Good idea, Frodo.

My wishlist would be:
1a. Make brick stacking a feature, and make it easy to make stacks. One way would be to highlight a brick and if you place another brick on it, it becomes a stack.

1b. Be able to drag a created stack into MyBricks set so you can just put the stack into place.

1c. Drag a brick out of MyBricks and get rid of all instances of that brick. I have a feeling this is doable since you can already swap one brick for another, therefore every instance of that brick is already known. Cavet: If a certain brick is used as a single as well as in stack and you drag off the single brick, the stack should not be affected.

2. Drag and reorder bricks in MyBricks.

3. Have a toggle button in Preview to turn anti-alising on/off. Same for within FontEditor.

4a. Drag characters to reorder them so you can have characters in the order you desire. (Too many variables to actually implement?)

4b. Select the order of the character subsets. UC-lc-No or lc-UC-No or lc-No-UC or No-lc-UC etc.

I'll think of more...

Well met, young Baggins. We'll all meet here at the moot ... well most will meet, a minority might miss the meaning of the moot maybe ........... HELP! Iv'e been possessed by an em.

Seriously, it's a great idea and a worthy contribution to the FS community :-)

Very good suggestions there, Frodo!

Though, #7 can be worked around by selecting all text (cmd-a/ctrl-a) and pressing delete.

Thx, Frodo, for sacrificing one your FSions for the cause.

I agree with the suggestions exposed so far, even though I actually have not thought about such possibilities & they seem like pretty smart moves.

My wish list is less about the app and more about the site itself:

1. Kill the Font Troll Rating system.
A Like/Dig rating system would be more fair since no one would have the power to downgrade the value suggested by others.

2. A User Comment Tracklist.
Since we already have a user section that counts all of our comments, that could maybe redirect us to a list of the links where such comments were posted. the items in the list could also be highlighted in case some comments back or responses. This would "forumize" us a little bit.

3. A non-Fontstruction Topic Discussion Feed, we could call Forum.
As gferreira exposed in Up All Night we already have a discussion system, so maybe a Create Topic feature could be added that just uses this feature without having a FSion to start it.
These topics could then be summarized in a new tab and there: we have Forum.

But then, I will still enjoy FS anyways...

thanks frodo, for starting this :)

1. revise voting.

2. provide ability to bookmark fonts - our own and others - on our myfontstruct page. include ability to create folders also and put bookmarks in folders.

3. provide ability to copy and paste lc to uc or uc to lc. this would be the entire 26 character set.

4. provide ability to group/ungroup bricks. sometimes it's tricky when working with various filter settings to always click on the actual brick area after you have selected it to move.

Ontmoot? Fentmoot? Anyway, seeing how you've set up an ad-hoc discussion forum, I'll put my two cents in here. Mr Meek asked me to elaborate on some ideas I've been throwing around elsewhere about reorganising the toolbox and adding a transform function.
Basically the toolbox would contain two types of bricks: those that transform and those that don't. Which bricks get displayed where depends upon how in-depth the transforms are going to be. If you have scale as well as rotate, all of the sub-grid bricks can become transforms as well. The idea is to include only meta-bricks in the toolbox, to de-clutter it.
The illustration shows how it would work. If you select "transform" (a new submenu in advanced features) with the brick you want highlighted in the toolbox, you get a list of options you'd like to choose for that brick. I've picked the halfround because that's one of the ones I want most! I've then picked a scale, which then appears in the document as shown. Obviously the depth of transformations available depends upon how much work poor Mr Meek is able to throw at it...
Note that you only get the bricks you need to make the compound shape. And they also appear in "my bricks" which is a whole separate pasteboard function, a saveable, transferrable file unique to each user. (Salivate here.)

The downside of this idea is that it's more complicated for a newbie. The rotated and scaled bricks don't appear in the toolbox any more. There's an extra process the user has to get his/her head around to access them. For this reason, I'd suggest an option Fontstruct Classic or Fontstruct Expert, for instance. It could be a preference.

One benefit of this approach is that brick extensions could be added incrementally. (The software we've got already has lots of transforms, it's just that at the moment they're cluttering up the toolbox.) I think this recategorising of bricks, with a beefed-up method of accessing them once chosen, would create a robust platform for further extension to Fontstruct without the need for user-generated brick-fiddling. By that, I mean beziers (make the sign of the cross here.)

