Voodooprojects
Chameleon => Theme Park => Topic started by: cizko on June 24, 2009, 05:42:43 AM
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Hi guys!
I had some spare time that past weekend, so I tried designing my own bootloader theme. I found the task of putting together font-graphics in photoshop quite time intensive, so I sat down and coded a fontmaker for my own personal use at first. Then I figured that some of you guys out there might need such a tool too, to quickly check, whether a font is working for a design or not. While looking for free fronts to test it with, I stumbled upon an Internet site, offering 6000+ free TTF fonts. So I wrote a quick page-ripper script and got them all... Finally, I put it all together and uploaded it to a currently unused domain, so enough talking - here it is:
http://www.cyberdisk.de (http://www.cyberdisk.de) ;D
Cheers, cizko
PS: I did not find any info on the copyright of the Chameleon logo, so I used it in the header gfx. If that bothers anybody, just let me know and I will have it removed again... ::)
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Hi cizko
Pure Genius! Well done.
I have just tested and it works perfectly. You have just made font creation so easy.
;D
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Pure Genius! Well done.
I have just tested and it works perfectly. You have just made font creation so easy.
;D
Thanks Blackosx - coming from the über-master of great designs, this is one hell of a compliment... *gg* ;)
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Careful cizko!
Free doesn't automatically mean you can violate their copyright, should they maintain that. Often, those "free" things are only free under special conditions, e.g. you may use them privately only, but once you use/show them publically on the web, you violate that.
And if you, as an apparent German reader, read the c't Magazin regularly, you should have noticed that there are actually companies that make their money thru this: They suggest to people they can use their free pictures, only to send them a big fee once these pics appear in a Myspace account as a background picture or something like that.
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Thanks Blackosx - coming from the über-master of great designs, this is one hell of a compliment... *gg* ;)
Thanks for the comment, but I wouldn't call myself a master, like you I am just giving back to the community. :)
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And if you, as an apparent German reader, read the c't Magazin regularly, you should have noticed that there are actually companies that make their money thru this: They suggest to people they can use their free pictures, only to send them a big fee once these pics appear in a Myspace account as a background picture or something like that.
Yeah I read the article in c't magazine that you are referring to. I found these fonts on websitepublicity.com, which is actually a seo company. They are boostig their own click rates by offering a load of free stuff to get many hits via google. It is a collection - better a compilation of fonts from different authors and not an archive that is specially licensed under any terms. Yet I filed them an email where I asked them to clear the special purpose usecase for "their" fonts. Good point, tempolo - thanks for the hint.
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Thanks Blackosx - coming from the über-master of great designs, this is one hell of a compliment... *gg* ;)
Thanks for the comment, but I wouldn't call myself a master, like you I am just giving back to the community. :)
That's the spirit! ;D
But I do personally think, that your designs currently rule the chameleon2 skinning community for they are very professional in terms of graphical composition and design. I especially like BigScreen (even though it won't be an appropriate theme for my lenoso s10e netbook... *ggg* But since I will be building a new hackintosh *pro* tomorrow. that will be the theme to use with that one. Too bad that you can not install chameleon on a regular mac instead of the bootcamp loader. Otherwise I would be running this thing on my macbook and my mini as well....
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Cheers cizko, you're very kind.
BigScreen is also my favourite and I use that too. :)
Good luck with the new build.
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Good luck with the new build.
its gonna be a triple screen, 8gig ram, 2tb raid-harddisk & core2quad 3ghz monster... 8)
so i guess "BIG Screen" is appropriate here.... *ggg*
keep up the good work!
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Great job - it's very helpfull tool
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Great job - it's very helpfull tool
thanks mate, it's nice of you saying that! :D
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you rule
thanks
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Really useful actually, saves loads of time and no need to search for fonts either. Although I do have a slight complaint. When doing a black font the anti-aliasing is rendered on a white background. It's ok on a light background but still shines through quite alot and if you use white font there is not anti-aliasing at all since the same problem is in there. Any chance you could improve that? Still really useful and you can always use alpha channel to redo the font you're looking for if you use black background.
And I own you a thanks for saving my time
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When doing a black font the anti-aliasing is rendered on a white background. It's ok on a light background but still shines through quite alot and if you use white font there is not anti-aliasing at all since the same problem is in there. Any chance you could improve that? Still really useful and you can always use alpha channel to redo the font you're looking for if you use black background.
I ran into a problem with php's gdlib when using 24bit pngs, so I stuck with 8bit pngs for the first release. I am not sure whether the white anti-aliasing derives from 8 bit png's not seeming to fully support alpha channel, or if this is a problem with gd's internal text rendering procedures. I will look into that some time soon...
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I ran into a problem with php's gdlib when using 24bit pngs, so I stuck with 8bit pngs for the first release. I am not sure whether the white anti-aliasing derives from 8 bit png's not seeming to fully support alpha channel, or if this is a problem with gd's internal text rendering procedures. I will look into that some time soon...
