Fonty opinion poll

[Donn]

Hi there,
I have two ideas that I could implement but I wanted to get some feedback from
others.

1.
A few sites I visited recently offer their various font styles as a download in
a zip file. Within that file you get the bold, emphasis, whatever versions of
the font. You also, sometimes, get a licence txt file (which would be more
useful if it was a standard name -- then I could predictably include it in the
process)

Would it be useful to have Fonty think of .zip files (with fonts in them) as
actual font files? I mean: You point the source at a folder that has zip files
rather than many ttf/otf/pfb files and Fonty will extract them when it comes
time to install a pog. Fonty would ensure that the zips are all that remain,
dealing with which zip files have been expanded into a tmp folder and when etc.
(not sure of the steps yet.)

In this way you can arrange your raw font files into tighter 'families' by
zipping related fonts together and naming the zip something sensible.

Is zip enough? Should I include .sit and .tar and .etc .etc. ? I can only do
what Python modules let me.

2.
Just about every design project requires a bunch of fonts to be sent (or
specified in a list) to other parties: printers, designers, clients etc.
Would it be helpful to be able to, from one or more selected pogs:
a. Create a zip of all the actual fonts.
b. Create a txt file of all the font filenames, and other meta data found.
a and b? a? b? None?

All the best,
\d
--
home: http://otherwise.relics.co.za/
2D vector animation : https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/things/
Font manager : https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fontypython/

[Chris Mohler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Donn<donn....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,

> I have two ideas that I could implement but I wanted to get some feedback from
> others.

Random feedback below ;)

> Would it be useful to have Fonty think of .zip files (with fonts in them) as
> actual font files?

I don't think the pain will be worth the gain - the speed hit for this
is likely to be substantial. Just my guess. But, if you do go ahead,
as long as you leave something in the config to toggle this behavior
it seems like a reasonable idea.

> 2.
> Just about every design project requires a bunch of fonts to be sent (or
> specified in a list) to other parties: printers, designers, clients etc.
> Would it be helpful to be able to, from one or more selected pogs:
> a. Create a zip of all the actual fonts.
> b. Create a txt file of all the font filenames, and other meta data found.
> a and b? a? b? None?

I like a+b. That would actually be quite useful.

Chris

[Donn]

On Wednesday 12 August 2009 04:45:17 Chris Mohler wrote:
> > Would it be useful to have Fonty think of .zip files (with fonts in them)
> > as actual font files?
> I don't think the pain will be worth the gain - the speed hit for this
> is likely to be substantial. Just my guess. But, if you do go ahead,
> as long as you leave something in the config to toggle this behavior
> it seems like a reasonable idea.

*If* being the operator :) But I would make it seamless so that you'd not
notice the fonts are in a zip or not.

> > 2.

> > a. Create a zip of all the actual fonts.
> > b. Create a txt file of all the font filenames, and other meta data

> I like a+b. That would actually be quite useful.

Yeah, I liked this one too.

Thanks for the feedback.
\d

[Pietro Battiston]

I'd say 2.a would be particularly nice. 1 is theoretically nice too, but
isn't it very computationally expensive?

Pietro

[Donn]

On Monday 17 August 2009 00:27:52 Pietro Battiston wrote:
> I'd say 2.a would be particularly nice. 1 is theoretically nice too, but
> isn't it very computationally expensive?

2a is winning the race so far. 1 is also looking to be subtly tricky and may
be too much of a monkey patch onto the current design.

Thanks,