CharImages Font Maker

[Nobuyuki]

Here it is, finally, the first release version of CharImages Font Maker (.NET Edition).



Original Features:

• Variable Width support
• Full Alpha channel support
• TrueType and OpenType fonts (no raster fonts, sorry! )
• Fine Anti-aliasing and subpixel support, including ClearType
• Floating-point Font Rotation
• Drop Shadow, Font Outline, and Vertical Gradient effects
• Hatch Overlays (over 50 hatch overlays built-in, including halftones)
• Bounding Box colors and toggle
• Background Checkerboard light/dark toggle

Well, on top of all what you guys were expecting, what else could I do to sweeten the pot? If CharImages were to one day support Unicode, would CIFM be able to handle it?



Why, certainly. And, so that you're not left out in the cold, either, I've even added a little thing to import Unicode character mappings.



The only thing that isn't fully supported yet is Unicode 6.0, so no Emoji for now, sorry :C

But wait, there's more....

All-New Features:
[list][*] Full Unicode support[*] Quick ASCII mappings[*] Commandline file import[*] FontMaker profile definitions

What's that last feature? It's a nice little thing that lets you save your work on a particular font so that you can come back to it later. This is an incredible boon for those of us who need to generate a large number of aliases with slight variations in the future without losing one's work. These can even be loaded from the commandline, so you can associate *.cifm files with this application to quick-load them. You can also share settings this way, although everyone has to have the font installed in order to see it properly....

Please enjoy. Let's see your fonts!

Latest Version: http://subsoap.com/nobu/files/CIFM.zip
System Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0

[DizzyDoo]

Played with it for 10 minutes, really great little tool, very useful. I've noticed though that some of my fonts don't appear? Lots of ones that I've installed are there, but some aren't, including my current favourite St Ryde (regular weight is free). Does this font appear in your list if you install it? I can get to it in every other application.

[Fernando]

Excellent Tool!!!

Just one question when i choose the color in the map, the slider does not change so you have to move the slider to the color you actually want.

Maybe we can see other features like; bevel, glow, etc.

Thanks this tool helps a lot.

[Nobuyuki]

DizzyDoo: It should load since it is OTF. Be sure that the font was installed properly from Windows' font installation dialog, and not simply dragged into your windows font folder. This can confuse many apps, since many apps poll the system for available fonts, and don't scan that folder manually. Also, again, this program doesn't support screen/bitmap fonts, so you can't use "Terminal", "Courier", "Small Fonts", and the like.

FVivolo: I'm not sure what you mean about the slider? Since the default text color is black, the slider defaults to 0 on the luminosity slider. This is the intended behavior of a ColorDialog. Try clicking some of the other non-black colors, and the luminosity slider should be at the correct position. CIFM should save your defaults after every close, so this shouldn't be an issue.

I may consider more effects in the future, such as texture overlay, adjusting gradient type/location, etc. Bevel may be considered as well using a similar system to the drop shadow. If I can think of a cost-efficient way to implement glow, I may, but that is unlikely. (Besides, kerning it to have the proper spacing in CharImages would be a pain anyway for such a cheesy effect)

[Stephen]

Very nice work on this!

[Fernando]

Hi Nobuyuki,

the color problem is, when you choose the color on the right panel, (color map ), the color is not choose and stay in black.

check the following image,



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

if a choose a color on the right panel this should be in the choose color and the slider should update, just like paint.net and other program. (not harm you can leave as it)

Regards,

[Nobuyuki]

DizzyDoo: On further investigation, it would seem that GDI+'s support for OpenType extends mainly to TrueType glyphed OpenType files. True OpenType and Type-1 OpenType outlines may not be supported and won't show up in the font list. Sadly, this is the same sorta limitation which makes rasterfonts impossible. There may be tools available to give you a font conversion from Type-1 OpenType to TT-OpenType, as a short-term solution.

In the long term, I will probably have to look at WPF to replace GDI+ for this application's main graphics engine, but that's likely not something I plan on doing anytime soon. If you do a lot of work with adobe or macintosh OpenType fonts you may want to see if a TrueType version is available, since on the surface it's not always apparent whether the font was made with Type-1 outlines or TrueType outlines in mind.


Edit -- FVivolo: That is probably still the default behavior of a color dialog. If you see to the right of the color selection field you can adjust the slider on the far right upwards to get the color you want. The slider will not change based on the selection in the color map, because the color map only contains hue and saturation data. The value data is in the slider on the right and remains the same as the previously selected color when the dialog is first opened. I took a quick look into Forms.ColorDialog's default properties, and there is no option to change this default behavior. Since it is a standard CommonDialog, I don't think it's necessary to change it for now. Perhaps in the future, I'll make a custom color selection dialog.

[mobichan]

I was all excited to give your tool a try, until I read you don't support bitmap fonts. Since most of my games are low rez on purpose, I use pixle fonts almost exclusively. Hopefully I will find time to give the editor a go on a future project. But it would be extremely useful to work with pixel fonts and not have to deal with grayscale alpha channels.

[Fernando]

Thx Nobuyuki,

i am sure next version you will find a way, since it is possible to do in c++ can be done in net, check codeproject, they always have great code for help

Keep the good coding!!!

[Nobuyuki]

mobichan: While screen fonts in *.FON format aren't supported, you can still generate fonts in raster format as long as the input font was originally in TrueType format. Many "pixel" fonts are like this, although not all of them are properly hinted at all resolutions. Try switching the rendering mode from (Default) to Hinted to see if the results are satisfactory to you. Aliased TrueType fonts will help, too. I feel your pain, though; I have many old raster 8px fonts in .FON format which I can't use with the new tool.