Understanding Fonts

Free Software Meeting in Guatemala City: Photos

Dave Crossland — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:09:01 +0000

Here are some photos by Sebastian Oliva of the informal type sketching workshop Dave did in Guatemala City last weekend:

http://labs.sebastianoliva.com/gallery/main.php/v/FSM_2012-02-04/

(They are Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licensed)

Events in Guatemala

Dave Crossland — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:30:02 +0000

Download Poster PDF

UPDATE: 2012-01-04 NEW SCHEDULE FOR USAC BELOW (NUEVO HORARIO PARA LA USAC)

Dave Crossland will be doing lectures and workshops in 4 locations in Guatemala:

Sábado 4 TEC z4
15:30 – 17:30 Conferencia: Why free fonts? (¿Por qué las fuentes libres?)

Martes 7 Universidad Rafael Landivar (URL), Auditorium
17:30 – 19:00 Conferencia: Libre Type Culture (La Cultura Tipográfica Libre)

Miércoles 8 Universidad Rafael Landivar (URL)
07:00 – 09:00 Conferencia: Free Culture Law (Las Leyes de la Cultura Libre)

Miércoles 8 University of San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC) Facultad de Arquitectura
15:00 – 16:30 Conferencia: Libre Type Culture (La Cultura Tipográfica Libre)
17:00 – 19:30 Type Sketching Workshop (Tipo de Dibujo Taller)

Fonts cannot be shared and when they do not work right, you are not allowed to fix them. Making your own typefaces is
a black art, hidden in mystery.

A long time ago software pro-grams were the same, but the free software movement has freed the knowledge, the tools,
and the business of software.

Now it is time to free fonts. Dave Crossland reveals how to design typefaces using only libre software—and how to earn money doing it.

Las tipografías privativas no se pueden compartir, y cuando están mal, no se pueden componer. Hacer tu propia tipografía es un arte oscuro y envuelto en misterio.

Tiempo atrás el software solía ser igual, pero el movimiento del software libre liberó el conocimiento, las herramientas y el negocio del software.

Ahora es tiempo de liberar la tipografía. Dave Crossland revelara como diseñar tipografías, utilizando software libre y haciendo dinero con ellas.

Para asistir al evento, el correo electrónico de dave@understandingfonts.com

Generic Poster for 2012 Events

Dave Crossland — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:13:36 +0000

I have made a new generic poster for upcoming events in 2012. It can be easily printed and photocopied as it is made in Libre Office (ODF) format.

Download the PDF and the complete sources (ODF + Fonts)

It is in English, but please feel free to translate it. A Portuguese translation was made for the events at the University of Aveiro by Pedro Amado. Thanks Pedro!

Typography in Chile

Dave Crossland — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:22:26 +0000

Chile Tipográfico – english subtitles from Krft.tv on Vimeo.

Marco Avilez kindly sent me a link to this great little documentary about typography in Chile

Caldas Workshop Photos

Dave Crossland — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:18:33 +0000

Ricardo Santos has kindly uploaded some photos from the type sketching workshop at Escola Superior de Artes e Design last week in Caldas da Rainha.

Thanks to Ruben, Ricardo and Natanael for inviting me to do the workshop!

Workshops in Portugal, January 2012

Dave Crossland — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:42:15 +0000

Dave Crossland will be running 2 type sketching workshops in Portugal this month, one at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design in Caldas da Rainha (ESAD CR) on Thursday 5th January and one at the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro (DeCA) on Monday 9th January (more details here). Please email dave@understandinglimited.com if you are interested in these events as spaces are limited and attendance is gratis

Typography extensions in Inkscape 0.49

Felipe Sanches — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:55:54 +0000

We’ve been prototyping typography features for better integrating Inkscape with FontForge. Today I have published on YouTube a screencast of the current version of these extensions. The extensions are scheduled for release in the upcoming Inkscape version 0.49.

The basic workflow is split in 3 steps (with one Inkscape extension for each step):

1) Setup Typography Canvas
Using this extension you can define the general metrics of the font you’re designing and have the Inkscape canvas properly setup: the paper size is adjusted to 1024×1024 units and guidelines for baseline, x-height, caps-height, ascender and descender are created.

2) Add glyph layer
Now you can design your first glyph. Each time you are satisfied with a glyph you can use the second extension to create a “glyph layer”, move the selection to the newly created layer and auto-hide it so that you have a clean canvas to work on your next glyph. You can, of course, at any moment toggle the visibility of any of your previous glyphs at the layers dialog so that you can either tweak it or use it as a reference while you are designing other glyphs.

3) Converting to SVG Font
Once you’ve designed all of your desired glyphs, you’ll have to use this third extension to convert the glyph layers to the SVGFont format, which is what FontForge is capable of dealing with.

After these 3 steps you can save your SVG document and load it in FontForge to continue the typography work.

Please leave a comment on this blog post with suggestions about how this could work better for you, or if you have any questions about what you can do to help move development of this tool forwards!

Video-demo of the Measurement Tool in upcoming Inkscape 0.49

Felipe Sanches — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:52:25 +0000

Libre Graphics World has published an article covering the new Inkscape Measurement Tool that we (Felipe Sanches and Dave Crossland) have been working on. It is planned to be included in the upcoming Inkscape 0.49 release.

Their nice video demonstrating our new feature is embedded here but be sure to read their article too.

Preview of the new Inkscape Measuring Tool

Dave Crossland — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:22:35 +0000

Felipe Sanches has been working on a new Inkscape Measuring Tool, and here is a preview of its current state:

Announcing GNOME Screencast

Felipe Sanches — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 01:27:34 +0000

While developing typography features in Inkscape, we (Felipe Sanches and Dave Crossland) decided to approach the task by gathering input from our user-base, based on user experience studies. We want to record the users trying out the new features we are working on and based on these recordings, figure out which aspects in our software needs further improvement. We tried to use all of the free software screencasting tools we found, but none was good enough for the task. The best one we found is part of GNOME Shell, but still need some improvement.

Up to now we added webcam support to the GNOME Shell Recorder (a core component of GNOME 3) and implemented a DBUS API for it so that it can be configured and triggered by other applications. And we are starting to work on GNOME Screencast, a new tool for GNOME 3.4, similar to GNOME Screenshot, that will allow the user to configure the screencasting parameters and start/stop a recording. More details are available in the GNOME bug tracker in the bugs 660203 (core screencasting functionality) and 661426 (GNOME Screencast tool).

Features for GNOME Screencast planned to be implemented before January 1st include cursor highlighting, so that the mouse pointer visibility in the screencast recording is enhanced by rendering a transparent coloured circle around it. We’ll also optionaly render a graphical representation of cursor and keyboard events such as mouse clicks and key strokes, respectively, which will be useful for the audience to better understand what goes on in the input devices in a given screencast.

This is an example of a screencast recorded with the current development versions of GNOME Screencast and GNOME Shell: