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193 Comments
@will.i.ૐ: No, the bricks in the first post are meant to be like that at a 1x1 filter setting. I wanted to create larger "perfect" circles than are possible right now, and make new bricks from composites. And yes, that more complex filter setting would be cool...
If the large circle bricks are not a good idea, then I would really like these bricks (plus the round corner bricks):
Alternately, -2 x -2 would simply rotate each 2 x 2 brick 180° and make them even harder to select! :)
Although triangular and hex grids would be really cool. Wahat about Select Grid Shape option? And generating faux bolds and faux obliques would be interesting to play with.
By the way, nice avatars opipik!
Though we have a brick replace option (by dragging the new brick from "All Bricks" onto the unwanted brick in "My Bricks"), it would be nice to have an option to delete a brick-type from "My Bricks" and from all the current glyphs.
One use for such an option would be for making an outline font from a pixel font. Say I have a pixel font that uses the square brick. By using a full-circle brick, I can trace outlines around each glyph. Unfortunately, I then have to erase ALL square bricks from each and every glyph. Lastly, I replace the full-circle brick with the square brick.
By having a "delete brick" option (meaning removing it from "My Bricks" and sending it back to "All Bricks"), all square bricks would be removed from the font set immediately.
How would it work? One way could be:
1A. Since you can't (currently) drag an eraser on the "My Bricks" menu, you could use a double-click on the (un-)desired brick in the "My Bricks" menu. That would bring-up the option of deleting the brick:
"Would you like to delete this brick-type from your current FontStruction?" (OK / Cancel)
If OK, a second screen would pop-up to ensure that it's not been agreed to accidentally:
"WARNING! This process cannot be undone. Are you certain you want to delete this brick-type from your current FontStruction?" (Delete / Cancel)
Alternately...
1B. Have a Blank brick or Erase brick - maybe a Square with an X in it, possibly red in color? (I think something like this has been mentioned before.) Simply drag the Erase Brick on the desired brick in "My Bricks" menu.
This would bring up the two "Are you sure? / Are you REALLY sure?" options mentioned in 1A.
2. If there is only one brick present in the "My Brick" menu, it would not be possible to delete that one last brick. Otherwise, it would be just resetting the entire FontStruction to its initial blank state.
Thank you for listening.
Concept art:
~PS: Original blocks at top are shaded yellow~
I guess I'll just say this is 1x1 filter, and see the 1/4 quarter brick on the upper left corner (not a composite)?
1. Select all bricks of Type-A in selection/character/set/font. Example usage: Select all full-size circle bricks, for subsequent edits.
2. Replace all bricks of Type-A in selection/character/set/font with bricks of Type-B. Example usage: Change a LED-style font made from circular bricks to square bricks, or change a font that uses diagonal corner bricks to rounded corner bricks.
3. Invert bricks in current selection across same selection-co-ordinates in selection/set/font. That is, swap bricks of type-A to type-B, and those of type-B to type-A. Example usage: Switch blank bricks to solid bricks, and solid bricks to blank bricks, so that you create the solid-outline of a font.
4. Invert the fill of a brick. Example usage: Convert a brick having a black 5-point-star with white surrounds, to a white 5-point-star with black surrounds.
5. The "Make Composite" command should work on larger selections. For example, I'd like a brick with a 3x3 or 4x4 grid of circles or squares (useful for LED-type fonts). I can make a composite brick with a 2x2 grid of circles or squares, but that's the current limit.
6. Brick submissions/sharing. It would be great if we could upload bricks in EPS/SVG, and/or save composite brick designs, to tagged, private or public brick-collections on fontstruct.
#6 is a great idea.
As for 4x4 circle, I'm not sure if I've misunderstood your advice, or if you've misunderstood my requirement. I'd like bricks that are 3/4 circles across, and 3/4 circles down, all within one brick. Is this possible, and if so, which filters do I adjust?
1) I make a font with tags Private, Latin, Cyrillic
2) I make 10 more with the same tags
3) I delete them
4) Under ((View All | Tags:)) on my page, I click on Private
5) FontStruct will say ((You have 10 FontStructions tagged “Private”. View all FontStructions tagged “Private”))
6) However, I see nothing.