Oh oh...

x. Redesign My Fontstruct. First page should only have folders. Give searching ability within.

y. tag fonts all over the site to remember which you liked.

more later...

I was thinking...Improved Gallery searches. For example, you could tag your own fonts as v0.1, v0.2, etc., depending on where you are in the development stage (your own call) and then do a search like '+thalamic, +v0.3' to get all your own fonts that are so tagged. Just throwing in the idea since this might be easier to implement than a redesign of MyFontStruct.

PS: I know that users like funk_king, intaglio, and anyone else with a lot of shared/unshared fonts could really benefit from that. I, myself, am upto 204 (most crap, BTW).

Oh yeah...voting system revision. Ratings out, Like/Dig/*/! in.

"This font has received 2!s." or "This font was liked by 2 people." or something.

And downloading of a font gets automatic Like, since the person obviously liked it to initiate download.

@thal: I was wondering how brickstacking could be accommodated. I like your idea, it's very simple at the user level but probably a gigantic headache to implement! The trouble, as far as I see it, is that there really has to be a tile for every imaginable stack in order for them to be truly cut-and-pasteable.

I love thinking about this sort of stuff. Maybe there could be a library of "most used" stacks (accessed when the transform tool is applied to a highlighted stack you've made). If your stack is one of the favoured combinations, the transform is available; if it's not, boo hoo, it's greyed out. That way we could accommodate stacks that can be copied (legal) without throwing out Williaum's method for those that don't (illegal). As well as allowing space for incremental increases of legal brickstacks to the library over time.

Re My Fontstruct: a very sensible idea. On my private page I don't need to see a preview, just the names will do. As you say, put the search functions on steroids instead. Why squander resources on your private page?

Wow. Thanks for letting us gather around your font Frodo.
There are a lot of great ideas here.
Basically we have a roadmap for adding features which is informed by input from FontStructors, from contact mails and comment threads like this one.
Most of the things which are being asked for are on that roadmap.
Implementing these changes is mostly a question of time and resources.
So keep the ideas coming, but we can't make any promises about when, and in what order features will be added.

@Frodo7 re your wishlist:

1. Copy and paste between FontStructions is just being tested at the moment.

2. Rotation and mirroring tools are on the roadmap.

3. There seems to be a bug with choosing licenses for individual fonts. I am going to look into this.

4. Extra Guides: Are on the roadmap.

5. This is not explicitly on the roadmap but makes sense and would fit well with 4.

6. I haven't heard that one before. Like the Navigator panel in Photoshop I guess you mean. Nice idea. Have to think about that one.

7. sebastianberns gives a way to do this lower down in the thread. It might also be useful to have some standard preview texts available from a dropdown- especially when we add kerning support.

8. Yes we plan to add this definitely.

9. I understand why people want this. An obstacle is that people are already working at much higher resolutions than FS was originally designed to handle
- hence, for example, the huge fonts that won't download. Things have improved since FontStruct started but until we've solved the issues
involved with high-res designs we won't increase the zoom range.

10. Yes we want to add kerning. This is on the roadmap.

@thalamic

1a. Yes we intend to add brick stacking as a feature
1b. Or whenever you create a stack it appears in MyBricks
1c. Binning bricks. I haven't heard or thought of that one before. Certainly doable but dangerous! Note taken anyway.
2. Reordering bricks in MyBricks. Yes. This is a must.
3. Alias toggle. Maybe in the right/ctrl-click menu. I'd like to keep the preview widget as simple as possible. Some FontStructions don't look good in the preview widget because a thin, dark line is drawn around each brick. This, almost invisible, line is there to prevent white gaps appearing between bricks (people who have used FontStruct from the beginning may remember those white lines from the early days). With some FontStructions this dark line causes unfortunate fuzziness in the preview and a loss of detail, for example if the design intentionally contains thin gaps. We would like to add a toggle setting for Font designers to enable them to turn off this dark line in the preview. We would also like to add a 'view grid' option to the preview widget.
4. Reordering character sets. Another new idea for me. I'll have to think about that one.

