Hi everyone,
if you type geeks have time (5 mins max.) to fill my PhD. survey on Font QA, I would be very grateful.
I'm (hopefully) starting PhD. on Bratislava university VSVU in Autumn 2021 and I'm kicking off with short survey on how people in font industry think of QA and the tools available these days. My goal is to do extensive research in this field and prepare new on-line tool that help independent designers to produce better fonts. One of the main reasons is also that many of the tools are only usable by programmers, for people outside this bubble it's rather hard to get any working. This new tool should be very easy to use and give human readable response what should be fixed.
Here it is:
https://forms.gle/8o4xRninh82EHnzPAThanks a lot for your time.
Comments
True, although more status-quo mutual backscratching.
I certainly admire Jan’s transparency, but I was just pointing out that his appeal was not very appealing.
I find this the only aproach to build this tool - scientific, backed up with specs, there should be no room for assumptions or personal taste.
The tool won't fix anything, it will just give you a report, so you still need a person, who will fix it. On easy level fixing missing glyphs, I don't really consider FE work, and on higher levels you still need expertise to fix it anyway. I see this tool as oportunity to get rid of everyday boring, repetetive tasks to do something more interesting, or to at least finish more in less time. Also it will offer much more consistency in your output.
Do you need to get to know all about photographic process to use camera? Do you need to know how every piece of car is working to drive it? You still give it to technician, right? And some people won't, they fix all by themselves and build their tools. And some people will share their tools public, so others don't have to figgure it by themselves. I'm for democratization and opensource I don't mind sharing.
Do you test your fonts before you export them from Font SW or after?
Both, but this is not an option. (Assume that “SW” = “software”)
Do you use internal / external QA tools?
I would bet that >90% of those who use internal QA tools ALSO use external QA tools.
Ok, good point, I changed these to checkboxes. Thanks!
For instance when using Wakamai Fondue, you load the site once, and then the communication with the internet stops. You use the font locally, on your own machine. You can load up wakamaifondue.com, unplug your internet router, and still use the site al day. So if you're allowed to use the font for anything on your own computer, you're allowed to drop it in the fondue. (The current version has basic Google Analytics, but not regarding any font you drop, and the beta doesn't and will not have GA anymore.)
So reservations against online tools are understandable but aren't necessarily justified. If you're worried about data collection or breaking NDAs or EULAs, I presume Adobe software is just as scary, but probably ignored since it's not seen as an "online tool" :-)