glyphs are extracted from the image and placed into a font the information about the relative position of the glyph s image and baseline will be used so you will not have to reposition the baseline in every glyph Using baselines in the Image Window can save you a lot of time as many glyphs are already aligned there That is why we recommend that you align glyphs in strings when you prepare an original image BitFonter automatically detects the positions of all baselines when using the Separate Shapes operation It analyses glyphs cells and tries to find the best position for the baselines If you want to change the positions of the baselines first make t
118. es The Names and Copyright page includes the most general information applicable to families styles and fonts Basic set of font names gt Family Name Construct200 Weight rll Style Plain width Spacing Proportional Style Hame il Font Hame Construct200 Full Hame Construct200 Menu Hame P Buld All Names Family Name Weight Width Style Spacing Style Name Full Name Font Name Menu Name Build All Names The name of the typeface to which all the enclosed fonts belong The family name is the name that appears in an application s font menu It may differ from the name of the file containing the family So be careful when you rename font families Do not mix up the Family Name and the Project Name Although these names may be the same these are quite different things since one project may contain several families Weight of the font You may enter a custom value in this field or select one of the predefined weight names in the dropdown list Values in this list are sorted by increased weight value Choose Normal or leave this field empty if you do not care about the font s weight The average advance width of the font s glyphs Enter a custom value or select one of the predefined width values from the dropdown list Leave this field empty or select Normal width if you do not care about the font s width The overall posture of the typeface design used in the font Select Ita
119. es by choosing the Trace outlines if they re missing option If you select the Always trace outlines option the existing outlines will be ignored and new outlines will be created and exported If you want BitFonter to export existing outlines only then choose the third radio button If you want BitFonter to use the selected option without asking you then check the Always apply these settings for current document check box You will see this dialog box again if you hold down the CTRL key when selecting the File gt Export gt Outline Font command If any glyph in your exported font has no outline layer or when you click on the Trace Options button in the Export as Outline Font dialog BitFonter opens the Trace Options dialog described in the Trace Options on page 302 section Set the options for tracing and click on OK When finished press Export to proceed or Cancel to stop the procedure If the Export outline font into VFB file option is off BitFonter will launch outline font editor and present another dialog Export as Outline Font Place inka New Font Export entire Font Select the font opened in FontLab Studio or TypeTool or AFS in the Place into dropdown list or choose New font Switch on the Export entire font option if needed and click on Export to finish If Export outline font into VFB file was switched on in Tools gt Options BitFonter will open the standard File Save dialog box Select the folder where yo
120. est results 219 5 Set the desired shape of pixels in the output font using the Pixel primitives dropdown list The normal shape is Squares but you may need to change it if you want to get out of the ordinary results Here are some examples so gs A She a a a a TETTES AREAK bei f j J 6 Scaling of the pixel elements is also an optional feature The common values are 100x100 i e without scaling pixels 7 Make pixels editable in FontLab Studio or Overlap pixels If you select Pixels are editable the output glyph image will consist of several separate square or whatever shape selected contours each representing a pixel Unfilled contours Filled contours If you have the Python system installed you will be able to edit such glyphs with the special Python tool in FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio 220 Choose the Overlap pixels option if you are not going to edit your font with the Python tool BitFonter will generate contours that can be edited in FontLab Studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool or AFS http www fontlab com asiafontstudio in the usual way but will not be editable by the Python tool Unfilled contours Filled contours 8 If any glyphs were selected you may switch off the Export all glyphs of the font option to export only selected glyphs Click on OK to start exporting or Cancel to stop the procedure After BitFonter finishes the font will op
121. et mode Correct Glyph When this option is on BitFonter checks and corrects if Metrics necessary the glyph metrics in the font while opening it Keep Comments When this option is on BitFonter reads comments from the font while opening it Omit Warning When this option is on BitFonter does not display warning Messages messages on import when finds something wrong with fonts 55 56 Export Options The Export section of the Tools gt Options dialog allows you to customize font export options Export options gt Default font storage format BOF Font bd Ww Default format is used for saving fonts along with frp projects The Default font storage format dropdown list allows you to choose the font format used by default for saving fonts along with their fnp project with the Save a Copy As command or when importing multiple sizes of the installed font Initially the default font storage format is BFB BitFonter Document BDF ABF export options gt Generate FREESE GLYPH RANGES fields _ Pad cells write encoding codepoints instead of Unicode codepoints Line terminator Mac wt These options refer to saving fonts in BDF format only Generate When this option is on BitFonter generates BDF files XFREE86_GLYPH_RANGES with special key words that define existing glyphs and fields their codes Usually this option need not be switched on Pad Cells When this option is on BitFonter generates and saves
122. f the selected cell while holding down the ALT key To deselect all the cells click anywhere outside the cells or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu To join two or more selected cells into one cell select the Merge Cells command in the Image menu The selected cells will be merged into one cell which will remain selected To remove unwanted cells that are not glyphs shapes for example select these cells with the Cell tool and then select the Delete command in the Edit menu or simply press the DEL key The Cell tool is also used to manually create cells in the image You can use it to modify the results of automatic splitting or to do manual splitting from the outset To draw a new cell 1 Select the Cell tool in the Tools toolbar and press CTRL 2 Position the mouse cursor at the corner of a rectangle to be defined as a cell 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to draw a rectangle around the glyph in the image 4 Release the mouse button to finish defining a new cell A new cell rectangle will appear You can define all the glyphs cells that you need in a font with this manual image splitting tool You can define cells with the Selection tools as well Select part of an image with one of the image selection tools and then choose the Create Cell From Selection command in the Image menu You will see the selection rectangle become a new cell Knife Tool The Knife tool Ce is used to man
123. factor when you separate an image but it may need to be adjusted especially when cells in the image have different heights BitFonter has the ability to adjust the scale factor for each of the cells individually or for the whole image To declare or edit the scale factor for the cells of an image 1 Click on the Set Scale button th on the Tools toolbar 2 The scale bar will appear on the image amp OOO OOS Gee The scale bar is equal to 100 of the font height A special highlighted mark on the scale bar is 70 because usually the height of the uppercase glyphs equals 70 of the font height 3 Select the cell or a group of cells for which you will set the scale factor and click on the L Auto button in the Tool Options panel If the cell has a baseline the scale bar s zero point is aligned to the cell s baseline position If you are not satisfied with the results of the scale factor s automatic detection it can be adjusted manually To do this position the scale bar so that its length equals the font height To move the scale bar position the mouse cursor on it not too close to scale bar s ends The mouse cursor will change to gt Hold down the left mouse button and drag the scale bar to its new place Release the left mouse button to finish To position the ends of the scale bar position the mouse cursor on the end that you want to move The mouse cursor will change to gt Hold do
124. family 14 pixels in our example Photofont export options gt Put glyph data Inside of font file v Crop by Font bounding box ka Estra space 7 of font PPM A Photofont PhF font may consist of one or several files the main XML based text file which may also contain bitmap image data and the bitmap image or images file containing actual glyph shapes referenced from the main file I e the bitmap image data can be placed either in the main file or in separate files referenced by the main file The first two dropdown lists control these glyph storage options Choose Inside of font file if you want to keep glyph images in the main file or choose Outside of font file to keep them separately in png files As separate Each glyph image will be saved separately in the main phf file images or in several separate png files Separate files are placed in a new folder fontname Imgs where fontname is the name of the main phf file Image file names have the following notation glyphindex glyphname png As single table Glyph images will be saved inside the main phf file or externally image in a png file designed as a table of cells One image one cell As single Glyph images will be saved inside the main phf file or externally compact image in a png file designed to save space Glyph images are placed very close to each other The space between images can be changed with the Extra space parameter The Crop by dropdown lis
125. file 335 Index AAT 22 Adobe 22 advance width 61 92 100 117 224 231 319 AICB option 169 Append 300 appending chracters 134 Arabic 122 ascender 53 98 231 ASCII 22 117 AsiaFont Studio 213 ATSUI 22 autosplitting 180 customizing 184 average width 97 background removing 178 baseline 193 231 aligning 180 editing 180 308 moving 180 batch conversion 74 BDF 107 206 bit map 26 BitFonter 9 features 9 interface options 47 options 44 user interface 44 BitFonter Options 82 84 86 188 197 239 269 BitFonter User Interface 10 213 bitmap 26 pasting 269 pasting options 53 bitmap fonts 26 Bitmap Pasting 251 Black White Conversion 324 bounding box 53 180 Brightness Contrast 280 brush angle 258 diameter 258 hardness 258 roundness 258 Brush tool 258 Brushes Panel 258 canvas size 176 caps height 97 Cell tool 185 cells defining 180 exporting 196 mask 185 merging 180 splitting 180 Changing Font Color Mode 164 174 Changing Font Size and or Resolution 164 273 characters appending 134 copying 133 creating 131 deleting 135 moving 132 pasting 133 reencoding 136 renaming 136 searching for 130 selecting 128 transforming 135 Clipboard 66 166 170 171 251 269 codepage 22 103 104 105 119 122 140 142 custom 26 codepage definition 122 Codepages 104 color selecting 253 color depth 26 color fonts 26 71 saving
126. file available only to BitFonter you must put the file to the Application default data Codepage folder Put your custom codepage files in the Shared user data folder Codepage folder typically C Documents and Settings Your Username My Documents FontLab Shared Codepage if you want to make the codepage available to all recent Fontlab Ltd applications or in the Application user data folder Codepage folder typically C Documents and Settings Your Username My Documents FontLab BitFonter3 Codepage if you want to make the codepage available within BitFonter only 125 Using the Font Window The Font window contains cells for all the font glyphs Use the vertical scroll bar to view those glyph cells that are not visible if any You also may scroll with the hand tool available when you press the SPACEBAR on the keyboard With the dropdown list you can define magnification or reduction of the Font window contents There are 7 zoom modes available in the menu The Zoom in lid and Zoom out a buttons allow you to change cell size by one level at a time There is a hidden view feature in the Font window Look for the small control above the vertical scroll bar amta D056 O04 Click on this small control with the mouse cursor and drag it lower along the scroll bar Additional Font window frames will become visible 2 Font Construct 200 Plain 200 Pixels Millions Colors C Samples t on E ek RS Tor ea e Gai
127. glyph editor s color palette resides at the top of the Glyph window There are three ways to set the current color in the Glyph window e With the Color Palette e With the Color dialog box e and with the Eyedropper tool To set the current color with the Color Palette move the mouse cursor to the palette bar the cursor will change to the Eye Dropper cursor and click the left mouse button over the color you need The selected color will be shown in the Current Color box To set the current color with the Color dialog box double click on the palette bar or the Current Color box The standard Windows Color dialog box will open Select the color you need in this dialog and click on the OK button The selected color will be shown in the Current Color box This method is better if you want to set a precise color by entering its numeric RGB values To set the current color with the Eyedropper tool select this tool in the Tools toolbar or press the ALT key on the keyboard position the mouse cursor over the glyph image and click the left mouse button The color of the pixel you clicked on will be shown in the Current Color box 253 254 To see the numeric values of the currently selected color position the mouse cursor over the Current Color box You will see the panel popups with RGB and opacity color information G Glyph three 0033 f fro 799 Hold down the left mouse button drag the mouse and release the left mous
128. h s shape aligned to the image s bottom right corner View the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the CTRL key Click on the OK button to apply changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation Here are some examples of the Colorize command 287 288 Remove Background One more way to make the glyphs cleaner is to use the Remove Background command in the Tools gt Filter menu This filter tries to separate the glyph s shape from its background and then clear the background We illustrated the use of this operation earlier when spoke about creating a font from an image in the Working with an Image on page 172 section Emboss This command and the remaining ones from the Tools gt Filter menu may be qualified as filters They are usually used for color glyph editing Emboss is a special filter command that will make the glyph s look high relief To make the glyph high relief embossed 1 2 Select the Emboss command in the Tools gt Filter menu You will see the Emboss dialog Angle 20 i Aoo Height 4 pixels S cI Amount ol eh Apply to all glyphs in the font Use the Angle Height and Amount sliders to customize the filter and click on the OK button The Emboss filter will be applied To see the original glyph in the preview field press and hold down the CTRL key After
129. h Window Options 10 12 12 Bitmap Pasting Options Import Options Export Options Image To Font Conversion Outline Font Editor FONT PROJECT The BitFonter Standard Toolbar Creating a New Project Opening a Font Project Working with Fonts in the Project Window The Project Window Toolbar Font entries in the project and their icons Browsing the project font set The Project Window context menu Creating new font families Creating new fonts and font references Duplicating copying and pasting fonts Deleting fonts and font families Viewing and editing family and font properties Font Project Info Verifying a Font Project Reverting a Font Project Saving a Font Project Saving BitFonter s Project File Saving a Windows Font Set Saving a Windows OpenType SBIT Font Saving a Palm OS Font Saving in PhotoFont Format EDITING FONTS Editing Family Properties Editing Style Properties Editing Font Properties Basic Set of Font Names Metrics and Dimensions Encoding and Unicode Format Specific Data Extra Properties and Font Note Pages File Location and Links Black White Conversion Editing a Font Character Set Font Window 113 114 115 Font Editing Modes Using the Font Window Customizing the Font Window Selecting Glyphs Searching for Glyphs Creating New Glyphs Moving Glyphs Copying and Pasting Glyphs Appending Glyphs to the Font Deleting Glyphs Transforming Glyphs Renaming and Reencoding Glyphs Reencoding Glyphs
130. he Glyph Window Options on page 50 section Glyph metrics v Font metrics Font bounding bor To edit glyph and font metrics the Edit Metrics tool described later in the Editing Metrics in the Glyph Window on page 308 section is used To edit left and right margins position the Adjust Sidebearings and Adjust Width operations in the Metrics window are used as well Refer to the Using the Metrics Window on page 309 section for details Outline Layer Each glyph in a font has an outline layer Usually it is empty because bitmap fonts do not contain outline information But sometimes when working with the glyph s bitmap you may need to see its outline An outline layer can be used in import export operations only but is never saved with the font except in BitFonter Binary Font bfb format A Glyph with an outline contour may look like this outline layer is in red on your screen If the outline layer of a glyph is not empty most operations that you make to the glyph are applied to its outlines too Outlines are created automatically during the import operations see the Importing a Font on page 198 section exporting to outline font see the Exporting Outlines on page 214 section or manually see the Outline Operations on page 300 section later in the chapter Use the Outline command in the View gt Show Layers menu to show or hide outlines in the Glyph window Refer to the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools
131. he number of available colors Select the Color Mode command in the Font menu and you will see the Change Color Mode dialog Change Color Mode Color Mode Color Colors 16 4 bits Color T able Adaptive poor quality Matte color m Select a new Color Mode number of Colors and Color Table for the font you are editing in the corresponding dropdown lists You may want BitFonter to generate a custom color table for your font This is possible in 4 16 and 256 color modes only when you change the number of colors in the font Select one of the available Adaptive color tables 56 Colors Adaptive poor quality Adaptive normal quality Adaptive fine quality Select the Matte color in the dropdown list or with the help of the Eye Dropper tool if needed 151 152 If you are going to make a black amp white font from a color or grayscale font you have to define the threshold parameter for conversion Color Mode See the description of this parameter in the Threshold on page 282 section in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter You can view the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog box To see the original glyph sample simply press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the OK button to finish the operation or Cancel to leave the font color mode unchanged You can undo this operation using the Edit gt Undo command Blending
132. he Save button Note Although you do not check bitmap fonts as embedded when saving for Palm OS all bitmap fonts will be checked as embedded automatically Note The pixel size of a Palm OS font is always defined by font ascent 85 86 Saving in PhotoFont Format A font in PhotoFont PhF format contains glyphs as a set of true color bitmap images You can save any existing font of any bitmap format in this format A font containing only TrueType OpenType TT outlines or fonts of more than one style cannot be saved as a PhotoFont font There are no restrictions on the glyphs in this format but one a font of any color mode will be saved as a 32 bit true color font This is the reason the phf font file is 10 times bigger than its black amp white twin The PhotoFont format accepts glyphs names codes and Unicode codepoints but they are not necessary All these features make this format very useful in graphic design desktop publishing creating presentations and web authoring The PhF font may consist of one or several files the main XML based text file which may also contain bitmap image data and the bitmap image or images files containing actual glyph shapes referenced from the main file I e the bitmap image data can be placed either in the main file or in separate files referenced by the main file Refer to the Export gt Photofont page of the Tools gt Options dialog to customize the PhotoFont export options described in
