Recommend a free font creation software or free trial?

[DesignStudio]

So I'm interested in creating a font for a project. I've thought about doing this several times in the past, but I'd like to try it out before I buy it out. Does anyone know of a free font creation software that's decent? Or can someone recommend a program they use that maybe has a free trial I can play with to see if I want to purchase the full version? Is there an industry standard for this? Any help from the typography gurus would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

[WannaBrie]

Fontographer has a free trial, I think. Maintype puts out one called Fontcreator, that I tried. It was pretty intuitive. A lot easier than I thought it would be. I think its pretty inexpensive as well. I have Maintype and it was only $40. Here's a link:

http://www.high-logic.com/download.html

Its only good for windoze, tho.

[DesignStudio]

Yeah I have a Mac, and I'm not running windows on it currently. I'll check out the others and see if they'll work on my platform. Thanks,

[urstwile]

If you can find a demo of Fontographer, I'd highly recommend it. I used to use it a long time ago, and it was very good. Not sure what the current incarnation is like, however.

[gentlepurespace]

fontforge is free, I've never used it though

[DesignStudio]

So I've downloaded and am trying to use fontographer. Almost every tutuorial or guide I can find says not to waste your time with the fontographer tools, rather create the characters in illustrator or freehand and paste them in.

So I started this process, but I can't seem to get the path to paste correctly from Illustrator or Photoshop into fontographer. Urste, if you've used it did you try this? Any suggestions?

[urstwile]

It's been a really long time since I used it, DS, but yes, that's precisely what I used the program for. It was a very long time ago, perhaps something in the way you have your Illustrator clipboard prefs set up? And I never pasted anything in from Photoshop.

Where did you download the trial from? I'd be willing to give it a try to help you figure it out. I tried Google yesterday, but the Fontlab site was apparently down at the time, is that where you downloaded it from?

[DesignStudio]

I'll have to take a quick look, I can't remember where I downloaded it from. Thanks in advance for the help.

If I add a fill to the compound path in Illustrator, then a light grey fill appears in fontographer, but I can't get the path to copy and paste nicely.

Edit: I just did a google search and I can't find any sites that look familiar with fontographer for free download. I'll have to go through my history and see if I can find the page. It looks like I only downloaded a demo version though, so I'm not sure what kind of limitations that's going to have, if I'll even be able to save and install my fonts.

[urstwile]

Looks like Fontlab's back up, so I'm going to download the demo. I can't promise I'll know the answer to the problem though, it's been a very long time since I used it. I wonder if I can still upgrade from my old serial number, though? That'd be sweet. :)

[DesignStudio]

Thanks for trying either way, I appreciate the help. I gave it a solid go for an hour and was getting pretty aggrivated- especially since for some reason I couldn't access the forum today so I couldn't ask for help.

[urstwile]

Happy to help if I can, and who knows, I may just end up upgrading. I haven't launched the program since I switched to Tiger, and also because I had much less need to use it than I used to.

[urstwile]

So I just tried what you described, pasting a compound path into a character in Fontographer. Initially, I saw just the outlines of the path, without a fill. Going to the Element menu, and then choosing selection info, I changed the tint % to 100% and it looks like I wanted it to.

Does that sound like it might relate to what you're trying to accomplish?

EDIT: Okay, you're not filling the compound path with something other than black are you? Because Fontographer doesn't do that. It's either fill with black or create a Type 3 font, which is an old font format that is probably not even much supported anywhere.

[DesignStudio]

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I filled the compound path with black (I'm starting with "A"). I copied it and pasted it, but got only a very rough aproximation of the fill, and not the path. When I tried copying and pasting without the fill, I get nothing. I have the settings set so that points show up, and my tint is to 100%. Did you simply copy and paste? I also tried option copy, option paste, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

[urstwile]

I did just a copy and paste, yes. Here's two screenshots, one before I adjusted the tint % to 100% and one after I adjusted it. Is it possible that your path isn't fully closed somehow?

Before adjusting tint %:
http://i31.tinypic.com/33a6hld.jpg

After adjusting tint %:

http://i31.tinypic.com/34zxa9d.jpg

[DesignStudio]

Here's what I'm starting with in Illustrator, and what I'm ending up with in fontographer. Still not sure what I'm doing wrong?
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/1600/picture4sd8.png
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7858/picture6bj7.png

[urstwile]

Is it possible there's another color in there besides black? That's the kind of preview I got when I pasted in something colored other than black.

[DesignStudio]

So I've been trying this font creation more, and still no luck. I'm checking the tint like you mentioned. When I have the fill set at black, I get the grey jagged edges posted above. When I have no fill, nothing is pasting, not even the points or path outlines. Any other ideas urst? Either way thanks for the help so far.

[urstwile]

The only other thing I can think of is something to do with the winding order perhaps? Are you pasting it in as a compound path? Have you tried reversing the winding order in Illustrator before you paste in your character?