Hello.
Right away, the ask is: Is there a way to convert this to a TrueType font? Not asking for free, but asking.
Mark Simonson thought I should try to ask my question here--not sure if this is the correct category as I am absolutely NOT a type designer, but am very interested in my font.
In the beginning of CAD (computer aided drafting) there existed a drafting font called 'blockfont.' I find it so interesting and want to convert it to ttf so it doesn't get lost. It is a single stroke font, so going to ttf isn't precisely straight-forward. It is currently in a .fnt file format--but not the one you're probably thinking, not the windows one. This one can be read in a text editor and are (x,y) coordinate pairs. Here is a lowercase 'f'. Part of the charm for me are the straight lines. The file has 135 characters plotted out just like this.
CHAR 'f'
LM 22 31
LD 22 94
LD 25 108
LD 34 119
LD 46 125
LD 61 125
LD 74 119
LD 83 108
LD 86 94
LM 34 73
LD 10 73
If you plotted the (x,y) coordinates in Excel using 'Scatter with Straight Lines and Markers' you will see the letter drawn. You will also see an extra line from the end of the curve of the 'f' to the horizontal line of the 'f'. This would not be drawn--and I suspect the LM 34 73 may read something like 'lift your pen from (86,94) to (34,73).
At the top of the font file are only three other lines:
127, 95, 31, 94,
1, 0, 0, 0,
0.500000, 0.100000, 0.002100,
The first row is the size of the font box grid that all the letters fit in. If you look at the 'f' above, you'll see the bottom of the 'f' is at y=31.
The second row indicates which width type was defined for the character font: 1 is fixed width
The third row are the overlap shifts and will be used only when the overlap width type is selected. I am not sure that applies here...
If you've made it this far, MUCH APPRECIATED. I feel like this is a tractable problem, but I am not clever enough to sort it out.
Comments
I can do it for you in 10 minutes if you provide me with the image.
If the result are not good enough, then John's method is the way to go.
As John says, you will then need to edit it in a font editor to add weight before converting to TTF, as TTF does not allow "open" outlines.
1, 0, 0, 0,
0.500000, 0.100000, 0.002100,
CHAR, ' ',
LM, 0, 0,
CHAR, ' ',
LM, 0, 0,
CHAR, '!',
LM, 48, 59,
LD, 38, 117,
LD, 48, 126,
LD, 57, 117,
LD, 48, 59,
LM, 47, 50,
LD, 38, 40,
LD, 47, 31,
LD, 57, 40,
LD, 48, 50,
The resulting UFO file should have more files in the glyphs/ directory, and you should be able to open it in something like Robofont or Glyphs.
raise PenError("Contour missing required initial moveTo")