133. he View gt Toolbars menu The buttons in the Operations toolbar are Flip Horizontal tg Flip Vertical a Scale F Rotate i Rotate 180 Dy Rotate 90 CW fai Rotate 90 CCW 4 Slant i Make Bold b Flips the glyph s or selection horizontally Flips the glyph s or selection vertically Scales the glyph s or selection Rotates the glyph s or selection by the given angle Rotates the glyph s or selection 180 degrees Rotates the glyph s or selection 90 degrees clockwise Rotates the glyph s or selection 90 degrees counter clockwise Slants the glyph s or selection to imitate italics Shifts the glyph s or selection by several pixels to imitate bold style Do not forget that you can use the Undo command if you want to undo any of the transformations 271 272 Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical When you want to flip a glyph in the vertical or horizontal direction you use the Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical commands from the Tools menu bof Before flipping After horizontal flipping After vertical flipping As with other commands from the Tools menu this command may be applied to the selected areas of a glyph but when there is no selection it will apply to the entire glyph In the latter case glyph outlines if any are flipped accordingly These operations may be necessary when you edit symmetrical glyphs Use the Undo command to undo the transformation Scale The Scale command allows you to res
134. he glyph image Pixel Width Left Sidebearing body width The advance width of the glyph the distance between the left and the right margins of the glyph in pixels Advance width in Units Per eM 1000 used for proper font scaling Vertical offset of the glyph image from the glyph origin point or baseline Pressing the P button at the right of the Name field generates glyph name from the Unicode codepoint below and vice versa pressing the L button at the right of the Unicode field generates Unicode codepoint from the glyph s name After you have finished editing click on the OK button or browse to the next previous glyph To discard changes to the current glyph click on Cancel 235 236 Changing the View in the Glyph Window To change the view in the editing field of the Glyph window use the Scroll bars Size dropdown list Zoom buttons and the View menu Browsing The Next and Previous commands in the Glyph menu show the next and the previous glyphs of the font You do not have to close one glyph to open another You can browse all the existing font glyphs by using these commands in one open Glyph window There are keyboard shortcuts for these commands CTRL and Crri Another way to get the glyph you need in the Glyph window is to use the alphanumeric keys of your keyboard Pressing them brings up the corresponding glyph for edit if the E button at the bottom of the Glyph window was not pressed If it
135. hem visible To make baselines visible in the Image Window select the Baseline item in the View menu To move a baseline 1 Select the Cell oh tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on the baseline the cursor changes to Ea 3 Hold down the left mouse button and drag the baseline where you want it to go Release the left mouse button to place the baseline in the new position To let BitFonter automatically detect the positions of all baselines again without performing autosplitting 1 Select the Cell tool 2 Make sure none of the cells selected 3 Select the Search Again command in the Image gt Baseline menu To set the position of a baseline for a string of cells 1 Select the Cell tool 2 Select the string of cells by Suirr clicking on or rectangular selection 3 Select the Search Again command in the Image gt Baseline menu There are some additional commands in the Image gt Baselines menu Here is their meaning Set To Cell s Bottom This command sets the selected cell s baseline or all baselines if no cell is selected to the cell s bottom border This is the same as clearing the cell s baseline Align To Top This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the position of the highest baseline Align To Middle This command sets all the baselines of the selected cells to the position of the calculated average value Align To Bottom This command sets all the bas
136. ht and the copyright year Notice Additional information that you want to include in Project Info Description Version page Project version information will help you keep track of the work process Properties of Project Allegro BT 10 Version Comments Fiekbace I Revision Extra properties i Stage vihi County code Short String Long Sinrig 77 78 Comments page Any information you decide to provide with your project Extra properties page The Extra Properties page is usually empty Later it may contain some additional project information that cannot be interpreted by the current version of BitFonter All the fields in the Project Info dialog except the project name field are optional You may leave them empty The information will be saved only in BitFonter s native project format file This means that if you save the project for example as a Windows font it will not contain any project info Verifying a Font Project Sometimes while working with big and complicated projects you may need to verify them Select the Verify command in the File menu while the Project window is active The project will be checked for errors and if there is one or more you will see an Errors window with error descriptions If there are no errors in the project you will be informed with a The project s OK message BitFonter verifies projects automatically when you select Save Save As or Save A Copy As com
137. ield automatically An up to four letter code that is assigned to most TrueType producers to identify their fonts An uppercase vendor code must be registered with Microsoft or Apple All registered Vendor codes known at the time of BitFonter s release are placed in the dropdown list If you want to identify yourself without registering you may enter a lowercase four letter vendor code TrueType OpenType TT font version records have a different format You may enter the TrueType OpenType TT version record here or click on the Build button at the right of the field to fill this record automatically 109 110 HPSF Data HPSF PCL settings gt Vendor Typeface family oT Here is the short description of the HPSF PCL fields Vendor The vendor code for the HP Soft font Typeface family If you are going to generate a HP Soft font type in or select in the dropdown list the appropriate PCL Typeface Family FON and FNT Data FON and FNT settings gt Variable pitch Break char 0020 Unicode Here is the short description of the fields used in FONs and FNTs Font Family Font families describe in a general way the look of a font They are intended for fonts when the exact face name desired is not available Variable Pitch Variable pitch means proportional This option should be off for a monospaced font Break Char This Unicode value specifies the character that will define word breaks This character defines word
138. ifferent fonts representing the same typeface in different formats A font family usually contains from one to a few dozen typefaces Glyph name Each glyph in a font contains the digital representation of the glyph image in form of outlines or bitmaps In addition each glyph is uniquely identified by its name Glyph names must follow certain conventions 1 Only plain English letters uppercase A Z or lowercase a z European digits 0 9 as well as the special characters period and _ underscore are permitted in glyph names 2 Spaces are not permitted in glyph names 3 Glyph names must not start with a digit 4 Glyph names must not start with a period except the glyph name notdef notdef is a special glyph that is displayed by the operating system if the font does not include a codepoint that the application is attempting to display Usually notdef has a form of a rectangle a crossed rectangle or a rectangle with a question mark inside 17 Menu When we refer to menu items in the main BitFonter menu we will use the following notation top menu item gt sub item For example Edit gt Copy means click on the word Edit on the menu bar and select the Copy command from the menu Edit w Undo Alt 6ksp Cut Sh Delete Copy Chrl C Paste Ctrl V Delete Duplicate Ctrl D Select All trl e4 Deselect Ctrl U Invert Selection Ctrl I Properties Alt Enter Folders and
139. igure width Capital width Lowercase width font If the space glyph exists in the font its advance width will be the normal space The recommended minimum word space value to be used with this font The minimum space is usually 0 75 of the normal space The recommended maximum word space value to be used with this font The maximum space is usually 1 5 of the normal space The recommended spacing value at the end of sentences The end space is usually equal to a normal space This metric gives the advance width of a quad em space The use of this font property has been deprecated The advance width of the tabular figures and the dollar sign if all advance widths are equal For Latin fonts these tabular figures are the Arabic numerals 0 through 9 The arithmetic mean of the absolute value of the advance width of each capital glyph in the font in pixels For Latin fonts capitals are the glyphs A through Z This property is usually used for font matching or substitution The arithmetic mean of the absolute value of the advance width of each lowercase glyph in the font in pixels For Latin fonts lowercase are the glyphs a through z This property is usually used for font matching or substitution Encoding and Unicode The Encoding and Unicode page includes the most general information that is applied to all the fonts in the family Encoding settings gt Encoding mode Use table MacOS Roman w Default cha
140. ile format on Windows compatible computers CMap character map a table relating an encoding to a set of internal computer codes For instance the computer may use the numbers between 1100 and 1356 to represent the characters in a font When it needs character number 1234 it looks at the CMap table to find the corresponding code which in turn directs it to the appropriate glyph EPS Encapsulated PostScript Image file format that supports both vector graphics and bitmap images FOND resource Macintosh terminology for the part of a Macintosh font that contains metrics information and describes the contents of a suitcase FontLab format see VFB format GIF Graphic Interchange Format A common format for image files often used on the WWW Resolution is limited to 256 colors INF Information file a text file that contains information about a PC Type 1 font Multiple master font a special type of font format which is an extension of the Type 1 font format Multiple master fonts contain several font styles called master fonts in one font file A program that uses multiple master fonts can not only select one of the master fonts but it also can select an intermediate design created by the linear interpolation of the master fonts NFNT resource Macintosh terminology for the part of a Type or TrueType Macintosh font that contains the bitmap font OpenType OpenType font format jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe OpenT
141. ill Selection Outline E Open Font Window Ctrl Properties Alt Enter Here is what the commands mean Copy Paste Delete Select All Select Inverse Deselect Fill Selection Outline Open Font Window Properties Copies the selection onto the Clipboard Same as the Copy command from the Edit menu Places pixels from the Clipboard into the glyph image Same as the Paste command from the Edit menu Deletes the selection Same as the Delete command from the Edit menu Selects the entire editing field of the Glyph window Deselects the selected area and selects the unselected area simultaneously Deselects any previously selected area Fills the selected area with the current color The commands from the Tools gt Outline menu They are described in the Outline Operations on page 300 section later in the chapter Switches to the corresponding Font window Opens the glyph Properties panel for the current glyph Tools The tools in the Tools toolbar are used for glyph shape and metrics editing and are not available if the Glyph or Image window is not active These tools are not used for outline layer editing To open the Tools toolbar select the View gt Toolbars gt Tools command You can easily switch between these tools by pressing the following keys on the keyboard PPLE LILLI LLL MFA S FF anoETOT se Fa These keyboard shortcuts will only work if the Direct glyph navigation button si at the
142. ill make the glyph darker and higher contrast with the Brightness Contrast filter Select this command in the Tools gt Adjust menu and you will see the corresponding dialog Brightness Contrast Brightness Contrast Transparency m Use the Brightness slider to make the glyph darker and the Contrast slider to make it higher contrast Click on the OK button when finished and look at the difference between the source glyph and the result Original glyph Result glyph Editing Metrics The tools in BitFonter that you can use to edit metrics data are quite diverse You can edit metrics e with the Edit Metrics tool in the Glyph window e inthe glyph Properties panel e with the Generate Metrics Adjust Width and Adjust Sidebearings operations e and in the Metrics window You can use all these methods or any of them that you feel more suitable for you 308 Editing Metrics in the Glyph Window This method was discussed already in the Edit Metrics Tool on page 267 section of the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter Here is the short story The Edit Metrics tool is used for glyph and font metrics editing Glyph metrics include the left and right margins of the glyph They are horizontal metrics Font metrics are the baseline font ascent font descent Caps height and x height These are vertical metrics To edit glyph metrics with the Edit Metrics tool click on the mouse cursor on one of the lines and drag the l
143. in a font If this option is unchecked only the selected range of glyphs will be reindexed 5 Click on the OK button to assign new codepoints to the glyphs X Note Unicode codepoints are assigned to glyphs by their current order in the Font window 139 140 Reencoding Glyphs Automatically Sometimes for example when you get a font with improper encoding you may need to reencode it quickly without performing multiple dragging or renaming operations This is where you need the automatic reencoding feature of BitFonter There are three different ways of reencoding a font two ways when it is open in a Font window and one way to reencode all the fonts in the font family Reencoding a Font Reencoding a font while it is open in its Font window can be performed in two ways by Codepage or by Name Table depending on the current editing mode To reencode glyphs by Codepage switch the Font window to the Codepage editing mode using the Mode dropdown list at the bottom of the Font window and then select the Reencode command from the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu The Reencode dialog appears Reencode With this operation you can reassign the Unicode indexes to characters of the current codepage to support another codepage The source codepage is MS Windows 1252 Western 4NS50 Select a codepage to which you want to reencode the current Font MacOS Simplified Chinese MacOS Symbol MacOS Thai MacOS Traditional Chinese
144. in the bottom control area of the Metrics window to open the Table Hame Width Left Right 743 j 0 B BED 3 Bd C 746 46 38 D 813 29 de E 630 46 29 F 538 32 12 G 818 46 36 H 853 35 37 371 20 40 J 332 77 16 K 712 56 10 This table contains metrics or kerning information for all the glyphs in the font When the Metrics window is in metrics mode every row in the table contains the name of the glyph the glyph advance width and left and right sidebearings If you right click on the table header you will see additional fields to show in the table ScWidth Scaled glyph advance width the distance between the left and the right margins of the glyph in Units Per eM 1000 Bottom Bottom sidebearing vertical offset of the glyph image from the baseline BdWt Body width the width of the glyph image in pixels This field is not editable BdHt Body height the height of the glyph image in pixels This field is not editable In kerning mode every row contains the names of the first and second glyphs in the pair and a kerning value 312 Context Menu As in all other windows of BitFonter if you right click on the editing area you will see a context menu that contains commands that are related to the current mode of the Metrics window Every Metrics window mode has its own context menu Text Mode d Cut Sh Delete M Metrics Mode 3 Copy Cree AY Kerning Mode TA Paste Ctrl y Delet Delet En Open Font Wind
145. ine to its new place Editing the baseline affects only the open glyph the glyph is shifted vertically Dragging font metrics lines except the baseline always affects font metrics i e all the glyphs in the font Holding down the Suirt key while the cursor is positioned over a metrics line which changes the cursor to or Ea and clicking on the mouse will move the line to the edge of the glyph shape This works with both glyph and font metrics Metrics Window BitFonter has a special window where you can edit the metrics and kerning information It is called the Metrics window To open the Metrics window select the Metrics Window command in the Window menu The Metrics window will appear 0 Metrics Trees Plain 137 Pixels Millions Colors Seles m aa fad Menies gt Options gt Toos_ J The Metrics window consists of several parts 1 A Metrics Tools toolbar with four buttons that allow you to select one of the editing modes By default this toolbar is vertically aligned and docked to the left side of the BitFonter main window You can drag it anywhere or dock to any side ge hdi 2 A local command area that is used to select a mode for the Metrics window and a string for metrics or kerning editing 100 v faatt Metrics v J Options Toots E v 3 The editing area where the edited string with controls appears 4 The Metrics Ruler a narrow bar located above the editing area AB
146. ing dialog box select the Remove Kerning command in the Glyph gt Metrics menu or in the context menu of the Metrics window The Remove Kerning dialog box appears Remove Kerning what exactly do vou want bo do G Remove kerning For the current pair Remove kerning For all pairs in the string O Remove kerning For all glyphs in the string Limit the number of kerning pairs to 1000 Delete all pairs that are less than 10 Completely remove kerning in the current font This dialog box includes options that control kerning removal Available options are Remove kerning for the Removes kerning for the selected pair only current pair Remove kerning for all Removes kerning in all pairs that exist in the current pairs in the string string Remove kerning for all Removes kerning in all pairs that include glyphs in the glyphs in the string current string Limit number of kerning Kerns only the given number of pairs with the largest pairs to absolute kerning value Delete all pairs that are Removes all pairs that have a kerning value less than less than the given value The absolute value of kerning is compared Completely remove Removes all the kerning pairs available in the font kerning in the current Before doing this we recommend you to save the font current metrics and kerning data in the metrics file Opening Metrics Files BitFonter allows you to import metrics and or kerning information into
147. ions panel The cursor will change to Te Only the common area of the new and previous selection will be selected To deselect the area click outside of the selected area or Crru click inside the area or use the Deselect command in the Edit menu Select Region Tool With the Select Region tool you can select areas of any shape The area may be selected on a point by point basis or by drawing a free hand line To select a free form part of the glyph 1 Choose the Select Region gt tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor on one of the points on the edge of the selection area 3 Hold down or click the left mouse button If you click the left down button you will add a new straight line to the selection polygon If you hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse you will draw a freehand line that will be added to the selection or 4 Double click the left mouse button to finish the selection To add to the selection hold down the Suirr key or use the Add to selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to rt The new selection will be added to the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down the Axr key or use the Subtract from selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be subtracted from the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down ALT SHIEFT or use the Intersect with sele