@cayo

1. Kill the troll. We are going to make changes to the voting system and add alternative ways of rating/evaluating fonts. Having said that, it's not going to be possible to please everyone on that front.

2. Yes that makes sense.

3. I'm definitely with Gustavo on this one. Isn't it nice to gather around a nice warm FontStruction to discuss things? The live feed does make it easier to follow a discussion. A forum integrated into FontStruct is still under discussion internally. Don't forget the Flickr discussion group. We're adding posts from that and images from the Flickr font pool to the live feed, so maybe that will encourage people to use these resources as well.

@funk_king

1. Re voting - see above.
2. Bookmarking. Yes, we intend to add a feature similar to this.
3. It would be nice to be able to select multiple characters (whatever group) and copy them all to different slots, in the same or a different FontStruction. Another feature which would be useful would be automatically filling all the latin accent character slots with the basic character e.g. "a" would be copied to âãåàá etc.
4. Grouping bricks. I know what you mean. We do plan to add some form of group function.

@intaglio

Yes I think we may need to add to levels to the interface - like classic and expert. If we do, the default should be saved as a user preference.

Ok. I'm running out of gas, and I should go and try and fix that licensing thing.
Thanks again for the moot!

YEEE!!!!
The man has spoken & has given us hope!
Thx, Mr Meek for your time & playground.
Yes. The live feed does lighten things up in that way & I did not know about the Flickr discussion group, so I'm joining in right now.
I know you can't please everybody, but you certainly make the effort to do so with such a detailed response.
Good Luck with everything!

License drop down should be back now.

1. The ability to change all black from white and white to black on a single brick.

2. Change filter size for individual bricks.

3. The ability to make circles.

Thx,
HEJHOG

Got one more! How about white overlays so you can make things permanently white (i.e. if you put a circle white overlay onto a black square brick, only the four angles on the square would remain, creating a type of white circle.) You could make the overlays in a variety of shapes, and it could lead to many new bricks.

Thanks for all the encouraging info Mr M - looks like the already great FS is going to get even greater.

I don't feel that I have been a 'structor for long enough to add much to the wish list. However, I suspect the range of good ideas from the others will give you more than enough to go on with :-)

Got one more! How about white overlays so you can make things permanently white (i.e. if you put a circle white overlay onto a black square brick, only the four angles on the square would remain, creating a type of white circle.) You could make the overlays in a variety of shapes, and it could lead to many new bricks.

The FontMoot has definitely shown it's value as a means of sharing ideas within the FS community. Many thanks Frodo for taking this initiative.

May I open a new topic for the Moot to consider ... Profiles

Perhaps it's just me, but I find it fascinating to learn more about the members of the FS community.

A few examples:

- Judging by his use of English, I would never have guessed that it wasn't Frodo's first language.

- I hadn't realised how young some of the really talented people here are (and probably they don't realise just how ancient I am :-)

For those who haven't got round to writing a profile yet ... how about a few words. Where you live; what you do; if, like many of us, you are not a design professional what attracts you to font design etc.

I feel that this can only help to enhance the FS community spirit and add some personality to the familiar names.

Let's have a race to see who's the oldest. I was born in 1952. Favourite colour: blue.

o_O!
Well, was born in '74
I'm Peruvian, but lived in Costa Rica all my childhood (where we had direct cable TV from the US, so English was way easier and necessary than the German I learned in School) I also lived in the US a while ago (Sun Valley, Idaho) and took a student exchange program to Germany back when the wall just fell.
I skate in my free time if the bones are not aching too much & I manage to pay for my beans as a freelance graphic designer.
Nice to meet you!

1986, Switzerland here... Won't win the race for the age, nor for the best english I'm afraid. How about the highest nuclear contamination during birth year? Any other Tschernobyl kiddies?;)

As for the suggestions for a better fontstruct:

1. The most bad-ass thing would definitely be a "Draw your own brick" or even a "Import SVG/EPS-brick" tool. But that would just lead to chaos and anarchy I think, so don't do it!

2. "Rotate/Reflect selection" would be awesome... Technically it might not even be too complicated.

