Re: Quest text font now available.

From: William Overington (WOverington@ngo.globalnet.co.uk)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 07:35:06 EDT

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    John Hudson wrote as follows.

    > Quite apart from the inappropriateness of this announcement to the Unicode
    list

    It was not inappropriate. The Unicode Consortium includes the following
    page in its webspace.

    http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/resources.html

    There are links to various fonts which support Unicode.

    So, it would seem reasonable to be able to post a notification of the
    existence of another such font to the Unicode list. Perhaps Quest text
    might become listed in that web page. Does one apply or is it by
    invitation?

    > (dozens of fonts are released every month,

    Well, I am not aware of most of them. Where are they listed please? I am
    presently only aware of a few released in April.

    > and there is no need for any of them to be announced in this forum),

    Well, what do you mean by "need"? How much of what is used and enjoyed in
    everyday life is a "need" and how much is just used because it gives
    pleasure. For example, patio furniture, packets of flower seeds, display
    fonts. Quest text is not the first Unicode font to be announced in this
    mailing list. One very good font was announced here some time ago and that
    was how I learned of its existence. That was a very useful post. If the
    scope of posts is drawn too tightly then the scope to learn, and the
    creativity and serendipity of this group will be lost. For example, someone
    posted about The Alphabet Synthesis Machine at http://alphabet.tmema.org and
    that got me interested in how fonts are made. I learned of Bézier curves.
    I studied the mathematics. I wrote an applet to draw them. I found out
    about the Softy program, which is shareware at a reasonable price, and I got
    started with making fonts. Small fonts at first with just a few characters,
    now Quest text is available.

    As far as I know there are very few fonts available with yogh and wynn and
    all of the accents for Welsh. Those of which I am aware are all ordinary
    everyday lettering type of fonts. Most display fonts, such as Old English
    Text and the like only have a few accented characters. So, as far as I know
    at present, Quest text is quite a special font, in that it is a display
    font, a Unicode font and it has various rarer characters, such as thorn,
    ash, eth, yogh, wynn and circled digits, all in their correct Unicode code
    positions. So maybe announcement in this forum is highly appropriate and
    moves the technology forward. Display fonts which have no accents for Welsh
    cannot be used for all Welsh words, so do not have the capabilities of Quest
    text. Maybe other fontmakers will wish to add these characters to their
    fonts, maybe not, that is their choice. However, at present, Quest text is
    a special font with characters which few other fonts have.

    > or the inappropriateness of your design to e.g. typesetting Middle
    English

    Please explain what you mean. As far as I know the required characters are
    all in the font.

    > (or any human language),

    I really would like you to provide reasons as to why Quest text is
    inappropriate to set English or Welsh.

    >your font contains dozens of glyph outline and table errors.

    Well, thank you for that information.

    > I suggest you get your hands on the MS Font Validator*

    Thank you for the suggestion and the link. However, I am using Windows 98
    and that program appears to be for later operating systems.

    > and check your fonts before releasing them to the public.

    Well, I would if I could. I was unaware of such tests or any need for them.
    I am happy to learn. The Quest Text font performs well in Word 97 and
    WordPad on a Windows 98 platform. Any other information on which platforms
    the font is being successfully used will be welcome please. In view of you
    saying that the font has errors, maybe Word 97 and WordPad, or maybe the
    Windows 98 platform, are finding the errors and automatically working round
    them, yet the font looks good in display.

    One email correspondent has pointed out to me that one of the errors to
    which you refer may be due to overlapping two contours in a letter x.

    I have noticed that this can show when using Quest text with WordArt in
    PowerPoint.

    Another email correspondent wrote as follows.

    quote

    Also your font will not show up on a Mac, so I haven't been able to check
    it out. Since normal windows .ttf fonts show up fine, I think there must
    be something missing in yours. Unfortunately I haven't a clue what it
    might be.

    end quote

    I have not any way to respond to that enquiry as I do not use a Mac at all.
    My only testing has been on a PC. I was not aware that TrueType fonts could
    be used on a Mac as various font sites seem to offer some fonts for PCs and
    some fonts for Macs. However, that "not awareness" is only because of my
    lack of knowledge in the matter, not some implication of it not being the
    case.

    Can anyone say anything about this please?

    >I used to have a freeware music program, but it didn't make me a composer.

    Ah.

    Creativity is from the human mind. Pen, paper, clay, paint, musical
    instruments and computer packages can help in expressing that creativity,
    yet do not produce creativity, though the availability of the tools and
    materials can inspire creativity and influence the way in which it is
    expressed.

    To write a song one needs to know what is a rhyme and a rhyming dictionary
    can help in finding rhymes for a specific word, yet the ideas to use such a
    rhyme to invent imagery is a creative process which comes from the mind.

    Many and varied are the ways that creativity can be expressed and each
    person expresses it in his or her own way.

    William Overington

    7 May 2003



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