148. ist of supported codepages select a codepage in the right list and press the Del button To reset the list of supported codepages click on the Reset button To select the supported codepages automatically click on the Auto button BitFonter will analyze the Unicode information available in the font and will automatically detect which codepages this font can support 105 Supported Unicode Ranges Supported Unicode ranges Basic Latin Latin 1 Supplement Latin Extended A Latin Extended B IPA Extensions Spacing Modifier Letters Combining Diactritical Marks Greek Cyrillic Armenian OpenType fonts must declare Unicode ranges that the font can support so that the operating system can decide which characters the font can be used to represent The Supported Unicode ranges page is relatively simple you can see a list of all Unicode ranges with a check box to the left of each name If the check box is checked it means that range is supported by the font Buttons to the right of the list mean Uncheck all ranges P Automatically check ranges using information about Unicode codepoints assigned to fonts glyphs 106 Format Specific Data The Format specific data section contains more sometimes useful font information specific for different font formats Format specific data BOFABF TrueType HPSF FON FNT AFP Format specific settings Typeface The Typeface dropdown list al
149. ith some useful commands from the Glyph menu Properties Opens the glyph properties panel for the current glyph 117 118 Changing cell caption Each cell has a caption or title showing the name of the glyph its code in various forms or its advance width The Title dropdown list __ located in the Font window footer lets you select one of the caption view modes None Glyph s caption will not be shown at all Name The glyph name Unicode The Unicode codepoint assigned to the glyph in hexadecimal form Index The glyph index i e the physical location of the glyph in the font ASCII The ASCII character that corresponds to the local character code Decimal Code The local character code in decimal form Octal Code The local character code in octal form Hex Code The local character code in hexadecimal form Width The glyph advance width Left Sidebearing The glyph s left sidebearing Right The glyph s right sidebearing Sidebearing Bottom The glyph s bottom sidebearing Sidebearing Body width The glyph shape width Body height The glyph shape height Unicodes count The number of Unicode codepoints assigned to the glyph The title view mode affects the caption display only and does not change the glyph attributes or font editing mode The glyphs cells may have a gray or white background and gray or yellow caption A gray cell background means that there is no glyph in this place in the font Instead of the
150. itting of glyph shapes and have included a special feature that can automatically locate glyph shapes if they are printed in a known sequence Our automatic separation feature usually produces very good results requiring few or no manual corrections Autosplitting Algorithms To autosplit an image into glyph shapes 1 Select the Separate Shapes command in the Image menu The Separate Shapes dialog appears Separate Shapes A BC DEFGH lJ KL Separation mask Threshold bp Luminosity C Inverted mode Separation algorithm Book smat amp Skip spots that are less than 16 pirels Automatically detect global baselines More Options 2 Ifyou are working with a color image use the Threshold by dropdown list and slider to define the boundaries between the white or whatever color paper and image pixels This option works similarly to the Threshold on page 282 operation discussed later You will see the preview of the image changes in the left part of the dialog Actually the threshold does not change your image or its colors it is only needed to separate the future glyphs shapes from their background If you are working with a black amp white image you will see the short version of the dialog without the Separation mask section and preview 181 3 Select the algorithm in the Separation Algorithm dropdown list BitFonter has four autosplitting algorithms to use on different types of images Here are des
151. ive subfolder metrics kerning and other text strings additional encodings as well as samples are stored Only Fontlab Ltd applications and applications from registered Fontlab Ltd developer partners should place their files there This is to rule out conflicts between the user s customized files and default files 19 20 Application user data folder typically C Documents and Settings Your Username My Documents FontLab BitFonter3 This folder has exactly the same structure as the folder discussed above and can store any files customized by the user Any file placed in the respective location within that folder will override the corresponding file placed in the Application default data folder Please put your customized files in this folder When we refer to one of the folders we will use the following syntax main folder subfolder name Where main folder can be one of the following Shared default data folder Shared user data folder Application default data folder Application user data folder and subfolder name is the name of the particular subfolder within that folder For reasons of brevity we will sometimes write Shared which will mean either Shared default data folder or Shared user data folder Application which will mean either Application default data folder or Application user data folder This means that a particular file can be stored in either of the two locations default or use
152. ize the glyph or selected part of the glyph by adding or deleting the appropriate number of pixels This function is useful for creating a larger font from a smaller one or vice versa Also you can transform a normal font into a narrow one by reducing the width of its glyphs But remember this operation does nothing with the glyph s metrics See also the Changing Font Size Resolution on page 149 section in the Editing Fonts on page 87 chapter To scale the glyph 1 Open the glyph s window 2 Select the Scale command in the Tools menu You will see the Scale dialog width Proportional 4 Height Resample Nearest Neighbor w Parameter CAAA AAAA 0 Ta Enter the scale factor for horizontal and vertical transformation and select the scaling method in the Resample dropdown list Check the Proportional check box if you want to keep the vertical and horizontal scale factors the same Then click on the OK button To abort scaling click on Cancel 273 274 The Resample method is the way scaling will be performed When you choose a method other than Simple the slider becomes available Use it along with the method to apply different effects during the scale operation It may take a little experimentation to find the best algorithm for your glyph image In any case you can edit the glyph manually after scaling You can see the preview of a glyph in the preview field of the dialog while changing the para
153. l glyphs in the font xK You may choose any image that can be produced with your image editing applications even your latest digital photo Select the appropriate Alignment in the corresponding menu The following variants of aligning the image to the glyph s shape are available Random The glyph s shape is filled with the image randomly If the image size is larger than the glyph s shape then different glyphs will be filled with different areas of one image Whole The glyph s shape is filled with the image scaled to the glyph s size All the glyphs will get the whole image Top Left The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s top left corner Top Centered The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s top edge and centered horizontally Top Right The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s top right corner Centered Left The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s left edge and centered vertically Centered The glyph s shape is filled with the image centered vertically and horizontally in the glyph Centered Right The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s right edge and centered vertically Bottom Left The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s bottom left corner Bottom Centered The image fills the glyph s shape aligned to the image s bottom edge and centered horizontally Bottom Right The image fills the glyp
154. lder To generate Unicode codepoints from glyph names select the Generate Unicode command in the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu As with some commands from the Tools menu a dialog appears if no glyphs were selected Click on Yes to process the whole font The glyphs will have their Unicode codepoints generated from their names automatically For example the character having name uni0040 will get the Unicode codepoint 0040 and the character with the name at will also get Unicode codepoint 0040 To assign new Unicode codepoints to glyphs 1 Select the Assign Unicode command in the Glyph gt Name and Unicode menu The following dialog appears Assien Unicode Codepoints Start from Glyph name Assign b new Unicode Index Clear Dontchange RR Apply to all glyphs in the font 2 Set the starting Unicode codepoint in the Start from field by typing it in You can also set the starting Unicode codepoint by selecting the appropriate Unicode range in the Ranges dropdown list 3 Select the method for assigning glyph names in the Glyph name dropdown list Set Assign by new Unicode index item to rename glyphs according to new codepoints or set Clear to remove glyph names or set Do not Change to leave glyph names unchanged 4 Set the Apply to all glyphs in the font option to assign new Unicode codepoints to all the glyphs
155. le here The image files can get their names from the glyph names or Unicode codepoints Left sidebearing Define the white margins to the left and right of the glyph shape in pixels here Set these fields to zero if you want the width of image to be equal to the advance width of the glyph shape Right sidebearing Export Entire Font Check this option if you want to export all font glyphs or leave this option unchecked to export the selected glyphs only If you have selected the font in the Project window the entire font will be exported anyway When you are ready click on the Export button The standard dialog will appear to let you choose the destination for the files Every glyph will be saved as separate image in one folder Editing Glyphs When you create a brand new font you will draw all the glyphs that you want to be included in the font Also when you generate a bitmap font from outlines or create glyphs by image importing you may want to edit them to get the best result Drawing and editing an individual glyph is a very hard and time consuming job but it is the only way to get the perfect font BitFonter includes professional bitmap glyph editing tools and operations for this purpose It is time to review them Most of the editing tools and operations discussed here are equally applicable to scanned imported or newly created images You can work with a whole image as if it is a big glyph 226 The Glyph Window The Gly
156. le is zero the brush shape is horizontal A positive angle turns the brush shape clockwise A negative value turns the brush shape counter clockwise Here are examples of different brush angles Changing the Roundness and the Angle you can get calligraphic brushes of different shapes To use the Brush tool 1 Select the Brush tool in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Set the brush diameter roundness angle and hardness in the Brushes panel 3 Draw brush strokes by clicking on and dragging the mouse 4 Ifyou want to cancel a stroke while drawing press the Esc key while dragging the mouse Tip To draw a straight line with the Brush click once at the line beginning and then Suirt click on at the line end Brushes Panel You can define several different brushes and place them in the Brushes panel To make the Brushes panel visible select the Brushes Panel command in the View menu e o ze 28 2o i Diameter Angle D Roundneszs 1 oo He Hardness To add a new brush to the top of the Brushes panel define the brush s shape at the bottom and click on the button in the panel The new brush will be added to the brushes list 259 260 To remove a brush from the Brushes panel click on the brush in the list to select it and then click on the W button in the panel The brush shape will be deleted from the brushes list To change the shape of a brush in the Bru
157. lic if you are creating italic font or Roman upright design in other cases Font attribute that defines advance widths of glyphs In Proportional fonts advance widths vary for each glyph and are defined by the left and the right margins of glyphs A Monospaced font is a font whose advance widths are the same for all glyphs defined as Average Width The Char Cell attribute defines a monospaced font whose glyphs have the same glyph width and height usually defined by the font bounding box Contains complete style information about the font We recommend that you fill in the Weight Width and Style data to automatically generate this field using the Build 2 button located to the right and edit this field if necessary More detailed font name May include spaces as well as any other characters Complete font name This name will appear in the font selection menu and dialog boxes of applications that use fonts Do not include spaces The name used to access a font in applications This name must not include style information bold italic or similar The length of this field is limited to 27 characters To control that the current Menu name is made properly click on the Check amp Fix button Click on this button to automatically generate all Name fields If you are creating a new font we recommend that you fill in the Family Name field in the Family Info dialog generate or manually fill in the Style Name field and press this butto
158. line Extra bitmap glyphs are All bitmap glyphs are saved component removed o outline All bitmap glyphs are saved Option is ignored Tf the existing outline font has a glyph with more than one Unicode codepoint and this is possible only one corresponding bitmap glyph will be written and the others will be removed during the save operation The Embed bitmaps only in existing outline glyphs option is on by default 57 58 Other options are as follows outline glyphs When BitFonter generates missing outline glyphs use this consisting of dropdown list to choose what these generated glyphs will look like spaces dots or squares Dots are the default selection Generate bitmap Use these two edit boxes to define the range of font sizes for scaling table which the embedded bitmap scaling table EBSC must be generated In order to better understand how bitmap scaling tables are generated let s look at the following example Let s assume you have a Windows font set with two bitmap fonts 10 and 14 pixels In an OpenType SBIT font with embedded bitmaps you will get different scaled sizes depending on what values you enter in the From and To fields A zero value in the From field designates that the minimum scaling size will be taken from the smallest bitmap font in the family 10 pixels in our example A zero value in the To field designates that the maximum scaling size will be taken from the largest bitmap font in the
159. lists select the parameter by which you want to search for the glyph s You can search for glyphs by name Unicode codepoint advance width height or horizontal or vertical offsets 2 Inthe edit box to the right of the menus enter the criteria depending on your selection that will be used to find the glyph 3 The names of all glyphs that match the entered data will appear in the list Click on the Select button and all the glyphs will be selected in the Font window or select the glyph from the list that you want its preview will appear in the preview panel and click on the OK button 131 132 Creating New Glyphs To create a new glyph in an open font select one or more empty cells gray background and select Create Glyphs in the Glyph menu The cell background will become white which means you have created the glyph definition When you double click on an empty cell BitFonter creates the glyph and opens it in the Glyph window Switch on the Double click on creates empty glyph first option on the Font Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog box to not open created glyphs The created glyph gets the appropriate name and Unicode codepoint from the encoding selected in the Encoding dropdown list Moving Glyphs You can change the position of glyphs in the Font window and move them to a new place To move a glyph in the font table 1 Select the glyphs that you want to move 2 Position the mouse cursor on the select
160. ll get the best result if the two fonts have identical sets of glyphs with correlating attributes Select the destination where the font resulting from the blender will be placed You may choose either the current font or the new font If you select the Current Font item then the font that had been the current before you selected the Blend command will be the destination font If you select the New Font item then a new font in a new window will be created by the blending procedure New font will always have millions of colors regardless of the source fonts color mode Note If source fonts contain glyphs with an outline layer glyph contours are not blended Only the outlines of the foreground font are placed into the destination font Blend Options Use the Blend Mode dropdown list to select the foreground and background color blending mode The following modes are available in the Blend Mode dropdown list Normal Behind Multiply Screen Soft Light Hard Light Color Dodge Color Burn The default mode The colors of background and foreground pixels are not blended if no transparency is applied for 1 16 bit fonts The colors of background and foreground pixels are blended according to their transparency values if 32 bit fonts are blended Simply moves the background pixels to the foreground As a result the foreground glyph goes to the background Looks at the color information and multiplies the background color
161. lows you to set the overall posture of the typeface design used in the font It is usually used in BDF fonts Select Italic if you are creating an italic font or Roman upright design in other cases You do not need to fill in all the fields on the pages that follow For example fill in the fields on the FON FNT page only if you are going to save in the Windows Font Set format etc 107 108 BDF and ABF Data BDF and ABF settings EJ VWersiore Codepage MacUS Roman we Generate Unicodes by encoding information Here is the short description of the fields Version Any string representing the formal or informal version of the font It is valid only for BDF format Codepage Codepage information used only in the BDF Font Name field Font Name Full font name for use in BDF format fonts only Click on the corresponding Build button to generate a correct name TrueType Data TrueType settings gt Unique ID record E Vendor Code Use it as default Version Record To make a proper font you may simply click on the Build button where applicable Here is the short description of the TrueType OpenType TT specific fields Unique ID record Vendor code Version record This field is necessary to identify TrueType OpenType TT fonts Usually it includes the creator s name family name and creation year The format of this field is freeform but we recommend that you use the Build button to fill this f
162. ly thing that you can do with this operation is to move the glyph s horizontally or vertically For example you may want to move several glyphs up or down at a time Positive values shift glyph s up and right negative values shift down and left You can use the Undo command to undo the Shift operation Clear Bitmap The Tools gt Clear Bitmap command erases the contents of the glyph bitmap layer Outlines in the outline layer are preserved if any Use the Undo command if you want to undo the operation 279 280 Brightness Contrast The next two operations are useful for retouching color glyphs As seen from the command name you can change the brightness and the contrast of glyphs with this command In addition this operation helps control glyph transparency To edit the glyph s brightness or contrast select the Brightness Contrast choice in the Tools gt Adjust menu You will see the dialog Brightness Contrast Brightness Contrast Transparency m Apply to all glyphs in the font Move the Brightness slider to the left to make the glyph darker or to the right to make it lighter Move the Contrast slider to the left to make the glyph lower contrast or to the right to make it higher contrast Use the Transparency slider to make the glyph more or less transparent You can view the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the Crrt key Click on the
163. mage into a cell mask Use the Image gt Cell Mask gt Remove command to completely dispose of the mask in the selected cell To restore the mask you will need to select image pixels with e g the Magic Wand tool and then use Image gt Cell Mask gt Update with Selection You can change colors for cell borders and cell mask on the Glyph and Image Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog described in the BitFonter Options on page 44 section Cell Selected cell Cell mask Saving and Restoring Splitting Data To save your image with all its separation information use the Save command from the File menu But you may want to save the image splitting data separately To save the splitting data 1 Select the Save Separation Info command in the Image menu 2 Inthe standard File Save dialog box that appears select the folder where you want to save the data and enter the file name 3 Click on Save to save the data Later you can load this saved data and apply it to the currently open image To load and apply the splitting data 1 Select the Load Separation Info command in the Image menu 2 Inthe standard File Open dialog box that appears select the file with data 3 Click on Open to load and apply the data to the image 189 190 Defining the Scale Factor The scale factor in BitFonter defines how the glyphs in the split image will fit the future font height Usually BitFonter automatically computes this scale