3. Voting system/Top picks/...: The most difficult question. Be very careful with the reorganisation there... But don't make a "like"-voting system. Even if this would kill the font trolls, it would have the very undesirable effect of just cementing the ranking, giving new fontstructions that start with 0 likes no chance to get anywhere close to the top, just because of the sheer amount of "likes" that the top 10 will get from people who just pop by to check out the best-ranked fonts. The actual rating system might have it's imperfections, but honestly it doesn't work SO bad. I think a few tweaks (like ignore statistically too diverting votes) might already make it much more popular.
As for the font trolls: They're nasty creatures, they're hairy, they stink and nobody likes them. Bu they even have a nice side effect: They cause a constant refreshing of the top of the ranking by regularly voting down fonts that have been in the top 10 for some time. Of course this can be very frustrating for the creators (believe me, I know how it sucks), but for the site it might not be too bad after all.

And here I go with maybe my most controversial statement (bold, so people who don't wanna read all the other blabla read this at least): I think people give too high ratings recently! The finger's just on the 10 way too fast. That's very well-meant and encouraging and really gives one the feeling that your work is appreciated, which is one of the characteristics of the small but great community here that I appreciate the most. But it just leads to a lot of way overrated fonts.
And I do very much include my own work here: I don't think fonts like Escheresk should get 9.9. It might be a nice, even a creative font, it might also be innovative. But in my eyes a font with such a small character set, let alone usability just shouldn't be on 9.9, cause 9.9 means there's exactly a range of 0.1 for better fonts, and dude, I really hope there are still a few fonts to come that deserve a bit more distinction.
I remembre when I started here, it was almost font-trolling each other down. It was hard to get above 6 or 7. It was frustrating and discouraging, and I'm happy these days are long past, but now we're kind of in the other extreme, and maybe that's not even much better.
So: I'm happier to get honest 8s and 9s than getting 10s all over and then having the feeling I'm stealing the place on the podium with a cheap thrill from a subtler, yet much better executed and way more usable font. :)

OK, now this is so long that nobody's gonna read it anyway... Good job.:P

Wow, I just discovered this Fontstruction Forum. Well, I really like most of the ideas, especially intaglios concept to choose between FS classic and FS expert. And it would be so cool to have the opportunity of scaling bricks...
By the way, I was born in 1986. Favorite colour: red.

I think I'm a strong contender for the silver plated walking frame award ... born in 1943.

To save you the maths, that makes me 66 (and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up!)

I was born in 1974 in Indiana, US. So, that seems to put me around the middle of the pack age-wise, so far.

There have been a lot of great ideas listed here.

Maybe some of us regulars could beta test new features before they are rolled out to the masses?

representing old school 1958 style (same year as michael jackson - rip, prince, and madonna - for um cultural reference.) favorite color: black. born at Ft. Knox, family from GA and mostly raised there, and currently live in the metro Orlando area far from Disney and other attractions :) seems we have a good mix of ages here. i have always been fascinated by type, wanted to be an architect, always intrigued by design, became a tech writer - so i guess my connection is although not a professional designer, i do use words/type professionally - although a creative occupation, tech writing is not really a very stimulating one - when was the last time you read a user's manual for entertainment :) although many of them are quite funny in a frustrating and confusing sort of way :) other passions currently in hibernation: pottery (slab not wheel), community theatre, scriptwriting (unproduced plays and screenplays.) very interesting to learn more about my fellow FSers :)

Oh here's one that's necessary. Now.

z. Sort fonts in What's New in the order the Top Picks are awarded and NOT in the order first shared. Newest TP goes to the head of the list no matter when it was first shared. This way each TP gets the full duration of exposure.

I also, kinda, agree with Shasta's evaluation of the rating system. The benefit of this system *is* that every font gets a chance to make it in the TP list. Like/Dig do not have that benefit. So, maybe, we live with the trolls. Or, as he also points out, automatically throw out the outliers—whether 1 or 10 (to be calculated when at least 3 votes are given).

