From: William Overington (WOverington@ngo.globalnet.co.uk)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 07:35:06 EDT
John Hudson wrote as follows.
> Quite apart from the inappropriateness of this announcement to the Unicode
list
It was not inappropriate. The Unicode Consortium includes the following
page in its webspace.
http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/resources.html
There are links to various fonts which support Unicode.
So, it would seem reasonable to be able to post a notification of the
existence of another such font to the Unicode list. Perhaps Quest text
might become listed in that web page. Does one apply or is it by
invitation?
> (dozens of fonts are released every month,
Well, I am not aware of most of them. Where are they listed please? I am
presently only aware of a few released in April.
> and there is no need for any of them to be announced in this forum),
Well, what do you mean by "need"? How much of what is used and enjoyed in
everyday life is a "need" and how much is just used because it gives
pleasure. For example, patio furniture, packets of flower seeds, display
fonts. Quest text is not the first Unicode font to be announced in this
mailing list. One very good font was announced here some time ago and that
was how I learned of its existence. That was a very useful post. If the
scope of posts is drawn too tightly then the scope to learn, and the
creativity and serendipity of this group will be lost. For example, someone
posted about The Alphabet Synthesis Machine at http://alphabet.tmema.org and
that got me interested in how fonts are made. I learned of Bézier curves.
I studied the mathematics. I wrote an applet to draw them. I found out
about the Softy program, which is shareware at a reasonable price, and I got
started with making fonts. Small fonts at first with just a few characters,
now Quest text is available.
As far as I know there are very few fonts available with yogh and wynn and
all of the accents for Welsh. Those of which I am aware are all ordinary
everyday lettering type of fonts. Most display fonts, such as Old English
Text and the like only have a few accented characters. So, as far as I know
at present, Quest text is quite a special font, in that it is a display
font, a Unicode font and it has various rarer characters, such as thorn,
ash, eth, yogh, wynn and circled digits, all in their correct Unicode code
positions. So maybe announcement in this forum is highly appropriate and
moves the technology forward. Display fonts which have no accents for Welsh
cannot be used for all Welsh words, so do not have the capabilities of Quest
text. Maybe other fontmakers will wish to add these characters to their
fonts, maybe not, that is their choice. However, at present, Quest text is
a special font with characters which few other fonts have.
> or the inappropriateness of your design to e.g. typesetting Middle
English
Please explain what you mean. As far as I know the required characters are
all in the font.
> (or any human language),
I really would like you to provide reasons as to why Quest text is
inappropriate to set English or Welsh.
>your font contains dozens of glyph outline and table errors.
Well, thank you for that information.
> I suggest you get your hands on the MS Font Validator*
Thank you for the suggestion and the link. However, I am using Windows 98
and that program appears to be for later operating systems.
> and check your fonts before releasing them to the public.
Well, I would if I could. I was unaware of such tests or any need for them.
I am happy to learn. The Quest Text font performs well in Word 97 and
WordPad on a Windows 98 platform. Any other information on which platforms
the font is being successfully used will be welcome please. In view of you
saying that the font has errors, maybe Word 97 and WordPad, or maybe the
Windows 98 platform, are finding the errors and automatically working round
them, yet the font looks good in display.
One email correspondent has pointed out to me that one of the errors to
which you refer may be due to overlapping two contours in a letter x.
I have noticed that this can show when using Quest text with WordArt in
PowerPoint.
Another email correspondent wrote as follows.
quote
Also your font will not show up on a Mac, so I haven't been able to check
it out. Since normal windows .ttf fonts show up fine, I think there must
be something missing in yours. Unfortunately I haven't a clue what it
might be.
end quote
I have not any way to respond to that enquiry as I do not use a Mac at all.
My only testing has been on a PC. I was not aware that TrueType fonts could
be used on a Mac as various font sites seem to offer some fonts for PCs and
some fonts for Macs. However, that "not awareness" is only because of my
lack of knowledge in the matter, not some implication of it not being the
case.
Can anyone say anything about this please?
>I used to have a freeware music program, but it didn't make me a composer.
Ah.
Creativity is from the human mind. Pen, paper, clay, paint, musical
instruments and computer packages can help in expressing that creativity,
yet do not produce creativity, though the availability of the tools and
materials can inspire creativity and influence the way in which it is
expressed.
To write a song one needs to know what is a rhyme and a rhyming dictionary
can help in finding rhymes for a specific word, yet the ideas to use such a
rhyme to invent imagery is a creative process which comes from the mind.
Many and varied are the ways that creativity can be expressed and each
person expresses it in his or her own way.
William Overington
7 May 2003
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