TruFont as a complement or...

Thomas Höggren

Hi, I'm brand new to this forum. Happy to find it. Seams to be a pretty good bunch of font neards here. Back in the old days I used Fontographer for producing some fonts, nowdays I use FontForge mostly for correcting glyphs, hints and kerning to the fonts I'm using for the moment. As I am a Webdesigner that love fonts I some days agoo was into a problem that I just have to solve in some way. The problem is/was that I had to use one font for headlines in all the slides of the site. Since the background photos of each slide are different with very various colors the solution was a Outline font with black outline and the body white!!??

Problem at once... the body is transparent as default and this is not possible to achieve in "FontForge" or any vectorbased font design softwares. I got advice in another forum to get "TruFont" which should manage this kind of handling. I have installed and played arround with this new software, I like the simple look and function but I can't find the function for making the font with two colors ?? Can't find any documentation or tutorials either...?

I would be very happy if someone here have answers or ideas how to solve this or how I can find more information/documentation for "TruFont"

Thanks for taking time reading this.
Thomas

Thomas Höggren

Forgot to mension... it's no problem making this in Illustrator and export the headlines and place in the webeditor. I have to update, change and manage this headlines frequently and this is a timeconsuming way.

I solved it for the moment by importing the font in FF and editing...erasing the outline and just keeping the body that now becomes filled. So in the webeditor I Copy the headline and change this copy to the bodyfont I produced and fill this with white and place it beneeth the outline headline... also a little timeconsuming but works for the moment.

And I know I will have this problem later, so I just have to solve this in a better way 

John Hudson

I presume there is a way to make text transparent in CSS?

Thomas Höggren

John Hudson said:

I presume there is a way to make text transparent in CSS?

Hi John, thanks for comment. But I am not looking for doing the text transparent. I shall make a part of it colored (filled) Outline = black, Body = white

Hin-Tak Leung

You mean like this figure or the next one down? The code is in that pull.
https://github.com/rougier/freetype-py/pull/55#issuecomment-298212985

The technical term is perhaps " stroke and fill with two different colors".

Thomas Höggren

"The technical term is perhaps " stroke and fill with two different colors".

The technical term perhaps is other than I speak about... but between designers all knew what the outline and the body of the character is. Aspecially when you talk about a font with a outline. Wonder if this is a correct description:  I want to create a font that has a black stroke and a white fill ??   
Hin-Tak I don't know if this is what you refer to in your link?

John Hudson

If you want an actual font in which each glyph is composed of two colours, even if those colours are black and white, then you need to make a chromatic font in one of the four supported chromatic fonts in the OpenType specification. Since you are probably wanting vector based glyphs, rather than chromatic bitmaps, your options are the COLR/CPAL format or the SVG-in-OpenType format.

But there may be other ways in which to achieve the visual effect you are seeking for text without making such a font.

One way would be to experiment with making two separate fonts — one with the outline shape and one with the fill shape — and overlapping them using CSS, e.g. two identical text strings in two separate divs layered one on top of the other. That method has the benefit that, like in a chromatic font, you would be controlling the outline in the glyph design stage.

An easier method, but perhaps one that isn't visually acceptable, would be to outline and fill the text directly in CSS, i.e. have just one font, representing the fill to be coloured white, and apply a black outline in CSS.

Thomas Höggren

Thanks John. Your comments making sence to me. I shall dive little deeper into this.
Feels like I'm on the right track making two fonts for the different content...
Muchas Gracias

Hin-Tak Leung

The action of drawing on the outline (only) of a shape is called stroke/stroking, and the action of filling the interior of a shape with a color is called full. These are graphic design terms, I think. AFAIK, even microsoft Word has such "text effect" choices.

Btw, just below the url I posted is the svg example - of converting glyph shapes to svg. You can then edit it with your favorite vector graphics editor (adobe illustrator or inkscape). 

Thomas Höggren

Ok Hin-Tak, shall look at your url again... first time didn't make much sence to me I'm no programmer so this kind of info has to be overlooked several times.

By the way... no one is in to "TruFont"?? Got advice that I could fix this things directly in that software...

Nikolaus Waxweiler

TruFont is a font design program just like FontForge. If you can't do something in FontForge, you can't do it in TruFont. I guess the others pointed you in the right direction already.

John Hudson

TruFont is a font design program just like FontForge. If you can't do something in FontForge, you can't do it in TruFont. 

I wouldn't presume that. My understanding is that part of the impetus for the development of TruFont was to move beyond the limitation of the moribund FontForge development. Certainly, not all font design programs have equal capabilities.

Thomas Höggren

John Hudson said:

TruFont is a font design program just like FontForge. If you can't do something in FontForge, you can't do it in TruFont. 

I wouldn't presume that. My understanding is that part of the impetus for the development of TruFont was to move beyond the limitation of the moribund FontForge development. Certainly, not all font design programs have equal capabilities.

Yes John, thanks. That's why I downloaded "TruFont". Looks and feals quite neat. But it's a little early to judge... some bugs and some more functions to handle.