(An outstanding example that's happening to me for real: "You have 40 FontStructions." "You have 44 FontStructions tagged “Private”.")
PS: If you don't know what leading is, it's the white space between two lines (it's something like 2 pixels in FS)
This could be handy for negative fonts, like when you have a combining character, like ^. You create the ^ in X-bricks, which means the shape gets removed from the character. Example: NEGATIVE a + Combining ^ in x-bricks = NEGATIVE a with removed ^-shape
I'm in the gallery adding fonts to my favorites or voting fonts, then when I go to the page of the author of the font, my rating(s) and/or favorite(s)don't appear for their fonts I rated and/or favorited.
The only thing is to be useful for outline fonts, your highlight would have to grab "empty" bricks to fill them in.
Maybe highlight with a special "grid-grabbing tool" (results in Red, grabs maximum grid corners), then pressing "Q" to exchange?...
I originally had it as "I" for invert, but saw that it was used for "Expert Info" when I consulted the Shortcut page.
Doesn't matter what key is used; just a suggestion that may or may not be useful. :^)
Actually it's worth for someone whose a professional typographer, designer, etc. As it's says PRO means professional.
But I think the chance for it to happen is very little.
So don't worry! :)
L-apostrophe has L-caron as an alternate, L-comma has L-cedilla... etc etc etc.
1) Someone had suggested a folder system for storing your fonts. I think that is a great idea, I definitely would use it a lot.
2) Along with that idea, the ability to create font families, and to be able to make different versions (bold, italic, bold italic) that actually download as Bold or Italic instead of Regular. That would allow users to click the Bold button in a word processor and have the bold version in place of the regular.
3) Also, the ability to clone fonts (or parts of fonts) into other fonts. One use of this would be to have two parts of the same font, saved as separate fonts--one with, say, Basic Latin and More Latin complete, and one with Extended Latin A--combined into one.
4) And finally, the option to save a font as a Fontstruct file, with an extension such as .fs1. You could then have the option on the 'Create a New Fontstruction' page to upload it. Or, if there is ever a standalone version of FS, you could upload fonts from Fontstruct to the standalone with the .fs1 file.
Speaking of which, a standalone version of Fontstruct would be fun... :-)
And I think I suggested the folder system.
Here's some more of my suggestions, if anyone is interested.
1. I think we need to be able to draw with the eraser tool as we draw with the pencil tool. That would be VERY useful in negative fonts.
2.The ability to composite stacks. This could be very useful in creating very intricate large-scale fonts.
3.The ability to composite composites and stacked composites. I'm sure almost all of us of FS would find this very useful.
4.Make FS open source to allow people to make modifications to the original code (to allow us to create new features in FS ourselves, if we have any coding experience.)
5. If it is your first time on FS, upon opening the fontstructor for the first time, you could be presented with a video guide to all the ins and outs of FS. This would be a huge help for beginners and would help the community make better, more high-quality fonts.
6. You should be able to design your own bricks, using a specially made Brick Editor . This would be a good alternative to compositing and would allow much more creativity.
7. An official FS forum. The unofficial ones were a HUGE success, which is why i'm suggesting this now.
8. Being able to subscribe and unsubscribe to users. If you are subscribed to a user, you get updates on new fonts they make, and users can send out email updates to their subscribers manually. This would help the FS community.
9. On every user's profile page, you should be able to see the user's Balanced Rating for all of their fonts, and also their number of subscribers.
All of these suggestions are not necessary, but I think they would be a great help for FS's growing community.
10. Being able to have multi-user accounts. This would be very useful for collaborations.
1. I think this is a great idea.
2. This is already possible; you simply have to make composites and then stack them. (See the picture for an example.)
3. I'm not sure that's a good idea; it would open up infinite possibilities, but would make creativity no longer necessary. Maybe being able to make slightly bigger composites would work better?
7. YES!!
8. That would be awesome. Allow me to make my own suggestion: favoriting fontstructors. I'm not 100% sure it's a good idea, just a thought.
