
What on earth possessed me... (2008) - evolve2k
http://fontforge.github.io/ff-history.html
======
donw
> In July a friend of mine, who is a mac user, said she wouldn't even consider
> looking at fontforge on her mac unless it behaved more like a mac
> application. So I figured out how to build a mac Application... > > My
> friend still (November) has not looked at fontforge. Ah well.

This is a great example why user feedback needs to be taken in close proximity
to a salt mine.

We, or at least most of us, being human, have a horrible job anticipating our
future emotional state. So when his friend said that she'd be interested if
FontForge was available on her Mac, she probably meant it, but her request
didn't reflect the underlying reasons she held for not using the software.

Not out of dishonesty or malice, but because she probably didn't know herself.
It's like all those times somebody swore they would love to have an app that
frobnitzed the foobars, but when said app became available, it was met with a
chorus of shrugs and mehs.

There's an excellent book on this topic -- The Mom Test -- that anybody
building products should read.

~~~
WalterBright
Reminds me of one day in the 90s I was out jogging with a colleague. He said
that what the world needed was a Java compiler that compiled to native code.
He needed one right now, and I should work on it.

I said it was a great idea, and I had already implemented one. He could start
using it today.

He promptly lost all interest in it.

(It turns out, on the complex plane the demand for native Java compilers is on
the imaginary axis.)

~~~
pjmlp
> It turns out, on the complex plane the demand for native Java compilers is
> on the imaginary axis.

Quite the contrary.

Excelsion JET, IBM, PTG, Aicas have supported native Java compilers since the
early days.

Oracle added AOT compilation for Linux x64 to OpenJDK on Java 9, with the
remaining platforms being supported later. The Java 10 fork, already has
Windows and macOS support as well.

The Graal team recently announced the Polyglot VM, which is actually another
AOT compiler for Java.

The demand for native Java compilers is going quite thanks to Fintech and
embedded development.

~~~
le-mark
Indeed, Excelsior JET is really a fantastic product. It's a really straight
forward, low friction way to deploy Java desktop applications. Their
commercial license prices have risen precipitously in recent years, indicating
they must be doing quite well for themselves. It's been a few years since I
was a user, but I was very please with the product.

------
dhotson
Semi-related, I recently got into type design as a hobby.

I've primarily been using an app called Glyphs
[https://glyphsapp.com/](https://glyphsapp.com/) as well as FontLab VI
[https://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-
vi/](https://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-vi/)

Both are excellent. FontForge is pretty good but I found it slightly
overwhelming. I found it's great if you need to fix parts of existing fonts
though.

There are some excellent guides out there on how to use FontForge. I really
liked this guide about adjusting for optical illusions:
[http://designwithfontforge.com/en-
US/Trusting_Your_Eyes.html](http://designwithfontforge.com/en-
US/Trusting_Your_Eyes.html) .. I found it kind of mind blowing.

For those interested, I'm currently working on a 19th century French Didot
style font, here's my progress:
[http://dn.ht/didhot/test.html](http://dn.ht/didhot/test.html) .. feedback
welcome. :)

~~~
evolve2k
I'm wanting to get into type design also.

Any recommendations for good beginner resources/ philosophies / courses to get
started on the right track?

~~~
dhotson
The fontforge guide is a really good start:
[http://designwithfontforge.com/en-
US/index.html](http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html)

Also, there are some great tutorials on the Glyphs website:
[https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/drawing-good-
paths](https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/drawing-good-paths)

Sometimes I've asked for advice on type design forums such as
[http://typedrawers.com/](http://typedrawers.com/) .. be prepared for possibly
blunt but honest and useful feedback. ;-)

------
seanmcdirmid
I tried fontforge once. Frankly, I couldn't figure it out how to get it to
work after playing with it for a few hours. My dreams of building custom
programming-oriented ligatures for a proportional font are still unrealized.

~~~
Brendinooo
You get what you pay for. I haven't worked with it for a few years now but I
found it to be quirky and unstable. But it was free, which was better than the
$650 or so that you needed for FontLab, which was the main piece of software
for font creation out tehre at the time, and it seemed to have a more features
than I needed for what I was working on. Cross-platform was a nice feature as
well.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
No one has really documented the OSS process for modifying and deploying a
font yet, though supposedly it exists.

------
gjm11
As an aside, the fragment of Shakespeare quoted at the start is a famously
dirty joke. (The fact that the two characters quoted both seem blithely
unaware of what they are saying is a further joke; both are being laughed at.)

------
molecule
I briefly hoped that this would be a link to

[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22what+on+earth+...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22what+on+earth+possessed+me%22&type=Commits)

------
VHRanger
Title gore

~~~
kurthr
Yes, and don't get George srarted about Chain Ringing! It may be the only
thing he loves more than fonts... or lemurs.

In all seriousness, he's done great work on open source projects he loves...
as a truly great software engineer. All paid for by a the risk he took working
for a Start-up that was acquired by AOL before the big boom.

~~~
pja
Do you mean Change Ringing ?

~~~
kurthr
Yes, with bells! Didn't catch the mobile autocorrect :(
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing)

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> Within a month I had received my first bug report, and presumably had my
> first user.

This isn't really discovering Agile before it's time, but maybe some people
think it is.