164. mage pasting Don t change we There are three controls on the page Image position This option affects the drag and drop pasting from the Image window to the Font window or pasting an image copied from the Image window in the Glyph window Pasting an image from one Glyph window to another with the Edit gt Paste command is always performed in the same position where copying was made Paste Lower Left at Choose this option if you want the lower left corner of the Origin bitmap image to be pasted at the glyph s origin point This option is selected by default Paste Upper Left at Choose this option if you want the upper edge of the bitmap Ascent image to be pasted at the font ascent line Paste Centered in Choose this option if you want the bitmap image to be pasted Canvas in the center of the editing field Paste Centered in Choose this option if you want the bitmap image to be pasted Font Bounding Box centered in the bounding box 53 54 Drag drop image resize This option affects only the drag and drop process when you drag the selected portion of an image from the Image window to the Font window Pasting in the Glyph window with the Edit gt Paste command is always performed without scaling the image During a drag and drop operation from one Font window to another glyphs are always scaled Do not Scale Image Choose this option if you want the bitmap image to be dropped without scaling it This option is the default choice
165. manager Common bitmap pasting using the Paste command in the Edit menu can be performed only to the Glyph window Drag and drop pasting can be performed by dragging a selection from other applications supporting drag and drop techniques to BitFonter s Font window The pasting and drag dropping processes are fully customizable Refer to the Bitmap Pasting page of the Tools gt Options dialog discussed in the BitFonter Options on page 44 section 269 270 Operations You can transform a set of glyphs one glyph or a selected part of a glyph using the commands from the Tools menu The Tools menu is also available when working with scanned or imported bitmap images What the commands are applied to depends on what window is active and what is selected at that moment If the Glyph window is active and there is no selection transformation commands are applied to the particular glyph If you select a part of a glyph or an image transformations are applied to the selection To transform a set of glyphs or an entire font make the Font window active select the glyph cells for transformation and choose the appropriate command in the Tools menu Note Some commands are not available in the Tools menu if you are editing a black amp white font or image Some commonly used transformation commands have corresponding buttons in the Operations toolbar for easy access Operations You can turn the toolbar on or off with the help of t
166. mand allows you to get the contour of a glyph As with other filters it can be applied to the selected part of a glyph to the whole glyph while open in it is Glyph window to all the glyphs in the font or to the selection in an Image window To apply this operation select the Find Edges command in the Tools gt Filter menu As it has no customizable parameters you will see the result immediately For example Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation 299 300 Outline Operations Operations from the Tools menu are applied not only to the glyph images but also to the outline layers if not empty Operations from the Tools gt Adjust and Tools gt Filter menus do not affect outlines Additionally there are five special operations in the Tools gt Outline menu for managing the glyph outline layer Use them to manually create delete fill or rasterize glyph outlines To create an outline in the glyph outline layer select the Trace Bitmap command in the Tools gt Outline menu BitFonter will autotrace the glyph image accordingly to the options set in the Trace Options dialog described later in the section and place the contours on the outline layer To create an outline with the simple pixel based algorithm use the Trace Pixels command in the Tools gt Outline menu BitFonter will trace the glyph image the same way that it does when exporting to an outline pixel font This command can be applied to black
167. mands in the File menu The project will not be saved if any error is found You must correct any errors before saving again 79 80 Reverting a Font Project Sometimes you may need to revert the project to the last saved version Reverting the project means reverting all its fonts even if they were saved before To do this select the Revert command in the File menu You will see the revert confirmation dialog BitFonter 3 i Revert command will discard all changes made since last sawe and reopen Arial Blue Plain 72 Pixels Millions Colors Do you want to discard the changes in document Click on the Yes button if you really want to discard all changes to the project The last saved version of the project will be read from the disk in this case Click on the No button if you have changed your mind a Saving a Font Project When you have finished working with your project and its fonts or want to save intermediate results you should save the project To save the project to the same file from where it was opened and in the same format use the Save command in the File menu or simply click on the button on the Standard toolbar For example if you open a Windows font set fon and make changes to it the Save command will write changes to the same font set file Note When you save the project and there were unsaved open fonts all changes to the fonts will be saved automatically To save the project under a diffe
168. mbine several fonts of different sizes in a new project If it is checked you will be prompted to create the project with the standard Save dialog 5 To make BitFonter import glyph outlines check the Import with outlines option The outline layer can be previewed while working with a glyph s bitmap Outlines will not be imported if the Import as one project option was checked and the BitFonter Binary Font format was not selected as the default storage format 6 Click on the Import button to import the font The outline glyphs will be rasterized and imported from the server application to BitFonter s new fonts one for each point size Every font will be opened in its new Font window If the Import as one project option was checked all the fonts will be added to the new project and saved to the disk Saving a Font While working with an open font you can save your work to disk anytime you want To save the font in the same file and same format as it was opened select the Save command in the File menu or click on the button in the Standard toolbar Save the font project also if the font that you have just saved is a part of the project If you have saved a font as part of a project by mistake revert the project to the last saved using the Revert command in the File menu Note You will be asked to save any unsaved project fonts when saving a project In other words all the fonts that are part of a project must be saved before
169. menu command To do so select the Button Appearance command in the button s context menu Button Appearance You will see a dialog box where you can choose the appearance method and if it includes an image choose the image that appears on the button or at the left of the menu item Button Appearance Image only Use Default Image Test only Select User defined Image O Image and text Description Button text Da see Choose a User defined image click on New to create a new image or Edit to edit one of the User images If you decide to change the image use the included image editor to change it Edit Button Image Picture Colors Ea m B Preview Use one of the Tools to edit the enlarged image and choose a color in the Colors area Click on the OK button when you are ready 37 Converting a Menu to a Toolbar In BitFonter some menus can be converted to toolbars If you open a menu and can see a tiny caption in the top area of it you can drag it to any place on screen and it becomes a toolbar View Show Layers pra Transparency ouire Toolbars gt 5 Glyph Metrics Brushes Panel Palette Panel Info Panel Font Metrics Tool Options Panel amp Font Bounding Box v Rulers zoom In Ctrl Num zoom Out Ctrl View Show Layers Transparency Toolbars Brushes Panel Palette Panel Info Panel Tool Options Panel v Rulers zoom In Ctrl
170. meters of transformation To see the original glyph simply press and hold down the CTRL key Rotate To rotate the glyph by a specific angle select the Tools gt Rotate gt Arbitrary command The Rotate dialog appears Rotate Angle 28 i Enter the angle for rotation in the Angle text field or use the slider below Positive values rotate the image clockwise You can see the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog while changing the angle for rotation To see the original glyph hold down the CTRL key The button allows you to set the rotation angle with the vector right in the preview field Click on the button and draw a line in the preview box For example the horizontal line drawn from left to right corresponds to zero angle When finished click on the OK button To abort the operation click on Cancel 275 276 Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW There are another three commands for glyph rotation in the Tools gt Rotate menu Use Rotate 90 CW Rotate 180 and Rotate 90 CCW commands to rotate by the appropriate angle Before rotating After rotating After rotating 180 After rotating 90 CW 90 CCW If these commands are applied to the entire glyph or a set of glyphs outlines if any are rotated accordingly Use the Undo command if you want to undo the transformation Slant This is the special transformation command that can help you make an oblique font from a
171. metrics 238 267 308 pasting 74 properties 75 90 reencoding 140 removing 74 146 resolution 148 reverting 144 Saving 203 font color mode changing 150 Font Family 27 creating 73 properties 88 reencoding 142 font name 92 Font Project 65 creating 67 opening 69 properties 76 saving 81 Font Set 65 83 saving 83 font size changing 148 font window 114 background color 117 cells 117 customizing 48 127 editing mode 119 footer 115 using 125 Font Window Options 127 226 FontLab 26 198 213 214 importing from 201 FontLab template 203 fonts blending 152 FreeHand 169 full name 92 Gaussian Blur 291 glyph 22 28 advance width 61 92 100 117 224 231 319 code 117 drawing 252 metrics 267 308 name 117 234 names 196 properties 116 234 242 sidebearings 231 234 Structure 229 transforming 270 transparency 256 Unicode 117 234 zooming 127 glyph cell caption 117 127 Glyph window changing view 236 colors 50 context menu 242 customizing 50 Glyph Window Options 232 glyphs appending 134 creating 131 deleting 135 searching for 130 transforming 135 Hand tool 236 Hebrew 121 HP Soft font 103 Hue Saturation 281 Illustrator 169 image colors changing 174 conversion 61 creating 171 editing 173 exporting 222 224 importing 168 170 preparing 166 size 168 176 339 splitting 180 Image Window 180 import options
172. mmands in context menus or toolbars Most of the customization commands are concentrated in the Customize panel that you can open with the Customize command from the Tools menu or the same command located in the context menu which appears if you right click on a menu toolbar or toolbar dock area Customize The Customize dialog box consists of several pages Commands List of all the available commands grouped into several categories Toolbars Customization of toolbars There is an option to create new toolbars Tools On this page you can connect an external program to a menu item in BitFonter s Tools menu Keyboard Customization of keyboard shortcuts Menu Customization of menus While the Customize dialog box is open all interface elements are in editable mode so you can simply drag drop buttons and menu items between different toolbars You can also customize the appearance of menu items and toolbar buttons 31 32 Customizing Toolbars To move a button within a toolbar click the left mouse button on it drag it to the new location and drop it If you drag the button slightly further to the right a separator bar will be added between it and the previous button Standard To move a button to another toolbar drag drop it there To copy a button hold down the CTRL key while you drag the button To remove a button from a toolbar drag it out of the toolbar Standard In BitFonter there is very
173. n define the following tracing options Easy Trace Options In the Trace Preset dropdown list you can quickly select common predefined options changing from Very tight to Very loose When you select one of these easy options in the dropdown list BitFonter will automatically adjust all the tracing parameters The tighter the option you choose the more accurate the tracing will be In other words the outline will be closer to the original bitmap image This is the first law of autotracing The second law is that the tighter the option you choose the more nodes you will get on the outline More nodes mean more time and larger font files Usually the Normal option will be the best If you find that the Normal autotracing option does not work for you you can try the other tracing options listed in the Trace Preset dropdown list Glyph pixel size Smal Medium large O Tight Normal Tight Normal Tight Normal Normal Loose Normal Normal Loose 303 304 Advanced Trace Options You can customize the trace parameters with the more detailed options below the Trace Preset dropdown list Trace tolerance Allows you to change the distance between the generated outline and the edge of the original bitmap Curve fit quality Allows you to change the accuracy of curve fitting in the generated outline Straighten angle Defines the angle between two lines less than which the autotracer will replace several lines with one line May generate c
174. n to create the Font and Full names If necessary you can edit the names later 93 94 Copyright Information The Copyright Information page of the Font Info dialog contains data about the font creators the font trademark name copyright owners etc and looks like this Font copyright information gt Created by Sophy Kozlova Creation year 200 Copyright Copyright c 2001 Sophy Kozlova All nights reserved Trademark Construct200 is a trademark of the Sophy Kozlova Notice Description On this page you can enter information about the creators of the font If you have created a new font you should enter your copyright notice here If you have edited an existing font that was not your creation you must not change the information contained on this page or you may violate copyright laws Created by Name of the company or person that created the font If you are creating a new font enter your name or the name of your company here Creation year Year when the font was created This is used by BitFonter to automatically fill in the Copyright field Copyright Copyright message Must include sign or the word Copyright the name of the company or person that owns the copyright and the copyright year Trademark Font trademark used to save font s trademark notice Notice Additional information that you want to include in Font Info Description Build Copyright Press this button to create the
175. ncil is the simplest drawing tool in BitFonter It draws a one pixel wide line and can be used to set or clear individual pixels The Pencil tool can be used at any zoom but it is easier to use it at zoom levels of 5 1 or greater To set or clear an individual pixel on a glyph move the mouse cursor onto the pixel you want to edit and click on the mouse button This sets a pixel to the current color Another click on the same pixel clears the pixel To draw a thin line with the current color press the mouse button and drag the mouse You can draw a straight line by clicking on a beginning node and then clicking on sequential final nodes while holding down the SHIFT key Press the Esc key on the keyboard while drawing to abort drawing a line 257 258 Brush Tool The Brush is a wide version of pencil You select the brush shape in the Brushes panel Diameter is the brush shape diameter in pixels The greater the value the wider the brush shape will be Hardness is the degree of diffusion of the brush edges The greater the value the more diffused the brush edges will be This option obviously does nothing in a plain black amp white glyph Roundness is the form of the brush shape If the roundness is zero the brush is rectangular The higher the value the rounder the brush Here are examples of brushes of different roundness Angle defines the angle of the brush tip It is applicable only to non round brushes If the ang
176. nd exactly with a monitor s pixel When you view a regular outline font on the screen you see the result of the system rasterizer s work The rasterizer is the program that converts glyph outline information into pixel information for the monitor I e it tells the monitor which pixels to turn on and off to make the glyph s image on the screen Regular fonts will look fine at medium to large sizes 12 points and larger especially if font smoothing anti aliasing is switched on but as the font size gets smaller the anti aliasing blurs the glyph making it fuzzy and hard to read a ABO DEPSH WK LA KO RST UY Z eRe Eeri N e 10 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPORSTUVWXYZ 1234567 R90 HSM A 12 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPORSTUVWAY2 1234567890 Soh 217 Bitmap and outline pixel fonts are designed so that they look good at small sizes without needing font smoothing H RECDEFLHIJELMNANOPORSTUP We 1234S 1S ao hE _ G ABCOEF GH IJKLMNOPQRST Uy ee 12S Sb Pode DELL s i ABCDEF GHIIKLAROPORS TU wate 1236630 A OF _ Pixel fonts are widely used for web page design especially in Macromedia Flash In all other respects they are typical outline fonts that can be installed on a Windows or Mac OS system without any additional software Generally pixel fonts can be created in any font format TrueType OpenType TT Type 1 OpenType PS but the TrueType OpenType TT font format is more common Pixel fonts are always created at some specified si
177. ner to scan the image and save it into one of the formats that BitFonter can read If you can place the image onto the Clipboard using the Copy command in any image editing application you can get it from there and paste it into BitFonter as a new image If you do not have a prepared font image but are ready to create it using the mouse or a digitizing tablet you can start from a clear image and draw it using BitFonter s image editing tools In any case to get the best results we recommend that you prepare the source image with the following characteristics in mind 1 Ifyou scan hard copy the paper must be white and smooth 2 Images of glyphs and symbols must have high contrast 3 Ifyou are preparing a font of handwriting do not choose a thin pen A standard 0 7mm pen is best 4 Try to align the glyphs on a baseline when drawing on paper or in the image ghijklm ghiklm abcdef abcdef Wrong Right 6 Do not overlap glyphs BitFonter includes advanced algorithms that can separate glyphs but not when glyphs touch each other Overlapping or touching characters will be treated as just one character The manual separation of overlapping characters is possible but is very time consuming 7 Consider the resolution of the destination font The source image resolution must be the same or greater than the font resolution If the image file resolution is not high enough for your font you will have to increase the size of
178. new name in the Font Info dialog Shadow for example 157 158 Move to the other window with the original imported in step 1 font and make it current Select the Colorize command in the Tools gt Filter menu Choose Picture in the Assign Mode dropdown list and click on the Browse button to locate the source image Find the water png image in the Patterns folder in the BitFonter folder and select it as the colorizing pattern Choose the Whole item in the Alignment dropdown list check the Apply to all glyphs in the font option and click on the OK button Now you have the foreground colorized font You can give it a new name in the Font Info dialog Water for example Select the Blend command in the Font menu Select the blurred font as background and the colorized font as foreground Enter 4 as the horizontal and vertical shift values set foreground opacity to 255 select Normal in the Blend Mode dropdown list and New Font as the destination font Click on the OK button when finished Voila There s your patterned and shadowed font in the new Font window Using the Window Menu The easiest way to manage open windows is to use the Window menu It contains some very useful commands Cascade Organizes open windows in a cascade like in the image above Tile horizontally Organizes windows like tiles on a rectangular floor Tile vertically Windows Opens the windows management dialog box To open the