9. That would be cool, along with a total of their favorites.
10. Oh, yeah!
On the profile page would it show the fontstructor's total favorites on his fonts, or on the fontstructor? (or both?)
1) A row/column select tool.
2) A hotkey + arrow key function for shifting selected bricks one grid-space in a given direction.
3) A hotkey + arrow key function for brick-cycling selected bricks (non-trivial alternative to global brick substitution).
4) Quater-round bricks – of the same size and orientations as the extra-corner bricks.
The first three suggestions would be extremely useful for speeding up many iterative or macro-like brick manipulations (e.g. grid doubling). While the fourth suggestion is not entirely new, the extra-corner logic is a potential improvement.
Thanks in advance for considering them! :)
1) That would be pretty useful.
2) YES!
3) That would be useful maybe for you, not for me.
4) Hmm...That would be nice. I always like it when we get new bricks :)
Also, we need a better way to look inside composite bricks (you know, in the palette with the shift button), currently the parts just overlap in weird ways...
1) shift+click to invoke the palette
2) hover over the topmost brick which may be obscuring bricks below it
3) the cursor becomes the eraser tool; click once to erase the topmost brick
4a) press ‘z’ to invoke undo, which restores the deleted brick
4b) the restored component reappears only in instances contained within the canvas; notice how the floating composite palette remains unchanged by the undo operation
5) rinse and repeat: click to erase a brick to reveal what is underneath; press z to reverse the erasure while delving into the underlying layers of the composite.
Really step 5) says it all, but I wanted be thorough because will.i.ૐ.
Existing suggestions I'd also like to see: Folders, subtractive bricks (I believe William was the first to suggest brick subtraction and other binary operations), Kerning of course.
Advanced suggestions:
1. Hiding Glyphs. Option to hide specific glyphs from publication. I usually have multiple versions of glyphs, some of which are failed attempts. It would be helpful to be able to turn off selected glyphs so they aren't made public. This would save space so an entire backup fontstruction doesn't have to be created.
2. Faster Fonstruction Navigation. A faster way to scroll through pages of fontstructions. It takes an extremely long time to get to page 114 going five pages at a time. I could just type in a page number at the URL but another option would be good.
3. Circle/Oval Drawing Tool. Draws regular oval shapes as a default, draws perfect circles when constrained with shift key.
3. Spacing Controls for All Drawing Tools. In order to efficiently draw in within the 2x2 filter space, the line drawing tool would need to draw a brick on every other grid space. Spacing controls would also enable a line or a circle to be drawn with only a specific number of bricks.
4. New Editing Shortcuts. Ctrl-Up or -Down to switch between Basic Latin to More Latin or other language systems.
5. A direct link to this page should be placed in the Support page.
I fully support Gene's proposal for a link in the Support tab.
1. Yes, great idea! That would be good when you are working on one glyph and don't want people to see your glyph-in-progress.
2. Yes, definitely.
3. WE NEED THIS!!!
4. I don't really think this would be really useful.
5. Yes! In fact, this forum is where I pretty much learned the ropes of FS when I first came here.
Small: Medium: Large:
Seeing the sample is no longer in the font comments, how do I remove it from the live feed?
(the first one is laynecom's Baby Elephant, I think it said)
If you look at it for a while, it gets kind of boring. I think it would be much more exciting if you included somthing so that it picks a random Top Pick every time it generates a new font.
1) A Fontstruct Collaboration license, where the creator can let others directly edit the font. If they only want certain people to edit it, they can specify a password, then privately give it to them. The server should keep every saved version, just in case someone changes something that shouldn't be changed. This can be a different approach to collabs with multiple people on one account.
1a) A place on every fontstructors' profile page that says how many collabs they have participated in, and how many of them have been top picked.
2) A set of 'white' bricks, maybe in another section of the bricks tab. These bricks, when overlapped onto another letter, will whiten that part of the letter. However, they can be stacked with other bricks within the same letter. See the last picture for an example. (The white bricks are gray)
3) A few more bricks:
@ETH, great idea on the collab license.
TL;DR:
Add support for more languages and fix the glitches in languages that already exist.
