What is Reddit's opinion of Type light?

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I used TypeLight to make my abugida. Honestly, I just spent hours upon hours playing with it and adjusting the measurements. I really don't know how to explain it except for "move the green line to the 0 and plot your diacritics to the left of the 0 so that when you type your diacritics, they appear over the glyph before them." (If there's another redditor out there who can explain that better, please do.)

All I know for certain is that it's possible. I know because I've done it.

Best of luck. :)

So I can't help you with Fontforge, I ran in to similar problems and found it far too complicated for me. However, I made a font for my conscript that I'm pretty darn happy with (all things considered, though it's not as perfect as it is on paper) with the following two methods:

First, creating basic letter patters in Fontstruct. Fontstruct is really, really easy to use and makes a great base/template. The only problem is it is So limited. So I wasn't done there. After I made the base, I downloaded my font from there and put it into Typelight.

Typelight is free software that is harder to use than Fontstruct, but still fairly intuitive. It's main problem seems to be creating things from scratch (which can be a pain). So Instead, I used it to augment my letters from Fontstruct. The result was a pretty good font. :)

So in short: I used fontstruct for base, then did touch-up and other edits in Typelight.

Well, if you can also go to CR8 Software and download Type Light 3.2. Its freeware, its available for Windows (there is a for pay version that also runs under OS/X and Linux as well as Windows, called Type 3.2 - it has more features but I haven't bought it yet to find out exactly what differences there are). It lets you produce a truetype font.

It takes some experimentation to get used to it, but its pretty easy to use and quite similar to using a vector drawing program like Inkscape if I recall correctly. I certainly haven't found it hard to use. Its let me produce a few attempts at various styles of font.

This is the final one that I am using at the moment. Here is some sample text.

A good program that you can download to your computer is TypeLight. It takes a couple of hours to learn and get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it works pretty well. It's what I use for all of my conscripts.

Okay I sent the fonts and docs to you via PM.

As for what I have done. Hmm. I created these using Type Light 3.2 - which is for Windows and which is the limited version. There is an upgrade called Type from the same people that costs around $65 I believe. I have it and it does add some nice features that limit the free version, but I have since purchased Fontlab Studio so I haven't been using Type of late.

In essence what I did was look for a public domain copy of a historical font. Then I load it up into Type (or Type Light etc and manually copy each glyph that I like to a position that I like. Essentially I move them around, repurpose them etc. In the case of Avbackwards I also reversed each glyph so that it could be written from left to right. When I am missing a sound I want, I just steal it from some glyph that isn't being used by me otherwise. So if you compare the values I have assigned for the Avestan script to the originals on Omniglot say, you will notice a difference everywhere.

Now, you can find a lot of the glyphs you want in Unicode as well, which means you can use the default font in your font editor, and just switch to the unicode setting then start rooting through to see what spaces it is using. Looking up the font and its unicode ranges might be a good idea to simplify the process. Then rip, remap etc.

Hope that helps.

Ah, if your inside shapes are filled, then its a matter of selecting the inside line and reversing the contour. Contours must be going in opposite directions to work properly.

If Fontforge is causing you major pain, and you are running Windows, you might try using Type Light 3.2 - its easier to use for editing. Now, I don't know if it will allow you to import your glyphs, but at worst it might let you more easily recreate them. Its free, but limited. When I started out that is what I started with. Since then I have switched to the Mac and bought Fontlab Studio. If you like Type Light and have a few bucks you can upgrade to Type which has more features and costs around $60 US if I recall correctly.

Mostly Type Light 3.2 - which is for Windows and is Free but with some limitations (there is an upgrade to a full version called Type which I will be purchasing shortly), but also FontForge which is Open Source. The former is pretty easy to adapt to with some practice, the later is extremely complex (to say the least) but can do just about anything.

Glad you like the look, it was fun to work on.

I use Type Light 3.2 - it has its limits, because there is a paid version ($65 USD I believe) that has all the features. Its working quite well for me, its easy and fairly intuitive to use. It doesn't do ligatures in the Free version sadly, and that is one area I really want to master.

I have just been playing with Birdfont as well. Its new, its still in development and its a bit odd to use because it doesn't use a standard windows interface and the documentation is minimal (mostly just some videos that are not that well produced). It does appear to do ligatures fairly easily - except I can't get them to work outside of the program :P

And of course I use FontForge - this version has worked very well for me, earlier versions failed completely and crashed a lot. (Actually I see I need to upgrade mine to a newer version). Fontforge is Opensource and does absolutely everything. It is cryptic, powerful and confusing as hell most of the time. I generally build something in Type Light and then move a copy to FontForge when I want to start playing with ligatures again.

If I can get Birdfont working with regards to ligatures I will do them there in the future, the process in Fontforge is very convoluted to say the least.

I also have a copy of Fontographer thats old but has the license information for it, and I hope at some point to see if I can buy the upgrade version of Fontographer using that license. This will save me around $400 USD if I recall correctly. I may purchase the upgrade version of Type Light in the meantime. Making conscripts is something I can't see myself tiring of anytime soon :P

Awesome, always glad to try another font program. Fontforge is definitely a challenge to figure out, I am still working on it. User-unfriendly to say the least, although admittedly the subject is more than extremely complex.

You might also check out Type Light 3.2 which I have been using successfully for creating conscripts. It is limited and there is an upgraded version available for (I think) $65 USD, but its a very well designed program and worth checking out. I will Birdfont out as soon as I get the chance though.

Why do you need a tutorial to install software? What system are you using? What exactly is not working for you... please give a reasonable amount of information or nobody will be able to help you.

Go to the website of Typelight (Windows or Unixoid), download the appropiate file and install the program as you would normally.

Allow me to recommend Type Light 3.2. Its free, it is limited in a number of ways, but it is possible to easily make a Conscript using it. The registered version called Type is something like $65 US (and there is a free 30 day trial of it, it has a lot more features than the free Light version naturally).

What I have done so far is make my fonts in Type Light, then if I want to do some ligatures, load it up into FontForge and follow the online instructions for creating a ligature or substitution. I find FontForge to be extremely complex and not that well or clearly documented, but it is a great program.

By monkeying with the shape of my glyphs I have made several fonts that overlap glyphs so that they appear to be joined. I have made a few ligatures so far, but they are unevenly supported in Windows software (to say the least). Now, for ease of use, because I am lazy, I have mapped my fonts to 1252 Latin 1, so that I don't have to switch keyboard layouts every time when I am using them in a document that is otherwise written in English. As a result I don't need to learn a whole new keyboard layout as well, and as a touch typist of more than 20 years practice, I don't really relish the idea of learning new layouts :P

Examples of my Conscripts - note that the last three (Kophtikas, Phagspa90 and Avbackwards are all adaptations of historical natlang scripts). In both Dzerbes and Ashuadi vowels attach to the previous consonant. In Ashuadi, syllables are clustered in fact, so that even a following consonant is attached to the previous consonant+vowel pair. All of these were created with Type Light 3.2.

Edit: the sample text is just a sentence in Hittite that I encountered during my research into my Conlang. I don't have enough of my Conlang developed to produce actual sentences worth using in an example yet.