Thomas Phinney

Fundamentally, normal, old-school black-and-white fonts have two colors: fill (which is black by default in most usage, but can be set to another color in most apps) and empty (which is the background color).

There have been reversed fonts before in normal font formats, and while they do create complications (for kerning, for instance), they work. But fundamentally they are done with transparent letters and a black area around the letter shape.

That is all that is technically possible in normal/classic font formats.

John explains well how color fonts work in the new color-variant formats.

Thomas Höggren

Thanks Thomas. Yes Johns explanation is well done. I shall look into this different advices. Just looking for time... 

Was also wondering if someone knew something about "TruFont"? It's hard to find any information

Nikolaus Waxweiler

I wouldn't presume that. My understanding is that part of the impetus for the development of TruFont was to move beyond the limitation of the moribund FontForge development. Certainly, not all font design programs have equal capabilities.

I meant to say that TruFont is a font editor like FontForge is, the latter being more featureful at the moment. If the op can't do what he wants in FontForge, he won't (currently) be able to do it in TruFont.

Was also wondering if someone knew something about "TruFont"? It's hard to find any information

It's a font editor early in development. Nothing about it is quite finished, but you can use it to do basic font editing.

Disclaimer: I work on minor parts of TruFont from time to time.

Thomas Höggren

Gracias Nikolaus. Is it to much to ask which parts you use "TruFont" for... As I experience it's very limited. But sure will be filled up because it has more possibillities in the programming... or?
I will sure follow the development progress.

Dave Crossland

Thomas, you'll need to port RoboChrome from RoboFont to TruFont. 

Thomas Höggren

Dave Crossland said:

Thomas, you'll need to port RoboChrome from RoboFont to TruFont. 

Thanks Dave. Shall look into that and see what I can do... not familiar with "RoboFont"

Thomas Höggren

Dave Crossland said:

Thomas, you'll need to port RoboChrome from RoboFont to TruFont. 

Hi again Dave... looked at RoboFont and got a problem directly... it's just for Mac. I'm a Windows user so that was it... 

Nikolaus Waxweiler

@Thomas Höggren: I contributed a few bug fixes. There is a lot more that can be done, but development is glacial at the moment.

I had the same non-Mac problem though. It's a shame that this is the main barrier to entry to font design. The only apps worth their weight are Mac-only Maybe Trufont can get the non-Mac-job done one day.

Thomas Höggren

Nikolaus Waxweiler said:

Maybe Trufont can get the non-Mac-job done one day.

We hope for that Nikolaus. Worked with Mac from 1985 - 2000. Changed because Windows was ahead and at least half the price for both softwares and hardware 

John Hudson

The only apps worth their weight are Mac-only.

@Erwin Denissen's Font Creator is often overlooked — maybe because it's Windows-only   —, but it is a good tool, and was one of the very first with colour font support.

I'm still using FontLab Studio 5 on Windows on a daily basis, and FontLab VI is being developed for both Mac and Windows.

Thomas Höggren

John Hudson said:

The only apps worth their weight are Mac-only.

@Erwin Denissen's Font Creator is often overlooked — maybe because it's Windows-only   —, but it is a good tool, and was one of the very first with colour font support.

Thanks John. Font Creator seams to be a good alternative. Didn't know it had the future for colored fonts. Has to check out how it works with webfonts...
Not so expensive either... 

Nikolaus Waxweiler

FontLab 5 seems like something I don't want to use, 6 appears to be much better though (the feature page has my mouth watering). It however remains in development with no release date I can find. I can't find any info on UFO support for FontCreator, that's a dealbreaker. And the UFO format isn't even that good. This leaves only Glyphs, with RoboFont as a specialist tool.

Thomas Höggren

John Hudson said:

"I'm still using FontLab Studio 5 on Windows on a daily basis, and FontLab VI is being developed for both Mac and Windows."

John... wonder if "Fontlab Studio supports colored fonts??

Ray Larabie

FontLab's TransType can generate color fonts in various formats using TTF, OTF or VFB( FontLab) layers in as input. But currently there are some critical bugs that prevent them from being commercially releasable so I'm waiting for a new version—probably 2020 or 2021.

Thomas Höggren

Thanks Ray... shall download the trial version and test. I'm not doing any commercial font. Just for my own design, so it's worth testing. Do you know what happens when you generate webfonts from a colored font? When I'm doing webdesign I use the formats; .woff, .eot, .svg and .ttf. The .ttf font is mostly just a placeholder for the other formats.

Can't wait to 2020 or 2021 

Just free trial for Mac... so I skip it for now 

jeremy tribby

Does the FontLab VI preview not support color fonts? It's been a while since I've played with it, not sure how far along actual support is

jeremy tribby

@Thomas Höggren I was curious so just confirmed it on the Mac version of the VI preview. It's preview software, which comes with caveats, but the Windows version allegedly works, too

There's a support article about what I believe is exactly the type of font you're talking about? http://help.fontlab.com/fontlab-vi/Color-Outlines/

Thomas Höggren

Thanks Jeremy... that was uplifting, then FontLab VI is the solution for now. Will give it a try.