I found in support an advice but it doesn't help.
Says:
Copy the text to your blog or website.
*I use this word for "stencil" here to differenciate it from stencil typefaces.
But I still think it would be good for faux-curves. Angles like 1:24 would be available or at maximum, 1:32 for compositing only twice. I might have obsessive-compulsive-composite syndrome if composite inception was implemented.
And an eraser that removes lines, rectangles and single bricks (like the drawing tools give single, line and rectangle)
2)Larger "real" curves! 1x1 is good, bur not good enough! We can probably not make a good font without faux-curves! Unless it's a angle-and-line font, NO CAN DO.
3"Pixel View". I can't stand going back and forth between the preview that HAS a pixel view. Can you make it available as a window on screen while you fontstruct?
4)What's with always having a name structure error? I always get it. HALP!
2)Larger "real" curves! 1x1 is good, bur not good enough! We can probably not make a good font without faux-curves! Unless it's a angle-and-line font, NO CAN DO.
3"Pixel View". I can't stand going back and forth between the preview that HAS a pixel view. Can you make it available as a window on screen while you fontstruct?
4)What's with always having a name structure error? I always get it. HALP!
Whatever size a curved brick is it will always limit the freedom to go beyond a simple quarter or half-round curve.
Faux-curves are used for a variety of fonts other than Helvetica copies ... as I think is demonstrated here
Let us explore all aspects of this wonderful software and allow everyone the freedom to use it in the way they desire. A narrow mind only allows for a narrow view.
Though, if FS preview was more realistic, no more massacring detailed works and idealizing approximative ones...
Also, I may be the only one with this problem, but I can't make composite bricks. The button for it is always grey.
1. Font Families
Being able to put multiple fonts into a family, so that when someone clicks on the fonts, they see the whole family.
2. Non-modular glyph outlines
You select a font from a list and you see a light gray outline of the font on your FS screen. It would be helpful for copying fonts or basing fonts off of a non-modular design.
3. A better preview
As many people know, the FS preview is quite abominable. It would be great if it actually displayed fonts correctly.
4. OpenType Features
It would be GREAT to have these.
5 Save As...
Where you can save your font as .ttf, .otf, .dfont, .fon, .fnt, .sfd, and more.
6 Most Used Bricks
It would be awesome if we had a section when we make fonts by My Bricks where it showed our most used bricks (just to help us)
7 Export to Dafont
This would be helpful for dafont users like me, to submit their font straight toward dafont.
8 Better images
FS always makes our images smaller, it can be quite annoying for large samples.
9. Premade samples
A set of samples (where the font is pasted onto a background just so you can see the font in use)
10. Language Options
Just so you can see FS in a different language if you speak another language and don't want to Google Translate everything.
11. Better Unicode Support
A lot of the glyphs in unicode show up as a letter from the language in a box, which makes it hard to do hyper-extended fonts. Also Umbreon126 mentioned that FS only supports Plane 0 of Unicode.
12. Better Privacy
There should be a system where all clones should be checked to see if they are exactly the same as another font, and if they show no difference, they should be automatically deleted.
13. FS Wiki
It would be good to have a wiki for FS so new users could learn how to use it easily.
14 Invert Colors/Night Mode
Where colors are inverted to make it easier to see at night (or when it's dark)
15 Kerning
WE NEED KERNING!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE IM ON MY KNEES!!
16 More sample text
Maybe have Lorem Ipsum text after the standard pangram sample text.
Just some suggestions that would be nice to have.
1. one really wonders what's taking so long
11. This is related to the FontStructor's adherence to Lucida Sans Unicode (which only really works for Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic, and basic support at most, at which point Windows' strange font rendering methods kick in and lets you see Armenian but not Dingbats, as well as China's single-bowl variations of āǎàá) Personally I'd go for the ability to choose which font is shown in the FontStructor (as well as adjusting the size of the character Current Glyph box)
As for everything outside Plane 0 (as well as the still unimplemented CJK, Hangul, and Yi), one has to consider if there is really any true need for it here. (Playing Cards and Emoji is nice and all but really :P)
12. You have to give someone the time to edit it, of course ;)
14. <s>shouldn't you be sleeping</s>
"Lucida Sans Unicode, b, c"
17 Select which font is used for the letters, maybe some options could be like 7:12 Serif or 126Sans or 5Mikropix (because those are hyper-extended) but PLEASE not always be lucida sans unicode
Better?