And, yes, the new votes are far from realistic. 9.5s are not uncommon now. Used to be that if you had an 8.5, you would be at the top of TP list. Those votes seemed a bit more realistic. But, the argument could be that people are giving so many 10 votes because they are not seeing it as a rating scale but more of a Like/Dig situation, giving a font a 10 if they like it, 1 if they don't. And I am guilty of this myself. I stopped rating fonts on their merit a long time ago. I either give a 10 or nothing. This is partly because there are just so many fonts shared everyday, that even for someone constantly logged on [points to self], it's hard to keep up. And after seeing almost the same pixel font for the 50th beeping time, you tend to just ignore the rest. And I say this as a lover of pixel fonts.

Anyway, what I would love to see is multiple merit badges given to each font [see sample below]. Creativity badge (for overall innovative design), Usability badge (for how usable the font is), FS badge (for interesting use of FontStruct), etc. And searchable by any/each badge.

Or not. ;-)

I like the badge idea.

One possible addition: either a different colour TP or a new badge for all fonts that have been Featured. I have trouble remembering which ones have been featured, even in recent months ... perhaps it's my age ;-(

oh, let the trolls have their fun, i suppose. i guess what we need maybe is the option to display or not display voting results and maybe an option to share but not allow voting perhaps. that would help my blood pressure tremendously :) gee thal, i like your idea and sample :)

I think the multiple badge idea is great. It would help the poor people with no Top Picks (like, me) get some kind of recognition:)

Hmmm... maybe there could be a race for the youngest? I was born in 1997 and my favorite color is blue:)

I was born in 1995! Oh. I already lost.
And Frodo7, the extra awards would be cool.

@p2pnut: Usain Bolt 100yrs dash of the FS community (until someone declares themselves older). We're almost contemporaries... you'll remember arcane stuff like Letraset... Spirograph... mattresses... artpulls... bromides... border tape... Rotring .01 (a perfect pain, mine couldn't go for more than a couple of days without getting clogged up)... bull (or cow) gum... emrulers... chinese white... opaque...

@intaglio: Ah yes, I remember them well ... tra la la :-)

I go back far enough to remember getting actual blue-prints done of technical drawings.

During the sixties I did a bit of screen-printing and used to be quite a demon stencil cutter - using blue-film and shellac pro-film.

The guys who developed Letraset had previously worked for the sceenprinting firm that I spent a year with in the late 60s.

A thought for the FS wish list:

Would it be possible to have the option of toggling the 'Brick Cycling with the Pen Tool' on/off?

I have not found a use for this facility so far, but it frequently seems to kick in by accident.

@Pnut: Yep, that "Brick Cycling" sucks. I would delete it.

Got one more. How about the ability to to change the width/height of columns/rows, like in Microsoft Excel?

here's one i mentioned elsewhere earlier - have a clock so that we can see the elapsed time we work on a font - both for each session and in total.

@jh - like the ability to modify the grid. that might be interesting :) and in combination with the filters...hum. but please, don't refer to excess, i mean excel as your model :)

CUT & PASTE BETWEEN FONTS!!!!!

Thanks a million to the FS team ... I love you guys :-)

1. The editor should order characters by glyphs, not by Unicode position. (Well, maybe Alpha does not need to be linked from A.) Accented characters should be accessible (only) via their base and be prefilled. For that matter there should be templates for diacritic marks. For applicable scripts, like the roman one, majuscules and minuscules should also be directly accessible from each other. This might be done by adding a second line below the current character selector. The case and accent switches could also be in the character window instead.

Base line: … A B |C| D E … → [c] (lowercase)
Comp. line: C |Ç| Č … → [¸] (diacritic)

2. The gallery could show or group similar fonts based on glyph shapes (of uppercase roman letters perhaps).

3. I expect to see all fonts in “What’s new?” by default, not only Top Picks.

4. Some simple brick types are missing. Bricks could be grouped (eg. all four perpendicular triangles) underneath one entry, ie. drop-down selection.

5. When selecting a new brick and clicking on the box you edited just before, the new brick should be used before brick cycling begins.

The other stuff has already been said, I guess.

@Crissov: When you go to the Gallery you are presented with a choice of 'Top Picks' and 'Everything'

Yeah, I know, p2pnut, but presented with the tabs “What’s New”, “Top Picks” and “Everything” you would expect the first to be a filter or sorting only on new stuff, the second a filter or sorting only on top rated or quality labeled stuff, and the third unfiltered and arbitrarily sorted. But in reality the first includes the filter of the second, using a different sort order. That’s just counter-intuitive, and unfair for those that don’t have had their designs awarded that label (yet).

