Hi Jon,

I have heard about OS X’s pixel-font hostile antics. If I understand, you have created outline-style TrueType pixel fonts, similar to those used by Flash designers, for a Mac-centric audience.

If these bitmap fonts are immune to the OS X problem, it will confirm TrueType/OpenType outlines as the system-independent bitmap font medium of choice. Ironic, but great.

FontLab+FlashFonter can convert old Mac fonts into the ‘flash pixel font’ style. How did you do it?

BTW, I’d like to try your e-World font on my Win2K system. Would you post the OS X TrueType in a .zip file.
?
-chris

Embedding a “true” bitmap font into a TT shell is not enough — MacOS doesn’t like those either. Especially not grayscale ones, which can cause even pre-X systems to perform a major flaming crash! Ironically, everything used to work seamlessly before System-8.

The only way -like Chris says- is to make an outline font that behaves like a bitmap font at one specific size. These are generally called pixelfonts (with some nice automation indeed provided by Pyrus), and the great news is they can be grayscale too (blowing away any other font rendering method).

hhp

Jon, I erroneously assumed you were the developer. thanks for posting the heads up.

I have seen ‘pixelfonts’ working on Mac OS X. Is it true that these fonts have actual bitmaps embedded, not bitmap-shaped outlines?

-chris

Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to the forums for awhile.

Christopher: no problem, my message did read like an announcement. I remain mystified by font behaviour on OS X. I have downloaded these fonts from pixelhaus but I haven’t installed or tried them yet.

I currently have two bitmap fonts on my OS X system, one which can be used and one not. I am going to compare them to these from pixelhaus (just downloaded) to see what happens.

BTW if you require a .zip file because you can’t open a .sit file here’s a utility to open .sit files on Windows.

Hrant: you seem to be making a distinction between bitmap fonts and pixelfonts and I must confess my ignorance. Are you saying pixelfont==a bitmap font with no outlines in a TrueType shell? And “true” or real bitmap font is one that has no outline, nor does it require one to be rendered to the screen? Is that the gist of what you are saying?

I’ll try to keep you posted.

Jon

> distinction between bitmap fonts and pixelfonts

It’s not like the terminology is solid, but there are three kinds of screen-optimized fonts:
1) The superhinted stuff, like the MS core fonts. These have no bitmap data — they have special code (“instructions”) to perform funky distortions to the outlines which makes them render out as nice bitmaps at each size. These are always 1-bit (b&w) in practice, although: it’s actually possible to superhint for grayscale rendering — it just seems to be too much work; and above certain PPEM sizes grayscaling is enabled, essentially because the rendering algorithm no longer needs much hand-holding.
2) What are generally called pixelfonts, which are regular outline fonts that have blocky forms that map to a specific pattern at a given size. These can be 1-bit (b&w) or more recently grayscale.
3) “True” bitmap fonts, which contain actual bitmap data, either as stand-alone files (like FON, or the old Mac NFNT stuff), or embedded in TT fonts which may or may not have outlines too. These can also be grayscale in theory, but it’s hard to make them work on Windows, and since System8 MacOS has flaming-crashed if you try to use one. Sad.

Although #3 in its embedded flavor is the most elegant (not least because it provides a nice separation between print and screen rendering), it’s looking like you want to avoid it, especially on the Mac (although doing 1-bit versions for Windows is great*). And even #1 is being demoted on the Mac since Panther seems to ignore hinting. So #2 is looking great overall — even if they try the OS makers will have trouble preventing it from working.

* http://www.themicrofoundry.com/f_arasan.html

Then there’s ClearType, which is a different kettle of fish. Technically it’s possible to apply any of the above three classes to CT (except maybe not the grayscale flavor of #2) but I’ve yet to see anybody actually do it.

hhp

Thanks Hrant. So what I have from pixelhaus is what you classify as #3 judging by the way that Dave at pixelhaus describes it (see above). I have installed the McMurdo font onto my system and here’s the deal:

1. The system runs fine.
2. TextEdit can use the font just fine. Omni Graffle can use it just fine. Both display great at 7pts. No AA. Illustrator doesn’t know it exists. Photoshop can see it and use it. Applies AA if you want it too though you can say none and it displays as expected.
3. FontBook can see that there’s a font there and despite what Dave at pixelhaus indicates I can see a preview of it.
4. Font Book crashes if I try to ‘manage’ the font in any way by adding it to a font collection. The system stays okay.
5. TypeTool has nothing to open. It doesn’t crash, it just thinks it’s opened everything there is to open, but nothing there for it.

Screenshots (sorry for the haloing):
Here’s TextEdit with text in McMurdo and McMurdo selected in the Font Panel:


And here’s Font Book showing a preview:


So that’s my experience so far. More soon.

Jon