179. ns oe oo20 Oo TA 0023 oor oo25 OOz6 DOs i028 i024 Ooze TA TA O020 OO2E DORF BaH Hoani aas OOO 0031 0032 0033 0034 Miksi O03 OOS 0035 0039 003A 0038 003C 0030 DOSE 0O03F wiy iig MEN 004A 0046 004C 0040 004E 004F m MS Windows 1252 Western 8 126 There is a Metrics frame to the left which is identical to the Metrics window that will be described in the Editing Metrics on page 307 chapter You can drag and drop glyphs there and view them while editing glyphs You can type text in the Metrics frame with existing glyphs but make sure you have clicked on in the frame before you start typing You can change the zoom mode and strings of text in the Metrics frame Double clicking on the glyph here will open its Glyph window and let you edit the glyph Also the Glyph frame becomes visible above the character set table If it is not visible make it visible with the second small control near the first one that you used to open the sample panel vigl gt OOSF A This part of the window almost completely duplicates the Glyph window that will be described in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter If this frame is active the drawing tools become available and you can edit an individual glyph of the font You can open and close Font window frames by double clicking on the described controls Of course you can resize the whole Font window by dragging its size box at the righ
180. ns panel Ta selects the Transparent mode ga selects the Opaque mode Copying and Pasting a Selection To copy a selection into another application or into another glyph use the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit menu With the Copy command you can place a copy of the selection area onto the Clipboard making it available to any application that can read bitmap images The Paste command reads bitmap images from the Clipboard and places them into the current glyph s editing field See also the Bitmap Pasting on page 269 section The Cut command combines Copy and Delete operations so a copy of the selection is placed on the Clipboard but the selection is deleted Deleting a Selection To remove a selection from the glyph image select the Delete command in the Edit menu or press the DEL key on the keyboard The selection will be removed and filled with white or transparency color do not forget you can use the Undo command if you want to undo the deletion Transforming a Selection You can use the commands from the Tools menu to transform a selected area of a glyph If you have a selection within the glyph transformation commands are applied to the selection If there is no selection the commands are applied to the entire glyph or image in the Image window All these operations will be discussed later in the Operations on page 270 section 251 Drawing You can draw a new glyph or modify an existing one
181. nt A Font window containing all the font glyphs will open G Font Construct200 Plain 200 Pixels Millions Colors C samples Con PB 0020 oo21 0022 o0 3 0024 oo 5 0026 0o27 ooze 0029 OOZA 0028 ooze 0020 002E 002F OOOO BON D00 0S1 ODS 0033 0034 0035 0036 OOF 0038 0039 OOSA OOSA OOSC 0020 OOSE OOSF SA aannononndnnn oos0 0051 00S 0053 O054 005S Mei OOS 00s 0S9 003A OOSB OSC 00S0 OOSE iiei O81 poez 0063 p e4 006s 00eg OOF oies ooga 006A 00GB D060 006E 00GF 006c DODUDUUU igan size aa ad Unicode Fages mode gt MS Windows 1252 Western A aes The Font window consists of the footer at the bottom and a glyph table where a single cell represents each glyph Each cell has a caption at the top that shows some identification information it may be the name of the glyph its code in various forms or some other glyph information Tip You can change the font size used to display the caption in Tools gt Options gt Font Window gt View 115 116 Font window footer There are several buttons and dropdown lists in the footer of the Font window Size oo Defines zoom mode for a table of glyphs Decreases the zoom mode by one step Increases the zoom mode by one step l Title dropdown list that defines the caption view mode for glyph cells Mode dropdown list that defines
182. nter Options on page 44 section When you are finished defining cell placement click on the OK button If New Font has been selected as the destination the New Font dialog will be displayed like when you select the New Font command in the File menu Define the main font characteristics as we described in the Creating a New Font on page 162 section and click on Create All the cells that you defined for placement into your new font will take their places in the new Font window Tip There is another way to get glyph shapes placed into a font You can drag and drop the cells from the image window right into the Font window 197 198 Importing a Font It is possible to import fonts from many different sources into BitFonter readable format Importing a font means rasterizing an outline font or getting existing bitmaps and always creates a new font If you have FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool you can easily import create bitmap fonts right from the outline font opened by these applications To quickly create a font based on one of the fonts installed in your system use the open installed font feature Importing from an Installed Font To import an installed font select the File gt Open Installed command The Open Installed Font dialog will appear Open Installed Font Select the font Font properties Font Name Point sizes 21 2 Agency FB Resolution 7
183. nts Alignment Don t align iz C Apple to all glyphs in the font Set the following parameters of the operation Glyph Width Use this option if you want to increase or decrease the glyph advance width the distance between its left and right margins or set it to some particular value Alignment Use this option to align the glyph to the left or right margin or to center it within the glyph advance width You can view the preview of the glyph with its margins in the preview field of the dialog To see the original margins position press and hold down the CTRL key Switch on the Apply to all glyphs in the font option if you want the operation be applied to all glyphs Click on the OK button to apply the changes when finished or Cancel to abort the operation You can use the Undo command to undo this operation 327 328 Editing Kerning This section discusses font kerning In BitFonter you can modify kerning either manually or automatically To modify kerning info switch the Metrics window to the Kerning mode click on the Kerning Mode button in the Metrics Tools toolbar or select the Kerning command in mode selection menu on the bottom command area Preview Text wf Metrics kerning You can also right click on the editing area and select the Kerning Mode command in the context menu To make the kerning editing controls visible you must select the second glyph of the pair th
184. o overlap the black areas of the underlying image You can change these options at any time not just before making a selection The following selecting mode buttons oji allow you to modify the selected area i e to add or to subtract from the selection Any selection action can be undone by the Undo command of the Edit menu 245 246 Select Tool Use the Select tool to outline a rectangular area and display it with a grid To select a rectangular part of the glyph r 4 1 Choose the Select tool in the Tools toolbar 2 Put the mouse cursor on one of the corners of the rectangle that you want to select 3 Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse cursor to the opposite corner of the area that you want to select 4 Release the left mouse button Tip To temporarily switch to the Select tool while another tool is active hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard To add to the selection hold down the Suirtr key or use the Add to selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be added to the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down the Axr key or use the Subtract from selection button in the Tool Options panel The cursor will change to The new selection will be subtracted from the previously selected area To subtract from the selection hold down ALT SHIFT or use the Intersect with selection button in the Tool Opt
185. onstruct72 Plain 72 Pixels will open G Font Cons ust200 Pl Plain 204 200 Re Bios il Millions Colors 0 Samples Con ooo 0002 foa O e o piace bias boo d et 0062 DOR Obed 006S 0087 cose OOo Odi D088 006C OSD OEE OOF size laa ja Unicode w J Fagesmode MacOS Roman The Font window containing all the characters glyphs of the particular font Here you can edit any glyph create new ones cut copy or paste glyphs view glyph information etc 27 Editing fonts S Let s for example draw a plus glyph Select the Find Glyph command in the Edit menu and type hyphen in the open Find Glyph window Find Glyph Name O begins with with 9 s hy a hyphen 002D Click on the OK button and then double click on the selected glyph in the Font window or simply press ENTER The Glyph window will open allowing you to work with the hyphen glyph iim PITEEPTEt Tati 100 PETET ma SAET maT Use the Zoom In and Zoom Out icons at the bottom of the window or commands from the View menu to enlarge or reduce the glyph view 7 Choose the Edit gt Select All command Then Edit gt Copy 8 Close the Glyph window And double click on the plus glyph in the Font window The Glyph window will open again allowing you to work with the plus glyph It is still empty i Glyph plus 002B from Construct2 Sei Joop nasa oan ea SS RS rates
186. ont family in the project C Creates a new font and adds it to the project Font entries in the project and their icons Every project is organized as a list of font families represented by a font family icon 8 in the Project window Usually a project contains one family but may contain as many as you want Every font family contains a set of font styles represented each by its own icon These styles are Plain Bold Italic and Bold Italic Since every font has a style characteristic every font of the project resides in its style folder Black amp white bitmap fonts have a icon Outline fonts are represented by a icon Bitmap fonts checked as Embedded also have a icon The embedded fonts are discussed in the Saving a Font Project on page 81 section later in the chapter Color fonts naturally have color icons fonts with 256 and fewer colors or levels of gray have a Al or kal icon fonts with thousands or millions of colors have a icon Note In a Project window bitmap fonts are named by their pixel size not the point size 71 72 Browsing the project font set To view the contents of the font family click on the triangle to the left of the family icon You will see the list of font styles in the family Click on the triangle to the left of the style icon to see the font of the particular style To select any font click on its icon or name To select multiple fonts click on their icons or names while holding
187. onter can save fonts in Hewlett Packard Soft Font format sfp for use in the LaserJet family of printers Only black amp white fonts can be saved in this format The font cannot have glyphs with duplicate or negative codes and the glyphs names and Unicode codepoints are not written in this format The font cannot have more than 256 glyphs and cannot have glyphs larger than 256x256 pixels When saving in HP Soft Font format the default export options are used These options are Format Choose the type of printer for which your font is generated Font type Choose among 7 bit 8 bit and PC 8 options Orientation Select Portrait or Landscape orientation whichever the font is designed for Use the Export gt HP Soft Font page of the Tools gt Options dialog to change HP Soft Font export options if needed Saving in Windows Font Format BitFonter can save fonts in Windows Font format fnt for use on Windows 3 1 and later Only black amp white fonts may be saved in this format The font cannot have glyphs with duplicate codes negative codes or without codes The glyphs names and Unicode codepoints can be written in this format but are not necessary The font cannot have more than 256 glyphs and cannot have glyphs larger than 256x256 pixels 207 208 Saving in AFP Font Resource BitFonter can save fonts in Advanced Function Printing AFP resource format Only black amp white bitmap fonts may be saved in this format The
188. oom out buttons The Tools toolbar becomes active when the Image window is open Often the size of the image that you open is larger than the size of the window where it appears You must have a method to view the whole image You also may need to see the details of an image in a magnified mode Do this using the Zoom dropdown list and Zoom buttons located at the bottom of the window To scroll the image area use horizontal and vertical scroll bars or the Hand tool by pressing the SpaceBar key on the keyboard To switch on off the rulers use the Rulers command in the View menu Some commands available in the Image window can be selected from the context menu To open the context menu right click anywhere in the Image window Editing an Image If you want to modify a scanned or imported image or if you created an empty image and want to draw something you can use BitFonter s glyph editing tools and operations While the Image window is active the selecting and drawing tools are available in the Tools toolbar mA FO As the techniques of editing the image in the Image window are almost the same as editing the glyph in the Glyph window we will not discuss them here in this chapter You will find the full detailed description of all available image editing tools and operations in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter 173 174 Changing Image Colors While the Image window is open you can change the image color mod
189. ords or paragraphs of text using any font installed on your system This feature is very useful because it allows you to use any font as an original for further modifications You can draw letters with any color from the Color Palette except white To draw a string of text 1 Select the Text tool in the Tools toolbar and click on in the glyph editing field 2 You will see a panel for entering text Text Tool 4rial at 13 pixels In this panel you can enter a line of text and choose the font that will be used to draw the text 3 Click on the Font button at the lower left corner to select the font You will see the font selection dialog box in which you can select the typeface style and point size of the text that you are drawing Ai Font Font style bral Regular as Al een iE z 1 rl k Arnal Black Italie Cancel F Arial Narrow Bold F Arial Rounded MT Bol Bold Italic Tr Arial Unicode MS F Baskerville Old Face Tp Bauhaus 93 SS Sample AaBbYyZz Western w This i an OpenType font This same font will be used on both your printer and your screen 4 Make your selection and click on the OK button 5 Type the letter or text that you want to draw in the glyph window You will see the text objects containing the text immediately appear in the glyph window while you are typing
190. ors or levels of gray in your font There are three variants for grayscale fonts 4 16 or 256 gray levels and five choices for color fonts 4 16 256 thousands or millions of colors Color Mode Color Colors 4 2 bits _ 4 2 bits Color Table JE 4 bits 256 8 bits k Thousands 16 Dra Millions 32 bits X Note Of course 16 and 32 bit color tables include grays as separate colors After you have described your new font click on the Create button Or click on the Cancel button to abort the process If you press Create a new Font window will open with all the glyph cells gray this means that no glyphs exist yet in the font You can create new glyphs by drawing them pasting them from the Clipboard or dragging them from other open fonts or images There is another way to create a font when you are working within a font project For example when you need to create another size or another style from an existing font Choose the font for transformation in the Project window drag it to another style by holding down the CTRL key to make a copy or duplicate the font with the Duplicate command from the Edit menu and make the appropriate transformations to the new copy of the font To change the font size open the font and use the Size Resolution command from the Font menu described in the Changing Font Size and or Resolution on page 149 section of the previous chapter To change the font color mode open the font an
191. ou do not have any of the listed applications installed you still can choose to export outlines into VFB file check the Export outline font into VFB file option 213 214 Exporting Outlines When exporting a font to an outline font editing application BitFonter performs several actions e Prepares glyphs for tracing e Traces glyphs in accordance with the tracing parameters e Prepares the font information that is needed for outline font generation e Finds and launches the outline font editing application e Transfers the glyphs outlines and font information to the outline font editing application To start the export procedure 1 Select the font or fonts in the Project window or select glyphs in the open Font window 2 Select the File gt Export gt Outline Font command If at least one glyph in your exported font has an outline layer BitFonter will show you the Export as Outline Font dialog asking what should be done with existing outlines Export as Outline Font G Trace outlines if they re missing O Always trace outlines Export existing outlines only Always apply these settings For current document IF this option is on hold down the Control key while choosing the menu command to open this dialog Cancel There are several radio buttons a check box and the Trace Options button in the dialog If some glyphs of the font have no outline layer you can tell BitFonter to create these outlin
192. ou use this option only if your font is very similar to the metrics file that you are importing Replace only those metrics records that are similar to the imported metrics The Allowed difference between metrics option controls the allowed difference These options are obvious What do you want to do with the kerning data Do nothing Completely replace kerning data in the current font Add imported kerning data to the current font Add new kerning pairs but autokern them Do not import kerning data from the metrics file Remove all existing kerning pairs and replace them with pairs imported from the metrics file Leave the existing kerning pairs unchanged but add new kerning pairs from the metrics file Import information about the glyphs that form each kerning pair in the metrics file and apply an autokerning algorithm to these pairs Select the appropriate options and click on OK to proceed or click on Cancel to abort the operation Saving Metrics Files Sometimes you may need to export all current metrics and kerning in a separate metrics file You can always do so by using the Metrics window Select the Metrics command in the File gt Export menu or the Export Metrics command in the Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window The standard Save File dialog box appears Select the destination format AFM or PFM and the destination directory Enter the file name and click on the Save button to save the metrics
193. our mind 145 Adding a Font to the Project You may want to combine similar or different fonts in projects for various reasons To add a font to the project 1 Open the project in a Project window 2 Open the font that you want to add in the Font window and select the Add to Project command in the Font menu A dialog asking your confirmation and showing a list of open projects will appear Add Fonts Add font s to projects C Test Fonts BF TEST FONTS symbole fon Font is embedded 3 Select the project name in the list and click on the OK button to add to the project or Cancel to abort To add a font with the OpenType SBIT embedding mark set check the Font is embedded option This will allow you to add a bitmap font with more than 255 glyphs If the Add to Project menu command is not available it means that there is no open project or the font is in the project already 146 Removing a Font from the Project You may need to remove one or more fonts from the project There are two ways of removing fonts 1 Ifthe Font window with the font you are removing is open select the Remove from Project command in the Font menu You will see the confirmation alert BitFonter 3 By pressing the Yes button vou will remove the Font 9 Pixels From the project C Test Fonts BF TEST FONTSIFONFNTIFREESETC FON This operation is not undoable Do you want to continue
194. ow Ctrl oe iii Select All Ctrl 4 amy Preview Mode IMi Metrics Mode AY Kerning Mode Open Font window Ctrl Preview mode context menu Text mode context menu Preview Mode Text Mode Metrics Mode tE ATH Preview Mode Text Mode AY Kerning Mode 2 Auto Metrics SF Auto kerning Metrics Sidebearing 2 Remove Kerning Metrics Width En Open Font Window Ctrl V Open Font window Ctrl Metrics mode context menu Kerning mode context menu 313 314 Selecting a String for Previewing or Editing To prepare text for editing you have the following options 1 Select one of the predefined sample strings in the sample text dropdown list SE Cabe 123 hamburgeyons HAMBURGEVONS SHE YERSE ASHORE abodefighijklm nopqrstuvi ys 1234567890 2 Enter the Text mode and type sample text directly in the Editing area 3 Append glyphs to the Editing area by dragging them from other windows Selecting a Predefined Sample String Use the sample text dropdown list to select the string for editing oy ABCabc1 23 harmburgeyons noporstuywsy2 1234567890 You can also use the CrrL PGUP and Crr_ PGDn keyboard shortcuts to navigate the list of sample strings up and down Customizing the Sample String List If you click on the button L to the right of the sample list control you will see the following dialog box Load Text Contents of the preview text combo box ABCabei 23 he quick br