This would save time if there are a lot of brick that are replaced. I've added a simple example to try and show what I mean.
add erase of a single diagonal line
Copying to:
add copy of basic Latin also to extended Latin A, extended Latin B, more Latin
Composites:
possibility to make new composites using existing composites
Please ........ :)
At the moment, though, FontStruct lacks one thing that would enable me, and countless people from projects like MUFI and CYFI, to completely switch over: the Private Use Area has not yet been added.
The Private Use Area consists of 6400 code points that are deliberately not assigned a character, from U+E000 to U+F8FF. In academia, this block tends to be used for encoding ligature-heavy medieval writing systems. If it would not be too much trouble, could this area be added?
Anyway, thank you once again -- for everything!
It also should be noted that this 'forum' is acknowledged, but not official: "Contact" is another option
Still, within the BMP, a distinction can be made between 'areas' and 'blocks'. The term 'block', in a more mathematical sense, sometimes refers to the first two digits of any code point within the Basic Multilingual plane. There are 50 of these 'blocks' within the Private Use Area, each having about 256 code points.
Certain scripts are radically deficient in their unicode forms. Often, one will find duplicates or nonexistent graphemes within archaic scripts. Precomposed characters are often a must for efficiency, and sometimes the only way to implement them with hope of eventually introducing them into the Unicode system is to develop a viable working model.
Most scripts do not require any more than four or five of these 'blocks' (E0, E1, E2, E3, E4). Certain eastern scripts can go well beyond. Anyone here interested in Tibetan? Probably not. For the time being, Instead of adding the entire area (a sizable portion of the BMP), I think it would be best to add only the first few.
The problem that results is that the area has been left open, so all further subdivisions are essentially arbitrary. The way this has been overcome in my circle is by taking each two-digit block of the area and assigning it a letter: Private Use Area A, Private Use Area B … each roughly the size of Basic Latin combined with Latin-1 Supplement.
I can still work around even if this idea is never seen through, but it would make things a lot easier. Any idea who to contact?
Thank you!
Is the High Private Surrogate Use what you need?
If so:
1. Click on the "Expert Mode" button if it is not on. (If it's off, you will see a gray dot to the left of the text. It's on when it's green.)
2. Drop down the Menu and hover over the "Advanced" tab.
3. Click on "Unicode Letter Sets."
4. Pull up the languages/sections by clicking on "Basic Latin" on the bottom left.
5. Press the up button holding the mouse very still (as a movement will close you out) and stop when you see the "High Private Surrogate Use" tab.
6. Vow to not type with Comic Sans ever again, and don't pick your nose.
(In case you are the really no-humor guy, that was a joke.)
You're done!
Hope this helped! Feel free to ask any more questions and happy Fontstructing!
*considers raising hand for Tibetan due to smatterings*
* by set (fonts having only Basic Latin first, followed by fonts containing All the different Latins in the sequence they are presently shown, followed by fonts of other languages in alphabetical order);
* by number of glyphs from low to high (alphabetically for ease of access where fonts have same number of glyphs);
* by date updated (this is the present type of listing);
* all Fontstructions alphabetically (own Fontstructions first, followed by cloned Fontstructions).
I'd like to have a folder for cloned and own tool sets (like the curves tools, the composites tools, the other useful collections).
And finally I'd like to be able to jump to a chosen page rather than having to go to page 10 and then jump only 4 pages ahead each time, which takes 'for ever' when one has more than 20 pages of Fontstructions and a slow internet connection...)
2)Being able to permanently save favorite bricks
3)Having a fill-in mode, where there's a tool which will fill in a certain shape blocked off by already-drawn shapes. (Basically a more advance version of the one we have already)
2) Sounds cool.
