Perfected TrueType font images

Sat Oct 11 14:39:11 UTC 2014

SignWriting List
October 11, 2014

Hello Steve, Adam and everyone -

Congratulations, Steve, on accomplishing this important step forward, and thank you for your acknowledgment of the hard work that came before - Thank you, Adam, for all you did years ago to make the original SVG images - it was indeed a huge job…and without that work we would not be where we are today.

Right now it is a little hard for non-programmers to grasp what this means. Steve and I had a long conversation on Skype yesterday and I asked a bunch of “lay person” questions, and I hope someday to create a transcript of Steve’s answers because it is important information…

In summary, these new TrueType fonts work together - there are two of them - Line and Fill. The Line TT font includes all the symbols without the white fill for the palm facing and arrowheads, and the Fill TT font gives us the white fill for the palm facing and arrowheads. The two fonts are then combined to work together with CSS - Cascading Style Sheets - within software encoding.

I learned that SVG is much more than just good looking graphics - I did not realize until yesterday that SVG is also a way to position symbols above each other or below each other - so the two fonts work together, with SVG, to give us complete SignWriting, but with TrueType that does many things for us…It gives us a way to display symbols in Unicode version 8 that is coming out in 2015, and it gives us a new way to use Steve’s FSW (Formal SignWriting encoding method) that we are using right now in SignPuddle and the Wikipedias…For the Wikipedia articles, for example, it will provide the same articles, looking just as sharp, but the files will be reduced from large-size files to very small files - so the TrueType will actually reduce files from let’s say 32mb to very very small ___K.

And Steve told me that these fonts can be installed in our desktop computers and used to write email in some cases - but I don’t think it is ready for that yet ;-)

So Stefan, these are not the TrueType fonts of yesterday….Your TT Fonts made with Fontographer or FontLab are very beautiful - These TTFonts are web-based in Open Font Technology…it is a new way of using TrueType that in the long run is very valuable for all SignWriting users -

Thanks again Steve, for all the long hours you have worked, and are working, as well...

And I hope you all are doing well - I think of you all every day -

Val ;-)

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On Oct 11, 2014, at 7:12 AM, Stephen E Slevinski Jr <slevin at SIGNPUDDLE.NET> wrote:

> Hi Val and Adam and SignWriting List,
> 
> I believe I have perfected the TrueType outlines for the entire SignWriting symbol set.
> 
> Here's the amazing picture that shows the details.
> 
> <jafggfgc.png>
> 
> I know that people want SignWriting to just work, but there are a lot of details behind the scenes that people never see.  The simple picture above represents incalculable hours of work and dedication.
> 
> The amount of time Valerie Sutton has worked on the SignWriting fonts is mind boggling.  She has worked, reworked, and persevered.  Her original PNG files are available in the SignWriting 2010 Fonts.
> 
> The amount of time Adam Frost spent tracing the pixelated PNG images by hand spans several years.  I will be forever grateful to Adam for his hard work, knowledge, and insight.  The SVG Refinement is also available in the SignWriting 2010 Fonts.
> 
> From the SVG refinement, I was able to retrace 2 new SVG versions of the font.  From the new SVG versions, I was able to create image perfect TrueType fonts.  There are very slight differences between the SVG and TTF, but they are extremely minor. 
> 
> I still need to adjust the margins for the TrueType fonts, but I think we're good on the image quality for all of the individual symbol glyphs.  I will be reviewing the demo pages to make sure we don't have any remaining issues.
> 
> The 2 TrueType fonts are available in the SignWriting 2010 Fonts project.
> https://github.com/Slevinski/signwriting_2010_fonts#downloads-and-log-reports
> 
> The demo pages are available online or for download.
> http://signpuddle.net/iswa/demo/
> 
> Additionally, I have figured out how to create 2-dimensional signs with TrueType glyphs and SVG positioning.  The conversion from Formal SignWriting strings to SVG is simple and powerful.  I will be adding examples to the demo pages soon.
> 
> Regards,
> ∼Steve
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> 
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> 
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