195. own fox jumps over the lazy dog BCDEF GH nkKLMNCINPORSTLUVASYZ 4 hamburgevons HAMXMBURGEVONS SHE VERSE ASHORE 45 AGREES RUNAS GORGEOUS MAME HAHHAACHAQDAD HEHHEHE OQET HHH OHT OG G HYzehg5 ABCDEFGH TIKLMNOPO RSTU abcdefghijklm As you can see there is a big multiline editing field that contains all the strings in the sample list Change it as you want or click on the button to fill it from a text file Type n to force a line break in the sample text Enter some text close the dialog box and then use the sample string scroll buttons or the CTRL PGUP and CTRL PGDN keyboard shortcuts to see how it works 315 316 Entering Text in Text Mode You may edit text in the editing area similarly to how you do it in any text editor Activate the Text tool on the Metrics Tools toolbar Mi Ay You can also select Text in the Mode Selection menu in the local command area docked to the bottom Preview Metrics kerning After the tool is activated you will see a caret cursor in the editing area Start typing text You may also drag select text and use the Edit gt Copy and Edit gt Paste commands to move blocks of text inside the Metrics window or from external applications es PEITA Se Te oe ed ee N Em St AFi Te mE FP Eo at ee im Ol se E TMO D Ea LE THI After the tool is activated you will see a iragaite in the editing area Start typing text The
196. perating systems and applications encode text using the international Unicode Standard which assigns a unique numerical codepoint to every character used in writing by humankind In Unicode A always uses the code U 00C4 which is hexadecimal for 196 Whenever the text is printed or displayed on the screen the computer looks inside the font file and finds out which character codes correspond to which glyphs so that the series of abstract character codes can be visualized using some specific images of letters digits and other symbols Every font includes a mapping of character codes to glyphs this mapping is called the font encoding sometimes encoding vector or in this manual just encoding These days most font formats use the Unicode Standard as basis for their font encoding but it is possible to produce fonts that are encoded using the older codepages It is even possible to have several different encoding vectors in one font so that both old and modern applications can work with it Font Family A font family is a collection of fonts representing typeface designs that share the same design idea but differ in width inclination upright or italic stroke thickness weight stroke endings serif or sanserif or in some other stylistic aspects For example Times Bold Italic is a typeface that belongs to the Times family timesbi ttf Times Bollta otf and tmbi pfb are all d
197. perating systems BitFonter includes descriptions for more than 200 codepages almost all the known Windows OS 2 MS DOS Mac OS codepages and many additional like Russian KOI 8 and NeXT Step codepages 123 124 In BitFonter a codepage is a filter through which you can look at your font from the environment point of view You may include many Unicode characters in your font and see how it would work for example if it were installed in OS 2 with the Arabic language selected This gives you the opportunity to easily create fonts that are properly encoded and will always work correctly To switch the Font window to the Codepage editing mode choose the Codepage command in the Mode dropdown list in the Font window footer To change a codepage in the Font window use the Encoding dropdown list to the right You will see the Font window change All the characters that are in the codepage will appear with yellow captions All other characters have gray captions and reside below Select the MS Windows 1252 Western codepage for example and you will see how your font will look in the Windows standard codepage Note The Codepage editing mode is the default in BitFonter You can change the default editing mode on the Font Window gt View page of the Tools gt Options dialog Note The codepage selected in the Encoding dropdown list does not affect the codepage that is written to the font Be sure the right codepage is selected in Font Info
198. ph window is a window for glyph shape drawing and editing You can easily open the Glyph window by double clicking on a glyph cell in the Font window Double clicking on a non existent glyph gray empty cell creates a glyph and opens an empty Glyph window for drawing If the Open glyph in new window option on the Font Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog is checked see the Font Window Options on page 48 section the glyph will be opened in a separate Glyph window If the Open glyph in new window option is unchecked the glyph will be opened in the existing Glyph window Holding down the CTRL key when double clicking reverts the meaning of this option If the Double click creates an empty glyph first option on the Font Window page of the Tools gt Options dialog is unchecked see the Font Window Options on page 48 section double clicking on a non existent glyph creates a space for a glyph and opens an empty Glyph window for drawing Otherwise you need two double clicks to create the glyph and to open it in the Glyph window The Glyph window is a little more complex than the windows that we discussed earlier E Glyph A 0041 from 16 Pixels a BX Current Color box Color Palette Top and Left rulers Editing field Lock Unlock button Zoom in and Zoom out buttons Zoom dropdown list The Glyph window consists of the following parts and controls e Editing Field e Top and left rulers e Color Palette e Curr
199. porting a Font There are four types of export features in BitFonter export to outline font export to pixel font export to a single image and export to a set of images We do not discuss saving fonts in different font formats here Saving fonts was discussed in the previous section on page 203 Outline Font Editor As you know BitFonter has no outline font editing features so you need another program to accept outline glyphs from BitFonter We call programs that can accept data from BitFonter or other sources Outline font editing Applications FontLab 4 x FontLab Studio 5 AsiaFont Studio and TypeTool 2 are programs that can establish communication with BitFonter accept data in outline and bitmap form and report to BitFonter the results of the data transfer so it can react properly Please note that you must have any of the listed applications installed together with BitFonter in order to create outline fonts If you do you can customize the communication options on the Outline font editor page of the Tools gt Options dialog Outline font editor Trace outlines If no outlines ka Ask me every time Fontlab outline font editor such as AsiaFont Studio FontLab Studio or Type ool i required if you want to export scalable fonts Export outline font into WFE file See the detailed description of these options in the Outline Font Editor on page 62 section of the BitFonter User Interface on page 13 chapter If y
200. pted with the new project creation dialog During the import operation all glyphs of the source outline font are rasterized and placed into the new bitmap fonts The newly created fonts open in their own Font windows or appear in the new Project window In the first case glyph outlines if any are kept in memory See the Outline Layer on page 233 and the Outline Operations on page 300 sections to learn more about outlines in BitFonter Importing from Outlines To import from an outline font opened in FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool 1 Select the Outline Font command in the File gt Import menu and you will see the following dialog Available fonts Font properties Adobe Garamond Pro Point sizes 24 64 pt Resolution 72 x Proportional Color mode Black amp White ABCabc ABCabe Import with outlines cance _ If the Available Fonts list is empty there are no fonts open Click on Cancel switch to the outline font editing application open the font that you want to import and return to BitFonter The Available Fonts list now contains all the open fonts Select one to import Enter the desired size s in points and the resolution in pixels as when creating a new font Select the Color mode number of colors and the Color table if needed as you do when creating a new font 201 202 4 The Import as one project option allows you to co
201. r FFFF Unicode Encoding mode The Font window editing mode which is used here as a font export Use table Reencode Default Char setting Use this and the next field to define the font export encoding The encoding table of the font based on the Font window editing mode The contents of this dropdown list depend on the selection in the Encoding mode dropdown list above This button runs the automatic font reencoding procedure See the Reencoding Glyphs Automatically on page 140 section for details The Unicode codepoint of the font default character The default character is used in text for showing codes not represented in the font character table by any glyph 103 Additional Encoding Info The Additional Encoding Info page includes some more rarely used encoding information Additional encoding info gt Mac Script FOND ID MS Charset MS Windows 1252 Latin 1 w aol Emeek l Undefined Mac Script The scripting system for Macintosh fonts The selection in the Script dropdown list automatically sets the FOND ID It is of no use if you are working with a non Macintosh font FOND ID The identifier of the FOND resource in a Macintosh font It is set manually or automatically when you select the script It is of no use if you are working with a non Macintosh font MS Charset Microsoft Windows Character Set must be defined if you are working with a Windows font PCL Charset If you are going to generate a HP Sof
202. r Remember that user locations always override default locations Mouse Click the mouse on some object Right click on some object Ctrl click on something Drag some object Context Menu Position the mouse cursor on the object and click the left mouse button Position the cursor on the object and click the right mouse button Position the cursor over something hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and click the left mouse button Position the cursor on the object press and hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse to move the object without releasing the mouse button while moving Release the mouse button when you re done Most windows and panels in BitFonter have context menus associated with them These menus contain the most useful or most frequently used operations that the user may have to perform in a particular situation To open the context menu right click see the section Mouse on page 21 on an empty area in the window or panel or on a particular object e g a glyph or a selection or a node Remember that the context menu will change depending on the context i e right clicking on a particular object will often display a different context menu than right clicking on an empty area of a window 21 22 Some More Definitions AAT Apple Advanced Typography fonts the TrueType fonts especially designed for use with ATSUI Like OpenType fonts these fonts have special features such as
203. r than its black amp white twin The PhotoFont format accepts glyphs names codes and Unicode codepoints but not all of them are necessary Fonts in the PhotoFont format can be kerned All these features make this format useful for incorporating images in font design Note that this format is of a project type in BitFonter Saving as a FontLab Template The FontLab Studio 5 Template font dat is used in Fontlab applications including BitFonter itself for showing a font chart template in the Font window This special template font usually contains several thousand characters that cover almost all Unicode codepoints A font in this format may contain only black amp white glyphs with their Unicode codepoints assigned The indexes cannot have duplicates The size of the glyph s bounding box must be 24x24 pixels The glyphs names and codes as well as other possible font information are not needed and not written in this special format The template dat file that is used in Fontlab applications is installed in the Shared default data Data folder 209 210 Saving Color Fonts When saving a font in a specified format you should know the restrictions mentioned in the previous section This section summarizes those restrictions concerning the color fonts 1 Color fonts with 4 16 or 256 colors may be saved as a BDF Font file or PhotoFont only 2 Grayscale fonts with 4 16 or 256 levels of gray may be saved as a BDF Fon
204. re either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation Other brand or product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders THIS PUBLICATION AND THE INFORMATION HEREIN IS FURNISHED AS IS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A COMMITMENT BY FONTLAB LTD FONTLAB LTD ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY ERRORS OR INACCURACIES MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EXPRESS IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WITH RESPECT TO THIS PUBLICATION AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSES AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS This document was created by Fontlab Lid http www fontlab com Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION About this Manual System Requirements Installation Notes BITFONTER USER INTERFACE Basic Terms Character Glyph Font Encoding Font Family Glyph name Menu Folders and Paths Mouse Context Menu Some More Definitions Getting Started Opening fonts Editing fonts Customizing BitFonter s User Interface Customizing Toolbars Customizing Menus Customizing Individual Items Converting a Menu to a Toolbar Customization of the Keyboard Links to External Programs Faster Method to Customize Commands BitFonter Options General Options Font Window Options Glyp
205. re copied directly to an output device screen or printer One dot of such a font was represented by one bit of memory Therefore every glyph looked like a bit map Later fonts had color characteristics and glyphs had color depth or bit depth But they are called bitmap fonts too BitFonter allows you to create or edit not only black amp white fonts but also color ones Color fonts have glyphs with pixels taking more computer space than 1 bit This includes grayscale fonts BitFonter allows you to create 2 4 8 16 and 32 bit fonts with 4 16 256 32768 or 16 7 million colors respectively An Outline font consists of mathematically defined curves and lines and can be scaled to any size without losing its quality PostScript Type 1 TrueType and OpenType are outline font formats BitFonter allows you to edit bitmap fonts only If you are going to edit outline fonts you must use Fontlab Studio http www fontlab com studio Fontographer http www fontlab com fontographer TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool or similar applications Let s start using BitFonter Opening fonts i Double click on BitFonter s icon E run the program Choose the Open command in the File menu Locate the font named Construct72 in the standard File Open dialog it is located in the Samples folder in C Program Files FontLab BitFonter3 folder or whatever folder you installed BitFonter in and click on Open The Font window named C
206. re scalable so that they can reproduce the glyph image in any size Font A typeface is a particular artwork of an alphabet a set of glyphs that are designed with a common graphic idea in mind A font is a digital file or a few files that holds a digital representation of a typeface A font contains an organized collection of glyphs along with some additional information that defines the spatial relations between the glyphs metrics and kerning as well as some central parameters such as names copyright information linespacing values etc font header 15 16 Encoding When the user presses a key or a combination of keys on a keyboard a numerical code is stored in the computer s memory This code represents a character an abstract unit of writing A series of such codes forms a string of text Every keystroke stands for a different character so every character uses a different numerical code also called codepoint Operating systems and applications need to know which number represents what character otherwise a spelling checker couldn t recognize words that you re typing So each operating system and each application uses a list that maps characters to numerical codes This mapping is called text encoding In the past different computers used different text encoding standards so called codepages so that the letter A was stored as number 142 in one program and as number 128 in another program Modern o
207. reful to check the effect after every use Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation X Note This operation does not work with black amp white fonts 291 292 Enhance The Enhance command tries to detect unwanted pixels and remove them It is similar to the Reduce Noise command described later as it reduces noise thus improving the glyph s appearance To enhance the glyph select the Enhance command in the Tools gt Filter menu The Enhance dialog will appear Enhance Level poo iad Apply to all glyphs in the font Use the Level slider to define the degree of unwanted pixels to remove This filter is good for scanned black amp white fonts too See also the examples of the Custom Filter on page 297 usage described later You will see the preview of the glyph in the preview field of the dialog To see the original glyph press and hold down the Crri key You can use this command several times but be careful to check the effect after every use Before After Use the Undo command to undo the operation Reduce Noise The Reduce Noise operation makes the glyph less noisy To apply this operation select the Tools gt Filter gt Reduce Noise command The Reduce Noise dialog will appear Reduce Noise Threshold by J acity Area izd Apply to all glyphs in the font Enter the Threshold method amount and the Area value in square pixels to define the best transformation
208. rent name and or in another format you should use the File gt Save As command When you select this command the standard Save As dialog appears You can select the project format in the Save as type dropdown list located at the bottom of the dialog Enter the project name and select the destination where you want to save your work After the Save As command is successfully performed the Project window will now contain this new font project with its new name location To save a copy of the open project with a different name and or in another format use the File gt Save A Copy As command The difference between this command and the Save As command is that the original project remains open in its window BitFonter automatically verifies projects before saving them The project will not be saved if any error is found So you have to fix any errors before saving the project again You can save your project in the following formats 1 BitFonter native project format fnp extension Windows font set fon extension Windows OpenType SBIT font ttf extension Palm OS font pdb extension SS SS SS PY PhotoFont font phf extension 81 82 Saving BitFonter s Project File A project file in native BitFonter format fnp extension never contains a font itself It keeps only aliases of the real font files and their properties Fonts themselves are stored in separate files on the disk So the result of saving in this special form
209. s technique allows you to easily create differently customized versions of one original font Be careful using the two different Duplicate commands from the Edit and the Font menus The Duplicate command from the Edit menu duplicates fonts right in the project placing them into the project You need not save such duplicates separately The Duplicate command from the Font menu duplicates an open font in memory only In this case you will need to save it later in an appropriate format Changing Font Size and or Resolution Sometimes you may need to change the point size of your font or even the font resolution You can do this in two ways The first way is to change the size of all the glyphs in the font with the help of the Scale operation see the Operations on page 270 section in the Editing Glyphs on page 225 chapter and then change the font information in the Font Info dialog see the Editing Font Properties on page 90 section But this is not the best and the easiest way it is better to use the second way the special command in the Font menu Once you decide to change the font size or resolution open the font and select the Size Resolution command in the Font menu The Change Size Resolution dialog will appear Change Size Resolution Point Size 200 point Linked Pixel Size 200 pixels Resolution 72 X ze v Proportional Resample Simple w Enter the new size in points or in pixels If the Link