3) That is disputably the most suggested suggestion. RIOT!
do anyone know how to email your fonts to someone.
I believe that I am a creative person by all the fonts I have made here. Some were great and others were not. It's hard for me to come up with a new idea for a font. Sometimes I feel a little constrained by the blocks that I am given to use. It would be nice if I had something that would help me come up with new ideas.
@ Chris Burgess: maybe this holds some inspiration > http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/860777/forum_inspiration
Dear Mr Meek, I have 2 programming wishes:
# I'd like to 'park' cloned fontstructions either at the end or the start of my personal FontStructions list (organising our fonts)
# I'd like to 'jump' to a specific page of my own pages and the gallerys' pages, rather than having just one of 4 pages at any one time and the very last page to go to.
I'd like to look for inspiration on page 153 or 729 for example but I know that I'll be occupied for quite a long time.
If the page-choice cannot be programmed would a 'jump' within a set of 20 pages (as opposed to the current 5) be possible?
@Aeolien the parking suggestion is an interesting one, I'll bear that in mind. If you want to jump to a specific page in the gallery you can just enter the number in the address bar at the top of the bar and hit return e.g.
http://fontstruct.com/gallery?page=100
while take you to page 100.
@ MR Meek: I used the address bar suggestion, it works fine for me, thank you.
The clones' "parking" out of the general gallery would be great. I now clone many of my more complex or decorative fonts to work on specific letters; this keeps the basic font in order while I work on further letters inside the clone so I wont lose too much work when the save doesn't want to hold every change made.
But clones clog up most published/to publish gallery views and when I clone others' fontstructions to see how something was done then this makes my gallery even more difficult to navigate. It would be great if it were possible to move all clones out of my general work gallery to the end or start of my fonts' listing (while retaining the recent worked-on clones at the top of the parking list as we can have now).
@Mr. Meek: I've noticed a few site bugs recently, of which you may or may not already be aware:
1. Any search on a FontStructor page finds no results.
2. Any search on a gallery page finds only fonts whose names start with the first three letters of the search term, or fonts that have a tag where a word starts this way. For example, a search for "circus" comes up with several fonts tagged "Circus", but also some tagged with "Circles" or "Circuit" or "Inverted Circle", as well as fonts named "circle" and "cirus".
3. I don't know whether this one is intentional, but changing the search term or any search filter clears the term/filters the user has already set.
4. I don't see any difference between the "Selected" and "All" options on the Live page...
5. The full-screen font preview seems to have a black background (at least in Firefox), making it impossible to preview fonts in full-screen.
It would be nice to see more formatting options in the comment box, such as underline, strikethrough, and a button to insert an image from a URL. Some formats are possible by copy-pasting or dragging text that contains these formats, and you can drag images into the box to insert them, but it'd be nice to have an easier method.
In the upcoming HTML5 FontStructor, I'd also like Expert Mode and composite-making to be a little more obvious. (I went for a few months without knowing about the composite tool, wondering how other users made crazily-shaped bricks.) Maybe there could be a little tour of the FontStructor when a user opens it for the first time?
I was also going to suggest an "Invert" tool, but I see this has already been suggested (and I've already seconded it, haha). Oh yeah, and I'd also really like quarter-unit letter widths.
Thanks for the bug reports and suggestions @ethproductions.
I'll look into the bugs when I get a chance.
The upcoming HTML5 FontStructor, which I hope will be ready for live testing within the next two months, will be very similar in terms of layout and features to the existing one, to begin with. Having said that, the plan is that the new FontStructor will be much easier to improve and extend so we should be able to add new, and long begged-for features after it's launched.
This sounds absolutely exciting. Looking forward to using the HTML5 FontStructor!
On the topic of the comments box, this might sound weird, but I'd like the ability to edit the raw HTML instead of using the WYSIWIG editor. (also for font descriptions)
@Umbreon126. Thanks for the suggestion, but we won't add that as it would be a security issue. One thing that would be nice for the comments boxes would be the ability to easily add a link to another FontStructor or FontStruction, maybe with an auto-generated sample. But the current development focus is on the FontStructor.
Please continue discussion here.
Comments are closed.