A TrueType font for printing a logo (or logos - you can hold many logos in
the same font) is just a particular use of a 'Symbol' font. Symbol fonts are
those who's character sets are not composed of normal text writing characters
for a country (e.g. upper and lower case letters, the numbers 0 - 9, and
standard punctuation marks).
Unless the logo is a very simple geometric shape which can be hand drawn
using the basic tools available in Softy, you will need to turn your logo into
a monochrome bitmap for use as a template, unless you already have it in that
form. Scan a good copy at a resolution of at least 300dpi. If necessary, clean
up the scanned image using any standard bitmap editing program. Save as a
Windows bitmap file (.bmp)
Start Softy. Select Font Type / TrueType. When the TrueType window
appears, click on its File / New menu item. Three windows are displayed in
succession. Accept the defaults for the first two (Click on Ok). The third one
is for you to name your font. Wherever the word 'New' appears, replace it with
your desired font name. Then click OK.
You are then ready to start adding characters to the font. The first one
must be a space character. Even though you only want a font with a single logo
in it, unless it has a space character as well, it won't work.
Click on Glyph / New. Then click on Glyph / Update. A highlighted new box
should appear as the third one in the list in the left hand window. If the box
appears, but is not highlighted, you may have a an early release. You should
really get an update if this is so, but if you click on the third box down,
this should highlight it so you can go to the next step.
Click on Glyph / Map. A box will appear, requiring a number to be entered.
Type in 32 - the standard code for the space character. Don't worry about the
message saying that 0xf000 will be added. This is normal for Symbol fonts.
At last you have reached the bit where the logo is used. In the main Softy
window (not the TTF window used so far), click on the Template / Open menu
item and use the standard dialog to select your logo bitmap file, and click
OK.
When the file has been opened it appears in both the main window and the
TTF editing window. You may need to adjust the guidelines in the main window
to frame the bitmap correctly. The centre horizontal line in the main window
is used to position the bitmap on the font baseline. The upper and lower
horizontal lines define the upper and lower boundaries of the bitmap for
autotracing purposes - bits outside these lines are clipped. These lines are
also used to scale the outline formed by autotracing so that it fits within
the font height. The left hand vertical line is used to align the bitmap with
the vertical origin line in the TrueType window. Bits to the left of this line
are clipped during autotracing. The final adjustment is made in the the
TrueType editing window. There is a purple vertical line to the right of the
red origin line. This can be moved to define the width of a character. Move
this to define the right hand boundary of the logo character.
Click on Glyph / Outline Template. If a box appears asking whether to
update the Character Map, click OK. You should see a vertical line move across
the screen from left to right, then an outline of the logo appear, with a
number (probably a lot) of points represent by squares (on curve points) or
circles (off curve). If your computer appears to hang at this point, you
may have hit a Softy bug. If this happens E-mail me and attach a copy of the
bitmap.
Click on Glyph / Update. A fourth box should appear in the left hand list
contain a small image of the logo. It should be highlighted as with the space
character created first.
Click on Glyph / Map. The box requiring entry of a character number
appears. Type in 33. It doesn't have to be 33, but it will do. This
corresponds to the exclamation mark in most Roman alphabet fonts. So, with
your font selected, typing the exclamation mark should display your logo in
most applications.
If you want to include another logo in this font, repeat the sequence from
where the bitmap file is loaded into the main window. Just remember to type in
a different number for each logo when entry of a character number is required
(previous step).
When all logo characters have been added, save the font. Click File / Save
As. Click OK in any window that pops up asking if you want to "Save Changed
Character Map?". Choose a name (no need to add the .TTF). Click OK.
Try it out! The first thing is to use the Windows Font Viewer. Find the
.TTF file in a file listing (use My Computer, File Manager etc), then double
click on the entry for the .TTF file. You should see a few details and a
sample of the characters.
Before you can use the font in an application, it must be installed. To
find out how to do this, consult the Windows Help. (Hint: Under Windows 95
it's Start/Settings/Control Panel/Fonts/File/Install New Font).