210. s like this Font point and pixel size gt Pixel size PPM pixels Font resolution 7 p2 e Proportional Lock resolution Point size points There are a several metric fields on this page Pixel size This is the point size in pixels calculated from the font resolution pixels Resolution The horizontal and vertical font resolution in pixels per inch 72 ppi is usual for Macintosh screen fonts Point size This is the designed font size in points It is calculated from the points Pixel size and Resolution When checked the Lock resolution option locks the font resolution making the Point size field recalculated while you change the Pixel size field and vice versa 97 98 Key Dimensions The Key Dimensions page contains the most important font metrics information including its vertical metrics Most important font dimensions Ascender 1 40 Jescender 42 Line ap Caps height fi P Recalculate Italic angle Underline height i a Thickness fi Font BBos 12 27 149 141 There are a several metric fields and a preview panel on this page Ascender Descender LineGap Caps height x height Italic angle Underline Thickness Position of the font s ascender line in pixels Usually this is the position of the top line of the lowercase b glyph Position of the font s descender line in pixels Usually this is the position of the bottom line of
211. shes panel click on the brush in the list to select it define the brush s shape at the bottom and then click on the Y button in the panel The new parameters will be applied to the currently selected brush Tablet Options If you have a digitizing tablet connected to your PC you may need to set up the tablet options Click on the button in the Tool Options panel to bring up the following Tablet Options dialog Tablet options Pen pressure iz Brush hardness Brush opacity You can customize the behavior of your digital pen in this dialog Check Size Hardness and Opacity options in an appropriate combination to define the results of pressing the digital pen Eraser Tool The Eraser tool may be used to clear portions of the image As with the brush tool you may set diameter roundness angle and hardness of the eraser in the Brushes panel Tablet options affect the Eraser tool as well Of course you can press the Esc key to abort the erasing process Fill Tool The Fill tool is used to fill areas filled with one color It works similarly to the Magic Wand tool To fill an area filled with one color with the current color using the Fill tool 1 Select the Fill tool in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette 2 Move the mouse cursor to the area you wish to fill 3 Click the left mouse button to fill this area with the current color To fill a selection with the current color use the Edit gt
212. standard Copyright record based and Trademark on the Created by and Creation Year fields records To automatically generate the Copyright and Trademark fields using information from the Created by and Creation Year fields click on the Build Copyright and Trademark records button 95 96 Designer Information The Designer Information page of the Font Info dialog contains data about the font designer and looks like this Information about font designer gt Verge O This page stores information about the font s designer Do not modify this data if you open an existing font to modify for personal use Designer Name of font designer Designer URL A new entry implemented only in TrueType OpenType TT format It is the WWW link to the designer of the font Vendor URL This TrueType only entry shows the WWW link to the site of the font vendor Use the buttons to the right of the Designer URL and Vendor URL controls to open pages in a Web browser window This requires an Internet connection Version Information The Version page of the Font Info dialog contains data about the font version Font version and revision information gt Complete Version record 001 000 Version Version of the font Revision Revision of the font Version and revision numbers are combined and build a complete version record Metrics and Dimensions The Metrics and Dimensions page contains the most general font metrics information and look
213. t also has two options Font bounding Glyph images will be stored as a rectangles of one size equal to box the size of the font bounding box the white rectangle in the Glyph window Glyph s Glyph images will be stored as rectangles of different sizes equal bounding box to each glyph s own bounding box This option does not affect in situation when glyphs are stored as one image The font bounding box is always used in such cases The Extra space parameter allows you to set the amount of space added at each side to the cropped glyph images 59 60 HP Soft Font export options gt Format Laserlet Onentation Portrait These options refer to saving HP Soft Fonts Format Choose the type of printer for which your font is generated Font type Choose among 7 bit 8 bit and PC 8 options Orientation Select Portrait or Landscape orientation whichever the font is designed for Image To Font Conversion The Image To Font Conversion page of the Tools gt Options dialog allows you to customize the process of creating fonts from bitmap images in BitFonter Image to font conversion Cells ordering C Hd Replace glyphs if already exist in the destination font Ignore glyph scaling set by the Scale tool Sidebearings Calculate automatically Use fixed Left jo Right LPM 1000 units Define the order of placement of the image cells horizontal or vertical When horizontal order is selected
214. t bottom corner 127 128 Customizing the Font Window To customize the view in the Font window select the Tools gt Options command in the Tools menu and refer to Font Window pages of the Tools gt Options dialog Font window Open glyph in new window Double click creates empty glyph first The Open glyph in new window option when checked tells BitFonter to open a double clicked on glyph in a new Glyph window If this option is off it is on by default all glyphs are opened in the same window for editing I e selecting a new glyph for editing will cause the glyph in the window to be replaced Pressing the CTRL key when double clicking on the glyph reverts the meaning of this option When Double click on creates empty glyph first is checked double clicking on an empty cell in the Font window creates the glyph but does not open it To open the glyph for editing you need to double click on it again By default this option is off and double clicking on an empty cell once creates and opens the glyph Chart cells Default font mode Codepage Caption content Unicode Caption font Arial Show glyoh template images in empty cells Show outline if no bitmap is present Enlarge glyphs in cells beyond their point size Max enlargement 2 1 Define the default font editing mode with the help of the Default font mode dropdown list Refer to the Font Window Options on page 48 section for more informa
215. t file or PhotoFont only In addition bitmap fonts with 4 or 16 levels of gray may be saved as an embedded part of a Microsoft Windows OpenType SBIT Font 3 Color fonts with thousands and millions of colors may be saved as BDF or PhotoFont files only Use the table below to quickly see the available font formats for each color mode Font Color Mode Bits per pixel Font file formats Black amp white l BDF Font HP Soft Font Microsoft Windows Font OpenType SBIT Font AFP Font Resource Palm OS Font PhotoFont FontLab Template 4 colors 2 BDF Font PhotoFont 4 levels of gray 2 BDF Font Microsoft Windows OpenType SBIT Font PhotoFont 16 colors 4 BDF Font PhotoFont 16 levels of gray 4 BDF Font Microsoft Windows OpenType SBIT Font PhotoFont 256 colors 8 BDF Font PhotoFont 256 levels of gray 8 BDF Font PhotoFont Thousands of colors 16 BDF Font PhotoFont Millions of colors and 32 BDF Font PhotoFont a transparency layer Actually the PhotoFont format is always true color 32 bits and it will be saved and opened as a 32 bits font regardless of the original font color mode As mentioned above BitFonter Binary Font bfb format is the most universal Anything that you can create and edit in BitFonter can be saved in this format That is why we suggest you save your intermediate results in this format When you are finished editing your font you can choose the final font format that you need 211 212 Ex
216. t font type in or select in the dropdown list the appropriate PCL Character Set When saving the font to a specific format only the corresponding information will be used and saved In other words you need not for example specify PCL Character Set if you are not going to save the font as a HP Soft font 104 Supported Codepages As you know fonts may have very many characters and support a lot of different languages To give the operating system information about what languages the current font can support you have to set the codepages information The part of this information is set on the Additional Encoding Info page Also for OpenType SBIT fonts you can identify all the supported codepages Supported codepages e Available codepages 1252 Latin 1 Al 4 1250 Latin 2 Easter Europe F gt 1257 Cyrillic 1253 Greek 1254 Turkish 1255 Hebrew 1256 Arabic 1257 windows Baltic gt 1258 Windows Yielnamese ord Thai J32 JIS Alapan 936 Simplitied Chinese 949 Korean Wansung S50 Traditional Chinese 1361 Korean Johab Macintosh Character Set L JIE ha lar oh There are two lists of codepages in the dialog the Available codepages to the left and the Supported codepages to the right To find out what a codepage is see the Codepages on page 123 section To add a codepage to the list of supported codepages select a codepage in the left list and click on the Add button To remove a codepage from the l
217. table and press the DELETE key on the keyboard The pair will be removed Of course you can use the Edit gt Undo command to get your pair back 329 330 Automatic Kerning Generation The easiest way to apply kerning to a font is to use BitFonter s autokerning algorithm This algorithm analyzes the shape of the glyphs in the given pairs and automatically kerns them You can control the pairs list that the autokerning algorithm processes as well as other parameters To define kerning automatically select the Auto Kerning command in the Glyph gt Metrics menu or in the context menu of the Metrics window The Automatic Kerning Generation dialog box appears Automatic Kerning Generation You want to generate kerning For fall pairs in the Following list Pairs list Standard How much white space do vou want ta leave between glyphs Medium y Custom 40 When do you want to keep existing kerning Never v 10 So Allow For positive kerning Maximum number of pairs to generate Smallest allowable kern absolute value This dialog box consists of two areas the Area of application and Parameters In the first area you select the pairs for which the algorithm will compute kerning values You can choose between Current pair only available if one of the pairs is selected in the editing area All Pairs in the current string or All Pairs in the following list BitFonter allows you to g
218. tant stages of the font design process Understanding these stages is half of success in making a font This chapter will show you how to create a new font from the very beginning import glyphs from other sources and generate a good final font product Creating a New Font To create a new empty font without any glyphs select the Font command from the File gt New menu or click on the E button on the Standard toolbar if available Another way is to select the Create New Project Font command in the Project menu while the project window is open The New Font dialog will be displayed New Font General information Family name Untitled Style Plain i v Encoding MS Windows 1252 Wester ANSI Spacing Proportional Dimensions Point Size 24 point es Linked Pixel Size 24 pixels Resolution pe Proportional Ascender he pinels Descent 4 piels Colors and grays Color Mode Color Colors 4 bis Color T able Four Colors Here you define the main characteristics of the font that you will create 162 Give your font a name by typing it in the Family Name text box Select the style for your font in the Style dropdown list The Spacing dropdown list defines the type of font from the point of view of the glyph advance width Select Proportional spacing if you are going to create a common font with varying glyph widths or Monospaced spacing for a font with eq
219. the characters in the source image or increase the resolution of your scan To scan an image from within BitFonter Place the paper with your image into the scanner Select the Select Source command in the File gt Import menu Select the scanner in the dialog that appears Select the Acquire command in the File gt Import menu ws ae ee a Follow the scanner dependent scanning dialog to scan the image 167 168 Importing an Image If you have scanned your image or prepared it with an image editing application you must save it in a format that BitFonter can open BitFonter supports black amp white and color images in TIFF JPEG BMP or PNG format To open an image in BitFonter select the Open command in the File menu In the standard File Open dialog open the folder and select the file that you want to open and click on the Open button You can also drag and drop the icon of the image file onto the BitFonter s main window You can open several images each in their own window The number of open images is limited only by the memory allocated to the program Tip When you open an image file the file name will appear in the bottom part of the File menu Later you can easily open this image again by simply selecting this file name in the menu Note BitFonter has certain limits for the size of the image The image width cannot exceed 32 Kb This means true color images with millions of colors cannot be wider than 81
220. the current font editing mode a Pages mode Encoding dropdown list that defines the current MS Windows 1252 Wester A encoding table based on the editing mode The footer of the BitFonter s window contains some additional glyph information the current glyph name and Unicode codepoint the total number of glyphs in the font and the number of selected glyphs Six 0036 5 17 44 Font window context menu Some commands available in the Font window can be selected from the context menu To open the context menu right click anywhere in the chart area Here is asample of the Font window context menu Widkh j 23 Copy Ctr e w Clear Delete Edit metrics Clear a Reencode Assign Unicodes te Make Unicodes From Names N Make Names From Unicodes Here is what the commands mean Width Allows you to easily select one of the predefined widths of the Font window Copy Copies the selected glyphs onto the Clipboard Same as the Copy command from the Edit menu Paste Places glyphs from the Clipboard into the font starting from the first selected cell Same as the Paste command from the Edit menu Append Places glyphs from the Clipboard to the cells according to their Unicode codepoints and names Same as the Append command from the Edit menu Delete Deletes the selected glyphs Same as the Delete command from the Edit menu Edit metrics Opens the Metrics window with the selected glyphs More Submenu w
221. the glyph shapes will be taken from the image line by line and when vertical order is checked IHl the shapes will be taken by columns When you place glyphs into the font you may overwrite existing glyphs This situation can be controlled with the Replace glyphs if already exist in the destination font option If it is switched on the existing glyphs will disappear from the font Otherwise they will be moved to the end of the font The images are usually scaled when placed in the font To not scale the glyph images switch on the Ignore glyph scaling option The scaling factor set with the scale tool will be ignored The Sidebearings section in the dialog allows you to define how BitFonter generates the advance width of glyphs You can allow BitFonter to generate the left and right glyph sidebearings automatically or you may enter your custom fixed values Use fixed Left Right UFM 1000 units 61 62 Outline Font Editor The Outline Font Editor page helps you customize the feature of BitFonter to communicate with outline font editors such as FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio AsiaFont Studio http www fontlab com asiafontstudio or TypeTool http www fontlab com typetool This is useful for situations when you select the Outline Font or Outline Pixelfont command in the File gt Export menu Outline font editor Trace outlines If na outlines Ask me every time Fontlab outline font editor su
222. the lowercase g glyph This is the distance between two lines of text between the descender of the first line and the ascender of the next line Height of the font s uppercase glyphs Usually the height of the H glyph Height of the lowercase glyphs Usually the height of the x glyph Angle for slanting the glyphs when automatic italicization is made Usually not used The recommended vertical offset in pixels from the baseline to the top of the underline It is used for text underlining This is the thickness of the underline line in pixels If you click on the Recalculate button BitFonter will automatically recalculate the values above the button Additional Vertical Metrics The Additional Vertical Metrics page contains additional font metrics information and looks like this Additional vertical metrics gt POs Y pos Size Subscript Strikeout position C e CE Recalculate Superscript 0 Jo o d ooo C e thickness Small he S126 jo Most programs do not use this information so it may be undefined in your font Click on the P Recalculate button to get the default automatically calculated values Here is the short description of the fields Subscript X offset Subscript Y offset Subscript size Superscript X offset Superscript Y offset Superscript size Strikeout position The recommended horizontal offset in pixels to the X origin of synthetic subscript text The recomm
223. the opportunity to select several rows by SHIFT clicking on them and changing all of them at the same time Note You need not save any changes when in the Metrics window just close it when finished editing and save the font Note that kerning data can be only stored in BDF fonts and photofonts Automatic Metrics Generation BitFonter can automatically define a glyph s metrics using a special algorithm This algorithm usually produces good results but we recommend further manual editing for the best results To generate glyph metrics automatically select the Metrics gt Generate command in the Glyph menu or the Generate Metrics command in the local Tools menu at the bottom of the Metrics window Import metrics Export metrics Adjust Sidebearings Adjust Width Save s Picture The Generate Metrics dialog box appears Generate Metrics How much white space do vou want to leave around glyphs TE Custom py Of io When do you want to keep exishng metrics Never Ww 0 4 How much must the shape of glyphs inflate to generate metrics m Apply to all glyphs in the font 323 324 Three dropdown lists are used to define the main data for the metrics generation algorithm These parameters produce different results for different fonts We recommend that you experiment with them and choose the appropriate result Adjust the metrics manually later The J button opens the Bl
224. ting new glyphs moving and pasting glyphs work differently in different modes Encoding Vectors The Names mode shows references between character codes and names Encoding Vectors use one byte to encode characters so only 256 characters of a font may be used at a time But you may have many more characters in one font having different names and referenced by different encodings I e a font may have multiple encodings each with a different set of 256 characters To switch the Font window to Names editing mode choose the Name Table command in the Mode dropdown list in the Font window footer Mame Table Unicode Range W Codepage Glyph Index To select the current encoding for the font use the Encoding dropdown list to the right When you open it you will see the big list of available encodings Here are some of them Adobe Standard Adobe standard encoding for creating Roman PostScript Encoding fonts Adobe Symbol Font Standard encoding for supporting fonts that include math and other characters Default Encoding The default encoding for all the applications in the FontLab family This provides the best support for the Default character set on Windows ISO 8859 1 Latin 1 ISO Latin 1 standard encoding MacOS Roman Standard Latin 1 encoding for Macintosh computers MacOS Cyrillic Standard encoding for supporting Cyrillic characters on Macintosh computers MS Windows 1252 Standard Latin 1 encoding used in Windows When you change
225. tion Selecting Glyphs You may need to select glyphs in the Font window for various purposes Selected glyphs can be copied deleted moved transformed etc To select a single glyph click on its cell with the mouse cursor The selected cell will be shown highlighted To select more than one glyph click on every cell you want to select while holding down the Suirt key or hold down the left mouse button on the first or last cell of your selection and drag the cursor across the cells you want to select You will see the selection highlighted If you drag the cursor outside the visible part of the cell table it will scroll accordingly You can also use the keyboard to select cells in the Font window Arrow keys Select the neighbor cell of the currently selected cell Ctri Arrow Select the neighbor of the neighbor cell of the currently selected cell End Selects the rightmost cell on the current row Home Selects the leftmost cell on the current row Page Up and Page Selects the cell one screen up or down relatively to the currently selected Down Ctrl Home Selects the first cell of the table Ctrl End Selects the last cell of the table Alphanumeric keys When pressed separately select the characters assigned to these keys by the current keyboard layout When typed quickly one by one select cells by the typed name if available You can use keyboard keys for selecting more than one cell by holding down the SHIFT or CTRL key To s
