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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)."
Just what we need ... the ability for websites to easily create their own font, ignoring the hundreds of years that have gone into perfecting typography.
There's no part of copyright law that allows a tool creator to dictate how the output of the tool can be licensed.. unless, of course, there's some significant amount of copyrightable material being added to the output above and beyond what the user of the tool is supplying. For example, a compiler compiler will generate code from the input CFG and embed additional code in the output that was written by the author of the tool, so this could be claimed as his copyright, but the generated code, no matter how well it was generated, is a result of the CFG writer, and is therefore his copyright.
Of course, none of this has been tested in court.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why not use Metafont? Vastly more powerful, and available for free on any platform TeX is.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My font looks like a database connection error. :-(
-Peter
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.
But this being a web application (like gmail/calendar/docs) it only needs a dom based browser to have fun with (which is "everyone",more or less right?) and supports the most common font format on the planet by default, truetype .ttf
Metafont isn't like any of those easy requirements, it doesnt "just work" for "everyone", it could, but it doesn't, so it fails.
thats why not METAFONT
You must be new here...
Slashdot is now an experimental weapon to take over the intertubes. Its aim is to supplant even the biggest of botnets.
We are succeeding... one website at a time.
That will be banned in many middle east countries and the Netherlands and will cause as Fatwa against me.
Ever letter will be an image of old mo' and if you change your default web browser font to it you will make all 72 virgins in heaven cry.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
especially if you can make them really, really tiny but still 'legible' (often requiring context of nearby letters, granted). I made one - it's used in graphics and licensed by one party for print ('read the fineprint' takes on a whole new meaning when the font is baseline 3 pixels tall.)
Other than that, pixel fonts are still routinely used in games - simply because rendering a vector font is more expensive than rendering a sprite.
Spot the irony:
Bragador (1036480) to astrashe (7452): You must be new here...The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
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.