Open source font tester?

Ramiro Espinoza

Hi there,
In the coming months I will re-design my website and I would like to know if there is an Open Source or commercial Font Tester out there you can recommend? I'd rather not choose rented systems like the one offered by P. Bilak.
I remember I saw one in the past but I can't find it anymore.
TIA.

Ermin Mededovic

Type Show is stand alone widget and GPL Licenced. http://typeshow.net

Ramiro Espinoza

ah, cool. That is the one I was looking for. Can anybody tell about its performace? It looks like it can't deal with OT features...

Göran Söderström

Do you have web fonts?

Ralf H

If you need OpenType features: http://www.type-applications.com/site/ft.php

Real type rendering in the browser is certainly the way to go in the future.

Ramiro Espinoza

@Göran: I don't offer webfonts directly in my website but I have the webkits for my use.
Anyway, they are offered in Fontdeck, Myfonts and Fontshop.

@Ralf: What I don't like about the Type-Applications tester is that it is a renting scheme (and also you must use iframes)

Göran Söderström

If you have your fonts as webfonts, you could easy make a live type tester using the actual webfonts.

We have a super simple solution for this, but you could also make the OT-features available.

http://lettersfromsweden.se/typetester

Ralf H

http://lettersfromsweden.se/typetester

BTW: The interface does fool me.
The actual lines say »Click to change (the font)«, so I click them and expect to be able to change the text. Then I even see a selection there and - again - expect to be able to type to overwrite that selection. But it doesn't work. I am supposed to use the smaller input field above.

It would probably be more intuitive to make the texts itself changeable.

Göran Söderström

You are supposed to click to change the font, that is how our whole webpage is built at the moment. It’s main purpose is to show all our fonts.

Above there is a box: "Type here..."

But I’m also thinking of updating it to something similar as http://www.mckltype.com/retail/fort/
which I think is an even smoother way of changing both text and fonts.

Ralf H

Sure, I figured it out after a while. It just didn't behave the way I expected it.
If it's live web type anyway, than that MCKL way should be no problem. Having an additional input box was only necessary for bitmap renderings.

If anyone is wondering how that that text scaling is done in Göran’s last link. That's “BigText”. I wrote an article about it a while ago: http://opentype.info/blog/2012/07/05/webtext-100-percent-width/

Ramiro Espinoza

I like it Göran. When I start planning my new website, I will contact you. Thanks.

Rodrigo Saiani

Göran, do you use a webfont generator/exporter on your store? I'm looking for a php solution in this thread
Best
Rodrigo

Göran Söderström

No, I manually craft the webfonts and sell them as regular font files plus send them to our partner Fontdeck who have font hosting service.

Why would you need a generator/exporter?

Rodrigo Saiani

In order for the coders/designers to be able to control the output such as subsetting for example. Do you think that's overkill?

Göran Söderström

A subsetter would surely be nice! We don’t have an automatic one at this moment. Instead we provide it upon request.

But I think the master webfont should be crafted manually first, and that is the main and most important work.

Rodrigo Saiani

Can you describe the process you go through for this (crafting the master webfont)?

Göran Söderström

In short:
- Convert the PS-outlines to TT-outlines
- TT-Hinting (Manual or Half-manual depending of the type of use)
- Stripping OT-features if necessary
- Remove some of the least important kerning pairs to save file size

James Montalbano

Revolutionary

Göran Söderström

Revolutionary

Who said that was revolutionary? Rodrigo asked and I answered how I create a professional webfont from a Postscript source file.

Those kind of comments you just pulled remind me a lot of the bullshit on Typophile.

Rodrigo Saiani

Thanks Göran!

James Puckett

I just deleted a few off topic comments. Please keep the conversation to actual topics of the thread.

Ramiro Espinoza

Just to let you know, guys that Pablo Impallari programmed for me a custom Font Tester with full OT coverage. Warning: It makes use of webfonts (my account in Fontdeck was very useful). But It works and well.

Jackson J Showalter Cavanaugh

But not cross browser then, huh?

PabloImpallari

Thanks Ramiro for commissioning this fun little project!
It was my pleasure to play around with Medusa.

Latest Firefox and Chrome: Full support. Tested.
Latest Safari: Only kern, liga and calt at this moment. Tested. (Hopefully more in the future)
Latest IE10: Full support, at least in theory. Not yet tested.

His main concern was to have 'kern', 'liga' and 'calt' turned on. So, we are covered on that ones.

Rodrigo Saiani

Nice!