I like the Crissov's suggestions, especially the first one. This 2-line concept with all diacritics of the selected glyph makes a lot of sense and would definitely save a lot of mouse clicks. I've already asked for a way to prefill the more latin characters a long time ago, and would still be very happy to get this feature. Of course though they can't be prefilled on default, but maybe a button "paste basic character" could do that job. Integrated in the 2-line concept it could look like that:

A B C D [E] F ...
È É [Ê] Ë ... [paste E to current] [paste E to all]

I'm sure this would also encourage people to do a bit more than just basic A to Z.

As for all the rating/ranking/quality labels issues: The multiple badges are in the core a nice idea, but the purist in me says it just makes things more complicated. Also I can't really see how Gustavo, who already has a hard job following all the releases and deciding whether to award pink badges or not, should cope with 4 or 5 possible distinctions for every font. I think I couldn't. :)

Maybe something more democratic could work (though I must admit having lost faith in internet democracy long ago), like a "top gallery" where everyone can suggest a very limited number of fonts (preferably by others) per time span for public (but anonymous) voting, and if they get a yes majority, they get in. This has worked pretty well on a photo page I used to visit, and all photos who make it to the gallery there are really high quality.

@Crissov: I agree about the tabs.

And I don´t think that multiple badges are absolutely necessary. But maybe we could try a different rating system...

Yes! I agree shasta. Maybe it could also if your font is selected for the top gallery, they should get a 'People's Choice Badge'. But the Top Pick should stay, having a staff member pick them out just like normal. Then the other award would be given. One font could get both maybe?

I want to clear up my idea about white overlays. Adding a white circle overlay onto a black square brick would get you four curved angles. Adding a half circle white overlay onto a circle brick, you would get a half circle.

igorrossi made a good point today on djnippa's Brick Stacking page. I mention it here in case it gets missed.

"I think it would be very useful too to open a tutorials section on Fontstruct, where we would find such explanations as djnippa brick stacking how-to."

One tutorial I would certainly benefit from would be 'An Introduction To The Use Of Diacritics (or: Diacritics for Dummies).

As somoeone who only knows English, I would like to know more about which languages use which diactics.

I have been lately creating some samplers and put my FSions to use to find a little bug on the ttf files:

some random glyph's letter space get spoiled one pixel closer. it's not always the same one on other FSions to say: "oh the lc r has issues", but on a certain FSion it would affect a certain glyph position and remain unfix-able, even if you copy&paste other bricks to an emptied position to check if it was carried with the former brick combo, that position will remain bugged.
The curious thing is the FS sample viewer will show a correct letter spacing, but as soon as you use the ttf file it will show this problem.

At first I though something was wrong with my crappy computer, but the I noticed it happened to Electricgator's Tester V, so I thought I should mention it in case it has been gone overseen.

I hope it's not a mayor issue.

Regarding p2pnut's post about which languages use which diacritics, there are some pdfs with that information available for a number of languages.

There are links in section 1.2.2 Alphabetic index of languages in the following web page.

http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/

@mathematician: Thank you for that link ... it leads to a plethora of information. Just what I needed :)

The following web page has links to many Unicode code charts.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/

The various pdf documents in the Latin section may be of particular interest.

They are linked from the lower part of the leftmost column of the webpage.

The web page for accessing code charts for symbols and punctuation is as follows.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html

@mathematician: Cheers :) My education just keeps going.

There is so much knowledge held by the FS community and these are exactly the kind of links that would help 'structing neophytes in a Tutorial/How To section.

1. new bricks requested. see image. i think these are pretty obvious and match the existing diagonals (blue) shown in width. the new bricks (red) are derived from the existing triangles (black.)

2. please put an 'add comments/image' button at the bottom of the page. when you have 58 comments like this, it would be useful :)

It would be great if there were a published format for expressing designs for new bricks in such a way as to make them easiest for adding into the FontStruct system.

It depends how bricks are coded in FontStruct.

For example, would a data list be what is needed or would a short piece of software be what is needed?

