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Make Your Own Fonts, In a Web Browser
Dekortage writes "Although it's been up for a few weeks, today is the official launch of FontStruct, a web-based font creation tool. That's right: in your web browser, you can build your own typeface, and download it as a TrueType font. The site's user agreement requires you to release your creations online under one of the Creative Commons licenses. The typefaces tend to be a little blocky, but it's still impressive (and a great way to pass time)."
About 10 years ago, when pixel fonts were all the rage. If you didn't check the site out, it allows you to create fonts in a NxN grid, using predefined primitives (circles, stars, rounded corners, etc). Not a whole lot of variety possible. If they came up with a vector-based online font creation tool, that would be something I could get excited about.
Apparently you've never created a font before. It's not a process where you set a few parameters and cross your fingers. A proper type face has specially styled italics characters, not just skewed ones, proper kerning, different weights and sizes for captions and headlines, etc. OpenType has opened up the type world to many new alternative possibilities with swashes, stylistic alternatives, tabular and old-style lined numerals and a whole slew of other options for designers to take advantage of in their work. I just don't see metafont making the process of font creation any easier than say FontLab.
Because I was responding to a poster in English with just English words. However, most of the writing I do online requires the use of multiple languages, many requiring letters present in Unicode Latin Extended A and B and the upper ranges of the Cyrillic block. I'd rather see more people using e.g. the DejaVu fonts, which look just as good as the Bitstream Vera the Free Software community already took to its heart, but which at least has that Unicode coverage there if you should ever need it.
Hi. I'm part of the FontShop team responsible for FontStruct. We're down right now (for obvious reasons -- ouch!) or I'd link you directly to the FAQ page on licensing, but I'll try to clarify it here.
There is no requirement to license your work. New FontStructions are private by default and you can download it for yourself to your heart's content. Only when you choose to make it public do you need to select a CC license.