I was asked if I could help someone to create a special glyph. Now, he had tried to create it himself using the instructions I have here on my site and could not. I was curious as to why he could not do it, so I said ok I would see if I could find the problem (I thought that maybe he had just missed a step and it would be an easy fix). He sent me the TTF file and I opened it with Fontview, only to find it empty

When I saw this, I thought, " Well, It looks like he missed the step to map the glyph to an ASCII character (ASCII 97 for the a character or any other legal characters). Now, I opened the TTF file in Softy to see what had happened..

Under Platform you have "Show Char Set" I selected this feature to see that indeed, he has mapped the glyph, but somehow it failed to show in the file. Now, I had long suspected that Softy had limits to the number of points it could keep track of, BUT, first I had to check the size, and other requirements of the glyph to make sure all things were within the allowable limits. After inspection, I found no fault with the glyph, by all rights, it should be a valid glyph, but wasn't, Further looking into to be done here...

Now, while still in Softy, I noticed that the glyph had what I thought was way to many points for the size and complexity of the glyph. I then opened the glyph in Paint Shop Pro and noticed right away the the edges were not a clean hard surface (to much gray for a good glyph), This I thought was the cause of so many points being set and a possable reason for the glyphs failure to take.

I then used the Gama Correction feature to darken the glyph thus making some of the heavier gray pixels black. I then used the Magic wand to select the glyph, inverted the selection, and then cleared the edge of the glyph thus removing the gray pixels from the glyph

Here is a view of the before and the after of what I had done. As you can see, the after glyph was a little slimmer, but the edge was now a clean edge and I thought this was going to work this time.

I did not delete the first attempt to create the glyph, Instead, I chose to use the next letter in the alphabet (ASCII 98 for the b character). Following all the steps necessary to make the glyph.

Here is a comparrison of the two glyphs side by side. I think you can see, there are a lot less points in the second glyph and the glyph has not lost it's distinction. Only thing left now was to save the file and open it in Fontview to see if it took.

Well, here is the results of the work done, The new glyph showed up in the TTF file. Now would it print?. Well, here it is, I just added some gloss to make it look a bit better. Well, that is all I have for now. Remember, as I have told you previously about shading, you must try to keep the number of points down, Softy has a hard time if you exceed it's limits (which, to me, is just a judgment call). I think, If your glyph does not show, your system does not freeze or crash, then, I would look to see if I could reduce the number of points in your glyph. I hope this helps you get a better handle on Softy.If you want to see how he used the glyph Visit his site