With threads like FontMoot 01, it need not necessarily be the person who suggests a new brick design being the person who codes the design into the desired format. One person could upload a graphic and another person could then use the graphic to produce the code.

Could you please consider adding a new category of bricks, hereinafter called "archbricks"?

The name arch comes from the "Elementary, Dear Data" episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, where the arch is used to set parameters in a holodeck simulation.

FontStruct could have many archbricks once the technique is introduced. I shall try to explain it using just one type of archbrick, namely "archbrick for italics".

The archbrick is placed in the space glyph.

There is the existing Font Mortar process. The FontStruct software would be adapted so that before the Font Mortar process starts, the software system scans the space glyph of the FontStruction. The space glyph of the TrueType font will always be blank, yet if an archbrick is encountered in the space glyph of the FontStruction, a flag (or even a value) is set in the arch and then the archbrick is removed from the space glyph. If the "archbrick for italics" archbrick is encountered, then the flag arch_italics is set to true. The Font Mortar process then proceeds as at present. Once the TrueType font has been prepared, it is then considered in relation to the settings of the flags and values in the arch. Those values are all such that if no archbricks have been used, then no changes will be made to the TrueType font.

If the arch_italics flag is set as true, then the x coordinate of each point in each glyph of the font is altered as follows.

x:= x + (y/8);

The y coordinate of each point in each glyph would be unaltered. There may well be some adjustment to the name of the font and the italics flag of the font needed as well. Used on a copy of a roman font, a faux italic would be produced. However, a true italic could be designed vertically in FontStruct as if it were a sort of swash roman and then processed using the archbrick so as to produce a true italic. There might need to be a convention about naming of the FontStruction with a keyword in the name so that that keyword is discarded so that there could be a FontStruction of a roman and a FontStruction of an italic and they could produce a pair of TrueType fonts with the same family name. It might well be desirable not to use the word Italic as the keyword in case someone just wants to use that word without it being altered. Maybe a keyword such as ARCHITALIC might be suitable.

Permanent and temporary points in bricks

This is an idea for an extension of the FontStruct system.

I am thinking that at present a FontStruct brick could be described using a sequence of triples, each triple describing a point, each triple consisting of an x coordinate, a y coordinate and a flag meaning on-curve or off-curve.

Suppose that in future a FontStruct brick is described as a sequence of quadruples, each quadruple describing a point, each quadruple consisting of an x coordinate, a y coordinate, a flag meaning on-curve or off-curve and a flag meaning permanent or temporary.

Conversion of the present bricks would have each quadruple being a copy of the present triple together with the designation of permanent.

The Font Mortar program would be a modified version of the present system.

For each glyph, first of all, the contour outlines would be determined, with no regard to whether the points in the bricks are permanent or temporary, though the information is retained. Each contour outline would be a sequence of quadruples. Once the contours are computed, the points that are flagged as temporary are then deleted from the contours, and a sequence of triples, as used at present, produced for use to produce a TrueType font. Just before being used to make a TrueType font, each contour is processed so that wherever there are two off-curve points in sequence, an on-curve point is placed halfway between them.

Suppose for example that a person were designing a FontStruction.

If he or she did not want to use any temporary points, then he or she could simply proceed as at present using just bricks that are all black.

If he or she did want to use a brick with a temporary point then he or she would use bricks that are all or part green.

For example, suppose that he or she produced an L-shaped arrangement of bricks as in the diagram.

Upon processing, the effect would be to leave three points only, two on-curve points with an off-curve point between them, thereby producing a large curve.

Here is the diagram.

I am trying to upload idea.png which is 240 pixels wide by 310 pixels high.

It is 3210 bytes in size and was made using a Print Screen from FontStruct that was manipulated in Microsoft Paint.

Any ideas why it will not upload please?

it's been a pretty long time since i last fumbled around with ms paint, but my guess is that you saved it as a .bmp, which is not an accepted format for image uploads...

Thank you for replying. I checked that out but found that a .bmp was a lot bigger.

However, having made a bmp to check that out, I then made a gif from the bmp and then tried to upload the gif rather than the png, and the gif uploaded.