226. tions 133 200 216 233 242 outlines 180 199 201 214 Painter 9 Palette Panel 255 Palm 67 69 81 85 203 208 210 Palm OS font saving 85 PCL Character Set 103 Pencil tool 257 PhotoFont 56 67 69 73 81 86 152 203 209 210 saving 86 209 Photoshop 9 pixel outline font 217 pixel size 71 97 148 162 176 Pixels tracing 300 PNG 166 222 285 point size 97 162 Polygon tool 262 PostScript 22 26 120 project 65 199 creating 67 info 76 properties 76 reverting 80 saving 81 saving a copy 82 verifying 79 version 76 project window 70 contents 71 context menu 72 toolbar 71 RAM 12 Rectangle tool 263 Reduce Noise 293 Reencoding Glyphs Automatically 102 Removing a Font from the Project 74 resampling 48 148 176 resolution 53 97 162 230 changing 148 176 Rotate 275 Sample font 27 Saving a Font 212 Saving a Font Project 71 Saving Color Fonts 84 203 Saving in Windows Font Format 83 84 Scale 273 scale bar 190 scale factor 190 scanner 166 script 103 Select Region tool 247 Select tool 246 Selecting 265 selection copying 249 251 deleting 251 moving 249 pasting 251 transforming 251 Sharpen 295 296 Shift 279 sidebearing 61 320 325 Slant 277 Smart Blur 290 Soften 295 296 Spacing 92 162 splitting editing 185 splitting data Saving and restoring 189 Standard toolbar 66 strikeout 99 style properties 89 subscript 99 suit
227. tions panel was checked Polygon tool Rectangle and Ellipse Tools These two tools are very similar in usage but differ in result The Rectangle tool is used to draw rectangles and squares and the Ellipse tool draws ellipses and circles To draw a rectangle or an ellipse 1 Select the appropriate tool O or in the Tools toolbar and a color in the palette Position the mouse cursor on one of the rectangle s corners If you are drawing an ellipse position the cursor on one of the corners of the imaginary rectangle that surrounds the ellipse Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to draw a rectangle or an ellipse Hold down the Suirr key while drawing to draw a square instead of a rectangle or a circle instead of an ellipse Hold down the Axr key while dragging to place the center of the ellipse or rectangle at the place where you initially positioned the mouse cursor or Pressing the Att key before you press the mouse button will change the tool temporarily to the Eye Dropper tool Release the left mouse button to finish drawing or press the Esc key to abort The ellipse or rectangle will be filled with the current color if the Fill interior check box in the Tool Options panel is checked To temporarily change the fill mode hold down the Crru key while dragging 263 264 Text Tool With this tool which is a little more complex than the other drawing tools you can draw letters w
228. tline with nodes shown Thick outline without nodes shown Glyph window dimensions Glyph window dimensions gt Canvas size Relative to font bounds Visual ascender and descender of PPM Canvas size Fixed The fixed canvas size means that the editable area is of custom fixed size in the Glyph window Enter the horizontal and vertical values in the editable fields Relative to font The relative canvas size means that the size of glyph s editable bounds area depends on the glyph s bounding box size This option is set by default 51 52 Visual ascender and descender When you select 100 as the zoom value BitFonter needs to choose a scaling factor to fit the font unit space in the Glyph window Two vertical levels in the font space define this scaling Visual Ascender and Visual Descender When you select 100 zoom it means that Visual Ascender is fitted to the top of the editing field and Visual Descender to the bottom The same values are used to build the icons that you see in the Font window Values are measured in percentage of the font PPM size so 25 is 6 if the PPM size is 24 and 12 if the PPM size is 48 Bitmap Pasting Options The Bitmap Pasting Options page allows you to fine tune image pasting as done with the common Paste command or by drag and dropping Bitmap pasting gt Image position Paste lower left at origin Drag drop image resize Don t scale image w Tool active after i
229. u want to save the vfb file and enter the file name 215 216 The bitmap glyphs will be converted to black amp white mode if not already autotraced and transferred to the outline font editing application which will be launched if not already open or exported in the vfb format If the Export existing outlines only option was checked and there were glyphs with outlines in the font these outlines will be transferred to the outline font editing application or exported to vfb directly and the trace options will be ignored The exported font will open in a new FontLab Studio or TypeTool or AFS Font window where you can start working with the outlines Note The options that you define in the Trace Options dialog are used also when you select the Trace Bitmap operation described later in the Outline Operations on page 300 section Exporting to Outline Pixel Font With BitFonter and FontLab Studio http www fontlab com studio you can create new outline pixel fonts in minutes What Are Pixel Fonts Pixel fonts also sometimes known as Flash fonts are TrueType or Type 1 outline fonts especially designed for low resolution screen display Regular outline fonts are designed primarily to be printed at high resolution This is not the purpose of pixel fonts A monitor s screen has a grid of small pixels The glyphs in a pixel typeface are made from pixels too Every pixel in each glyph design has to correspo
230. ual glyph widths like the Courier font Select the codepage in the Encoding dropdown list for the proper template in the Font window You can change the codepage anytime later Define the font size and resolution Enter the size in points or in pixels as you wish If the Linked option is checked the Pixel Size will be updated when you enter the Point Size and vice versa If the Linked option is not checked changing the Point or Pixel sizes will change the font resolution in the corresponding fields You can enter new font horizontal and vertical resolutions Check the Proportional option to keep the horizontal and vertical resolution equal When the vertical font resolution changes the Pixel Size also changes while the Point Size of the font remains unchanged Note that Macintosh screen fonts usually have 72x72 ppi resolution and Windows screen fonts usually have 96x96 ppi resolution Leave the Ascender and Descender fields as they are You can edit the font metrics later when editing glyphs And finally you need to define the color characteristics for your new font Choose the font color type in the Color Mode dropdown list of the New Font dialog Color Mode Black amp White lack amp White Lravecale Fe Color 163 164 Leave the Black amp White selection if you are creating a common black amp white font Otherwise select the Grayscale or the Color menu item In the latter cases you need to choose the number of col
231. ual to a glyph point at 72 pixels per inch resolution on Macintosh But if for example vertical and horizontal font resolution is 144 pixels per inch every glyph point consists of four glyph pixels Point 1 pixel at 72 ppi Point 4 pixels at 144 ppi E Glyph adie E B E Glyph adie E B X Note In a Project window bitmap fonts are named by their pixel size not the point size Metrics The Metrics data of a glyph includes information about the horizontal and vertical widths Glyphs have an origin point and left and right margins sidebearings i ls F Font ascender re pom a a qe Glyph Right marein Glyph Left margin TE 5 E Baseline A Glyph Origin point Font descender F Left and right margins are used to define the positions of sequential glyphs in a series when the horizontal writing mode is selected The origin point of a glyph is the cross point of the left margin and the font baseline The distance between the left and right margins is called the glyph s advance width The ascender the descender the Caps height the x height and the baseline are font characteristics Nonetheless you can edit these font properties in the Glyph window as well 231 232 You may choose to change the lines colors and other viewing options in the Tools gt Options dialog Select the Tools gt Options command in the Tools menu and refer to the Glyph and Image Window page described in t
232. ually cut a cell into two cells It is needed when one cell contains two or more glyph shapes after autosplitting the image To cut a cell into two cells 1 Select the Knife tool E in the Tools toolbar 2 Position the mouse cursor at the beginning of the line that will separate the cell 3 Click the left mouse button to start defining a straight line segment or hold down the left mouse button to begin a freehand line 4 Move the mouse to define a straight line segment or to draw a freehand separating line 5 Click the left mouse button again to finish defining the straight line segment or release the mouse button to finish drawing the freehand line The separating line must intersect the contour of the glyph shape 6 Double click the left mouse button to separate the glyph shapes or press the Esc key to abort the operation 187 188 Cell Mask You can see that the glyph shapes in cells have green outlines after autosplitting the image This is a cell mask The mask view can be switched on and off with the View gt Show Layers gt Contour Mask command The only purpose of the cell mask is to define which pixels of the split image will go to the glyph in the font For example the dot in the top left corner of the picture above is not masked to be included and will be ignored when the cell is exported to the glyph Use the Image gt Cell Mask gt Update with Selection command to turn the selected area of an i
233. urrent font by setting the Always apply these settings for current document check box In this case BitFonter will remember your choice and will not produce this dialog until you hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard while choosing the Export Outline Font command If BitFonter cannot locate any outline font editor in your system or fails to communicate with a particular version of the server application launch the application manually and try again 63 Font Project This chapter describes in detail how to manage fonts that you are editing or creating using Font Projects Basically a font project is a file that contains references to real font files and families It is important to understand that the project in native BitFonter format never contains a font itself it keeps only aliases to real fonts and their properties on the disk When you open e g a Microsoft Windows font set it looks like the project in native BitFonter format too But in this case it contains real fonts not the aliases 66 The BitFonter Standard Toolbar Before we begin to work with projects we have to look at the BitFonter Standard toolbar Standard Jah 3 oo The Standard toolbar contains command buttons for commonly used menu operations All of them will be mentioned later in the manual but we want to give their short description here _1 Creates new empty font in a new Font window il Opens the font image or the project from disk Saves th
234. urves This option active by default allows the autotracer to generate curves Must generate extreme This option active by default forces the autotracer to points on curves insert nodes at the extreme points of curves Every time you change a parameter the preview to the left also changes allowing you to check your results Use the zoom buttons of the preview if needed You can make the tracing options permanent for the current font by setting the Always use these settings for current document check box In this case BitFonter will remember your choice and will not produce this dialog until you press the CTRL key on the keyboard while choosing the Tools gt Outline gt Trace Bitmap command Note The trace options that you define in this dialog are used also when you select the Export gt Outline Font feature described earlier in the Exporting Outlines on page 214 section Example of Operations Usage Let s take the font produced from the example image in the Creating a Font from an Image on page 165 section We have glyphs like this one To improve this and other glyphs we will apply some filters Let s make the glyph softer with the Soften filter Select the glyphs in the font chart and choose the Soften command in the Tools gt Filter menu You will see the Soften dialog Soften Use the slider to adjust the softness level and click on the OK button The glyph s edges became better 305 306 Now we w
235. using the drawing tools BitFonter s glyph editor includes the following drawing tools Pencil Draws thin 1 pixel lines or sets or clears individual pixels Very useful in the Zoom In mode Brush sf Main drawing and painting tool Draws strokes of selected width and shape Eraser lt Clears areas of a glyph Fill y Fills closed areas with selected color Line Draws straight lines Polygon f Draws filled or unfilled polygons Rectangle 7 Draws filled or unfilled rectangles and squares Ellipse gt Draws filled or unfilled circles and ellipses Text T Enters text The default color for drawing is black You can change the current color by selecting one in the Color Palette of the Glyph window All the tools except the Text tool may draw with any color While drawing you can change your drawing tool temporarily e to the Select tool by holding down the Crrt key or e tothe Eye Dropper tool by holding down the Axr key or e tothe Hand tool by holding down the Spacesar key or e tothe Zoom In tool by holding down the CrrL SPacesar keys or e tothe Zoom Out tool by holding down the CTRL ALT SPACEBAR keys X Note If there is a selected area anywhere in the editing field drawing will take place only within this selected area 252 Selecting Colors The glyph editor in BitFonter is actually a powerful color image retouching module As in any image editing application you can select drawing colors in color palettes The
236. verwritten If you select the Cut command instead of the Copy command the glyphs will be copied to the Clipboard but will be deleted from the source positions do not forget that you can use the Undo command if you want to undo any of these operations When pasting glyphs their names and Unicode codepoints change according to their position in the current encoding or codepage If copied glyphs have outlines in their outline layer the outlines are pasted together with the bitmaps To paste copied outlines without bitmaps use the Paste Outline and Append Outline commands To learn more about glyph outlines refer to the Outline Operations on page 300 section Appending Glyphs to the Font Instead of the Paste command you can use the Append command from the Edit menu or the Font window context menu to add glyphs from the Clipboard to the font When BitFonter appends glyphs it respects the glyph names and Unicode codepoints so on the first attempt glyphs will be placed in the expected code positions in the font Here is an example Your first font contains Latin glyphs but has no Cyrillic glyphs A second font is a Cyrillic font with the matching style and you want to add Cyrillic support to the first font 1 Select the Cyrillic glyphs in the second font this will be easy if you select the Mac OS Cyrillic codepage or the Cyrillic Unicode range and copy them to the Clipboard Return to the first font right click on the Font
237. verywhere you have to check all these values and enter corrected data if necessary To open the Font Info dialog select the font in the Project window and choose the Font Info command in the File menu or click on the E button located in the Project window toolbar The Font Info dialog looks like Family Info and Style Info dialogs and includes the complete set of pages Indeed the Family Info and Style Info pages are the subset of the Font Info pages Browse the pages using the list at the left or buttons Use the Filter dropdown list at the bottom of the Font Info dialog to disable those fields and options that are not relevant for this or that font format All target Formats BitFonter Binary Font GFE BOF Font bdf BitFonter Font Project Fnp HP Soft Font sFp Windows Font Set Foni Windows Font Frit OpenType SBIT Bitmap Font I Palmas Font pdb AFF Font Resource arp PhotoFonk phFt Fontlab Template dat For example if you select Windows Font Set fon as a filter you can see the Basic Set of Font Names page changes its view Width Spacing Only the Family Name Weight and Style are relevant for a font in the selected format To apply new information to the font click on the Apply button on any page To apply information and close the Font Info dialog click on OK To close the dialog without saving changes click on the Cancel button 91 92 Basic Set of Font Nam
238. wn the left mouse button and drag the scale bar s end Release the left mouse button to finish To keep the scale bar vertically or horizontally hold down the Suirr key on the keyboard If you want to permanently prevent the scale bar from being slanted enable this setting in the Tools gt Options dialog Constrain the Scale bar alignment to vertical direction Note that only the length of the scale bar makes sense 191 192 You can see and edit the current scale value actually the length of the scale bar in the Tool Options panel It is measured in image pixels Scale tool Scale value 81 400 The L5 Auto button in the Tool Options panel sets the default scale factor for selected cells Note If you want to reset all the scale changes you have made for individual cells deselect all cells and click on the Auto button in the Tool Options panel Editing Baselines BitFonter s main purpose is to preserve information This process consists of several steps 1 Transforming an image into an electronic form scanning Determining what parts of the image relate to each glyph splitting Determining the actual size of the glyphs set scale a ae Assigning the right names and codes to the glyphs placing them into a font At this point you have all the important information restored and are ready to produce a font However there are some additional steps that can save time and help you produce bett
239. ype fonts can be TrueType flavored we call them OpenType TT fonts and PostScript flavored OpenType PS fonts Both are Unicode encoded and support special features like swashes contextual forms ligatures etc 23 24 PFB Postscript Font Binary file a binary file that contains the glyph outline information for a PC Type 1 font PFM Postscript Font Metrics file a binary file that contains the metrics information for a PC Type 1 font PICT The native graphic file format for Macintosh images A PICT file may contain black and white grayscale or color information PNG Portable Network Graphics A standard graphics file format designed for WWW to replace the GIF file format POST resource Macintosh terminology for the part of a Macintosh font that contains an Adobe Type 1 font RGB the color model in which red green and blue are combined in various ways to reproduce other colors on the monitor sfnt resource Macintosh terminology for the part of a Macintosh font that contains a TrueType font Suitcase Macintosh terminology for a file that contains information about a font or family of fonts Table a set of data defining behaviors or relationships of a font Digital fonts contain not only the drawings of their glyphs but also information about how those glyphs should behave Information about the spacing on each side of a glyph metrics how close particular glyphs should be to each other kerning CMaps and many
240. ze e g 8 pixels This is merely a setting of the font and not necessarily its actual size However it is generally the size at which the font will look best When using a pixel font you should always keep in mind its size Multiplications of the specified size will also work e g 16 24 32 etc but will look pixelated at larger sizes H AECDEFGHIJKLINOPORSTUR WHY TASS Sao hE 16 RECDEFLHIJHLMI 12345R 1S H5 cH AECOEFGHI Tea4sb 18390 Jc HECOEFGHI aah Taso The Exporting Process To export all the font glyphs or selected glyphs only 1 Open the font in the Font window in BitFonter and make sure it is black amp white If not use the Font gt Color Mode command to change the font colors to black amp white Select the cells with glyphs that you want to be exported Choose the Outline Pixelfont command in the File gt Export menu BitFonter will show you the following dialog Outline Pixelfont Export Target font size 12 pt Source PPM 12 Pixel primitives squares ba Horizontal scale i 100 Yo P Linked o vertical scale 100 Pixels are editable in Fontlab Studio with Pixel tool 100 B Overlap pixels not editable Export all glyphs of the Font The Source PPM value tells you the original size of the bitmap font in pixels Set the Target font size for your new pixel font We recommend that you set the target font point size equal to the source font PPM size for b

BitFonter 3 for Windows User Manual

Contents

Download Pdf Manuals

Related Search

Related Contents