10-31-2012, 08:40 AM
I've always wanted to see fonts designed so you could select from a number of different "R" letterforms, for example.
Until recently, this was not an option unless you had professional fontographers' software.
Doing a web search brought me to this page which outlines recent advances making this alternate-character selection possible: Font Glyphs!
Still a couple drawbacks:
- very little software has the functionality built in yet. It looks like only Adobe Illustrator can handle glyphs right now...not GIMP, not Photoshop, not MS Word, etc. etc.
- Due to the huge amount of extra skill and work required to craft such technically-challenging fonts, none of them are free.
Maybe one day, we'll be able to hold down the "alt" key, select a letter in GIMP and choose from a palette of alternate letterforms!
Until recently, this was not an option unless you had professional fontographers' software.
Doing a web search brought me to this page which outlines recent advances making this alternate-character selection possible: Font Glyphs!
Still a couple drawbacks:
- very little software has the functionality built in yet. It looks like only Adobe Illustrator can handle glyphs right now...not GIMP, not Photoshop, not MS Word, etc. etc.
- Due to the huge amount of extra skill and work required to craft such technically-challenging fonts, none of them are free.
Maybe one day, we'll be able to hold down the "alt" key, select a letter in GIMP and choose from a palette of alternate letterforms!