[Sugar-devel] [GSOC] Font Editor Next Steps

[Dave Crossland]

Hi Yash

On 20 June 2016 at 22:25, Yash Agarwal <agrwal.ysh94 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yesterday's Work Report,
> for details see the blog post:
> https://sugarlabs.github.io/edit-fonts-activity/week-5-work
> Short Version:
> here are the gif's
>
>    - main_activty
>    <https://sugarlabs.github.io/edit-fonts-activity/files/img/activity.gif>
>    - bezier curve editing
>    <https://sugarlabs.github.io/edit-fonts-activity/files/img/bezier.gif>
>
> This blog post is very exciting! You cracked bezier editing which is an
awesome accomplishment - well done! :D

A few days ago on 17 June I wrote:

I think your main job for the next week is to make the core
> new/load/save/import/export methods work. Once they are working well, then
> move on to the core methods needed to edit a glyph: editing the points is
> 1/2 of that, and editing the sidebearings is the other half. Probably
> sidebearings is easier than points :)
>

I'm happy that you've shown ambition with tacking the hard problem of
editing the points, but I'm also anxious that the more boring but 'core'
parts (new/load/save/import/export) are not 100%.... For each one, please
could you note what remains to complete it, if anything? :)


For editing points, there is
>
> 0. adding new points to make a new contour (a "pen tool")
>
> 1. repositioning existing points
>
> 2. adding new points to existing contours
>
> 3. removing points from a contour that 'breaks' an closed contour into an
> open one
>
> 4. 'merging' points, where they are removed from a closed contour without
> breaking it open
>

Now you can edit 1 cubic Bezier spline, that suggests that (1) is nearly
there :) After that, (2) (3) and (4) are probably worth doing before (0) as
that one is the most complex of the 5.

Perhaps the best primer on the 'pen tool' is the video made by John Warnock
- one of the Adobe founders, who invented Adobe Illustrator 30 years ago -
that was included in the very first version of Adobe Illustrator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAbjajnLZY0

Also, you may have seen this already, but there are various ways of
calculating Bezier splines, and some are much faster than others -
http://incolumitas.com/2013/10/06/plotting-bezier-curves/  has sample
Python code, which per http://incolumitas.com/pages/impressum/#impressum
you can use freely.


> Imagine you are using it for the first time: you need to make a new font,
> add some glyphs, add some contours to those glyphs, move their points
> around and set their sidebearings, save your work in a UFO, export your
> font as a OTF, install the OTF in the system, and use it in another
> activity.
>
> When you can do that, you'll have a v1.0 :)
>

However, I would like to request your daily email is sent at the end of
each day, rather than in the morning the following day, so that you get a
steady count; I'll count yesterday's post if you can post the daily email
in 12-1 5 hours from now, this evening :) I also would like to request that
you do follow the 3-point structure that you agreed to:

On 16 May 2016 at 05:35, Yash Agarwal <agrwal.ysh94 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am fine with the daily posting as suggested by Dave
>
>    1. what we did today
>    2. what we'll do tomorrow
>    3. any questions for the team
>
> What do you plan to do today, and do you have any questions? :)

Cheers
Dave
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