Thank you for replying. I checked that out but found that a .bmp was a lot bigger.

However, having made a bmp to check that out, I then made a gif from the bmp and then tried to upload the gif rather than the png, and the gif uploaded.

Mathematician you are a genius!

Not because of your discourse on new brick technique ... that just made my brain hurt (I'm just a 'fontleton' - a simpleton who attempts fonts) :) ... but because you solved the problem of uploading images for me.

I had tried everything (or so I thought), but hadn't converted the .jpeg image to .gif

Many thanks :-)

FontStruct already allows a designer to add ligatures for fi and fl.

Could you possibly add locations for the other five Unicode precomposed Latin ligatures please?

These are ff, ffi, ffl, long s t and st.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFB00.pdf

An interesting aspect of modern font design is glyphs for ligatures and glyphs for alternates.

The leading method for using such ligatures and alternates is OpenType technology and OpenType-aware software packages. However, OpenType-aware software packages are few and tend to be very expensive.

However, a good way to be able to store glyphs for ligatures and alternates in fonts is to use the Unicode Private Use Area. Some budget packages can access the Private Use Area. The Private Use Area can be accessed from Microsoft WordPad. Using Print Screen and then pasting into Microsoft Paint and then trimming allows graphic files to be produced.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UE000.pdf

Section 16.5 of The Unicode Standard includes the following sentence.

The primary Private Use Area consists of code points in the range U+E000 to U+F8FF, for
a total of 6,400 private-use characters.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/ch16.pdf

Could the management possibly add some Private Use Area locations into FontStruct please?

I am unaware of whether adding all of them is 64 times as much work as adding one hundred of them or whether the amount of work is about the same regardless of how many of them are added.

However, if some of the primary Private Use Area locations, say the first hundred from U+E000 onwards were added into FontStruct, then adding of glyphs for ligatures and alternates could be done without needing to use a location such as % or = to do so.

It would also mean that the correct glyphs for % and = could be implemented as well and that the artwork for the ligatures and alternates would be stored in the font and be readily available if, some day, an OpenType version of the font were produced.

Latin Extended Additional

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1E00.pdf

Could you possibly add the following eight characters for Welsh please?

U+1E80 through to U+1E85 and U+1EF2 and U+1EF3.

Also, could you possibly add the following character for German please?

U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S

This may sound extreme, but how about letting some of us regulars act as moderators in some way?

Maybe give us an "Utter Crap" button (ok, give it a nicer name), and if 3 (or 5 or 7) of us click it, the font disappears from any public listings?

Carrying the moderator idea further, maybe we could make Top Picks? If 3-7 (the best number could be debated) of us regulars give a font a "Top Pick" vote, then it would a badge. Or maybe give it a different name "Peer Pick" or something?

Just ideas...

I fully agree with the "Peer Pick" idea. Thanks, aphoria, for bringing that up again. A similar idea was brought up before (jinx and shasta's "People's Choice" badge idea) but no one really supported it. THIS IS A GREAT IDEA!!!

Ah...Yes. I really like the idea about the 'peer pick'. It would make it much easier for the staff members, too.
So, maybe you should be able to rate fonts like usual, but add a little check box to nominate it for 'Peer Pick'. Then, take it a step further and have all fonts that have been nominated go into a 'Nominees' gallery. Then you would vist that gallery and chose the 5 you think which should get 'Peer Pick' for that week. Then the Nominee Galery would refresh each week for new nominations. If a nominated font does not win, it still can be re-nominated the next week.
Maybe 2 fonts could get it a week?
Just an idea. :)

new feature - quick typeset. provide the ability to do simple project in FS. sort of like the existing 'user input' feature in the widget, but expanded with the ability to do simple font changes like bold and italic, point size, color, etc. also maybe import images. i don't know. this was just a thought. maybe much much later :)

Ho about special spacing? Like changing the spacing in between certain letters (aa, ab, ac, etc; ba, bb, bc, etc, etc)

i dunno about you guys, but i'd love to have my FS account linked to my Facebook and/or Twitter account, so that what I do here, get posted over there in my news feed.

i also agree with putting the comment box down the bottom :-)

is there a ‰ (double percent) character available in FS? i thought there used to be. i guess not.