[fontforge-users] snellen font is mirrored by default

[Federico Bruni]

Hi all

I've already asked this question here but received no help so far:
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/69954/snellen-and-sloan-fonts-are-flipped-mirrored

If you get the following font:
http://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen-font.zip

and try to use it in any program, you'll see that the default font is
the mirrored one.

It was built incorrectly?
.sfd file is included in the .zip file.
I've never used FontForge before and don't know what should I do to
make this font behave as expected. Can you give some pointer?

Many thanks in advance
Federico

[Max Rabkin]

I guess you have only tried to type lowercase letters -- but all the
Snellen optotypes are uppercase!

The font contains the original glyphs as uppercase letters and mirrored
copies as lowercase.

Post by Federico Bruni
Hi all
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/69954/snellen-and-sloan-fonts-are-flipped-mirrored
http://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen-font.zip
and try to use it in any program, you'll see that the default font is
the mirrored one.
It was built incorrectly?
.sfd file is included in the .zip file.
I've never used FontForge before and don't know what should I do to
make this font behave as expected. Can you give some pointer?
Many thanks in advance
Federico
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

[Federico Bruni]

You are right!
So simple :)
I did not even try the uppercase...

Thanks!

Post by Max Rabkin
I guess you have only tried to type lowercase letters -- but all the
Snellen optotypes are uppercase!
The font contains the original glyphs as uppercase letters and
mirrored copies as lowercase.

Post by Federico Bruni
Hi all
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/69954/snellen-and-sloan-fonts-are-flipped-mirrored
http://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen-font.zip
and try to use it in any program, you'll see that the default font is
the mirrored one.
It was built incorrectly?
.sfd file is included in the .zip file.
I've never used FontForge before and don't know what should I do to
make this font behave as expected. Can you give some pointer?
Many thanks in advance
Federico
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into
multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

[Federico Bruni]

I'd like to ask some advice regarding this font.
As I'm building eye charts with LaTeX (I'll publish the source on
github with a free license as soon as I've finished), I have a problem
because some charts include numbers, which are not present in this font.

I've found a workaround¹ in LaTeX to use a different font for numbers
only, but I'm not happy at all with it because the height of the
numbers is different from the other letters.

Do you suggest changing the Snellen font and add the numbers there?
This means that I should learn FontForge... I see I should start from
here:
http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html

I'm not quite sure yet if it's worth the trouble.. but learning new
things is a pleasure.

What would you do?

Thanks
Federico

¹
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/62603/how-to-choose-a-specific-weight-from-a-font-family-using-fontspec-and-xelatex

Il giorno lun 18 apr 2016 alle 15:58, Federico Bruni

Post by Federico Bruni
You are right!
So simple :)
I did not even try the uppercase...
Thanks!
Il giorno lun 18 apr 2016 alle 15:18, Max Rabkin

Post by Max Rabkin
I guess you have only tried to type lowercase letters -- but all the
Snellen optotypes are uppercase!
The font contains the original glyphs as uppercase letters and
mirrored copies as lowercase.

Post by Federico Bruni
Hi all
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/69954/snellen-and-sloan-fonts-are-flipped-mirrored
http://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen-font.zip
and try to use it in any program, you'll see that the default font is
the mirrored one.
It was built incorrectly?
.sfd file is included in the .zip file.
I've never used FontForge before and don't know what should I do to
make this font behave as expected. Can you give some pointer?
Many thanks in advance
Federico
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find and fix application performance issues faster with
Applications
Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems
quickly
and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

[David J. Perry]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Federico Bruni]

Thanks David

Eventually I decided that drawing the chart in Inkscape was the easiest
and most flexible solution (I can easily add also the small numbers
above each line which tell what's the distance for normal eyesight).

inkscape command-line tool allows to export to PDF keeping the sheet
size defined in the SVG document (while rsvg-convert does not allow
this, AFAIK). I can even build a color negative version (white on
black) with a script, keeping in mind this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/166396

I might give XeLaTeX a try again one day, but for now I'm happy with
Inkscape.

Il giorno gio 21 apr 2016 alle 16:36, David J. Perry

Post by David J. Perry
If you are proficient in LaTeX, it will almost certainly be less work to
learn how to compile your charts with XeLaTeX than to acquire good
skills in FontForge. The fontspec package, used to select and control
fonts in XeLaTeX, has an option to scale a font to match the height of
uppercase or lowercase letters in the main font of the document. See
§8.2 of the fontspec manual. With XeLaTeX and fontspec, you can use any
font on your computer without going through the extra steps required to
add a font to LaTeX, plus you get easier (and much more up todate)
multilanguage support via Unicode. Worth learning if you want to stick
with TeX.
David

Post by Federico Bruni
I've found a workaround¹ in LaTeX to use a different font for numbers
only, but I'm not happy at all with it because the height of the
numbers is different from the other letters.
Do you suggest changing the Snellen font and add the numbers there?
This means that I should learn FontForge... I see I should start from
http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

[marty39]

What would I do? Is this the "Snellen" font that has no serifs on the H, J,
M, U and a few others, and half serifs on the N? Bad. I would use fontforge
to redo those caps, and a few others. The font is supposed to be slab-serif,
and the letters should be recognizable and distinguishable. Only then would
I extend the font to other characters.

Why are you making eye charts? Having read the web pages about optotypes and
the Snellen and Sloan charts, I now know that less than half the letters of
the alphabet are actually used in the eye charts. The others in the font are
made up, and in my judgment, wrongly. The few characters actually used in
the existing charts are enough to test visual acuity. The others are not
needed and some of them might even be misleading.

If you want to make a full font that can be used for headlines or text that
look like eye charts, then it might be fun to make a font with a true lower
case, and maybe even extend it to a Cyrillic alphabet. I don't think Greek
lower case would work.



--
View this message in context: http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/snellen-font-is-mirrored-by-default-tp15012p15050.html
Sent from the User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[marty39]

Post by marty39
If you want to make a full font that can be used for headlines or text
that look like eye charts, then it might be fun to make a font with a true
lower case, and maybe even extend it to a Cyrillic alphabet. I don't think
Greek lower case would work.

I guessed wrong. Building the lower case glyphs in a 4x4 square (3x4 or 5x4
when necessary), the Greek lower case does work. It's the Cyrillic lower
case that gives trouble. The ones that look like scaled down capitals can't
be built as 4x4 and have to be scaled down 5x5. Numerals are OK. I haven't
tried special characters; I think ampersand would be OK but I can't build
dollar within 5x5.



--
View this message in context: http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/snellen-font-is-mirrored-by-default-tp15012p15051.html
Sent from the User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Federico Bruni]

Post by marty39
What would I do? Is this the "Snellen" font that has no serifs on the H, J,
M, U and a few others, and half serifs on the N? Bad. I would use fontforge
to redo those caps, and a few others. The font is supposed to be slab-serif,
and the letters should be recognizable and distinguishable. Only then would
I extend the font to other characters.
Why are you making eye charts? Having read the web pages about
optotypes and
the Snellen and Sloan charts, I now know that less than half the letters of
the alphabet are actually used in the eye charts. The others in the font are
made up, and in my judgment, wrongly. The few characters actually used in
the existing charts are enough to test visual acuity. The others are not
needed and some of them might even be misleading.

Yes, I don't need all the characters.
Some of them doesn't look good, especially K, N and R.

I think I'll consider trying to improve them (or building them again
from scratch).
Low priority in my todo list...

Thanks for the feedback
Federico