Hello, I believe the alpha channel for 8bits png is 1bit only (like for GIF), so no antialiasing is possible with it, but should be with 24bits png.
I was also wondering, would be possible to have 16/10 resize option to fit widescreens?
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16:10, huh?! Well I actualy thought about that one too (since I also have an os-xed Lenovo S10e Netbook). Don't want to promise anything here that I just can not oversee technically here. I believe the best approach would be to narrow the original font width by the aspect ratio and then writing a slimmed down font to the png. I will do some reading over the upcoming weekend. I just do not know whether the text-to-gfx functions within gd2lib are as sophisticated as they would need to be when pursuing this approach. A post-write scaling algorithm would most likely break the fontfile since it would neccessarily tamper with the red-dots used for char separation later on...
I am quite sure that ghostscript has a suitable functionset for such an approach, but this would mean a 100% re-write of the current code plus an extra amount of time to make ghostscript export to png via image- or graphicsmagick...
Your idea caught my attention, but I just do not want to promise anything quite yet... ::)
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I have been doing some modifications on FontMaker:
- it now produces 24Bit truecolor PNG-files instead of 8Bit PNGs
- it calculates the antialiasing of the fonts with full support for the alphachannel, so the generated fonts now blend smoothly into whatever background you are using for your theme
(Thanks to Zef for supplying the original mkbootfont sources for inspiration!)
Cheers, cizko
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Congratulations with the continuous improvements for this. It's even better now. 8)
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Great!
Thanks for work!
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Thanks guys. :)
And here is some more NEWS (2009-07-16):
FontMaker now supports aspect ratio tweaking to compensate for Netbook resolution issues.
Have fun!
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Hi guys, since Chameleon2 RC2 fixed the resolution issues on my Lenovo S10e, I would like to encourage you to participate in the poll at the very beginning of this post. I need to know whether I could/should take the aspect ratio tweaking feature out of fontmaker again... Thanks in advance!
--cizko
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It wouldn't hurt to leave it until final comes out.
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It wouldn't hurt to leave it until final comes out.
Yeah I figured that too - so it's staying for the time being.... ::)
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Hi Cizko,
Many thanks for this. It looks quite helpful.
I have tried uploading my own tt font, and after it takes me to the list of fonts with the right letter of what I uploaded, but I cannot find my font on the list. Is there a trick?
Many thanks,
Hernando
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Hmmm... no tricks attached actuallly - I will see into this tomorrow and then report back...
Sorry for the inconvinience!
-- cizko
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Ok, since I decided to categorize fonts into first-character-categories when I was already knee-deep in code, I forgot to adopt the uploader to the changes made to the rest of the code. Thus all uploads went to a subdirectory that was not scanned for fonts any longer. The issue has been fixed and uploading is now possible. Sorry for any inconviniences and for the long time it took me to look into that issue...
cheers, cizko
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Hmmm... I just saw that fontmaker has been serving 500+ font files so far. Just wondering where all those font-pimped themes went... ::)
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Thanks for the fontmaker app!
I am still tweaking my theme =P but I was wondering, how can I get a font that would be all caps? Would I have to convert a font file manually somehow, and then just upload it to your site? hmm Well anyways, thanks for the great work.
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The font maker is good, but i have a question: is possible move a little up or little down the name of the disks ?
And if this is possible, which is the option in theme.plist?
Thanks and sorry for my english ;)
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The font maker is good, but i have a question: is possible move a little up or little down the name of the disks ?
And if this is possible, which is the option in theme.plist?
Thanks and sorry for my english ;)
Hi smith@@
There isn't any data you can change for determining the specific placement of the disk names. However, you can get them to be positioned differently by adding or removing blank space at the bottom of the devices. I haven't played with themes for a while so it's not fresh in my mind, though I know all devices need to be the same height, including the device selection (I think). Does that make sense?
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Ok, i have understand ;)
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Thanks for the fontmaker app!
I am still tweaking my theme =P but I was wondering, how can I get a font that would be all caps? Would I have to convert a font file manually somehow, and then just upload it to your site? hmm Well anyways, thanks for the great work.
In the resulting png, u have to copy the caps version over the non caps. But take care of the little red dots. If u want i'll do it for u
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Thank you so much!
This fontmaker is amazing, I'm finishing my theme right now and this is making my life really easy.ßß
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Thanks for the fontmaker app!
I am still tweaking my theme =P but I was wondering, how can I get a font that would be all caps? Would I have to convert a font file manually somehow, and then just upload it to your site? hmm Well anyways, thanks for the great work.
Hey Enzo, this kinda sounds like a nice additional feature to have.
I'll look into an "all caps" option this upcoming weekend.
So, just sit back, relax and stay tuned. :-)
cheers, cizko
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Ok, why wait. Here it is - fontmaker 1.2.2 featuring the all new option for character set selection. Now you can choose from the regular character set, an all lowercase and an all uppercase version.
So it now features even more possibilities to express your creativity. ;D
http://cyberdisk.de/ (http://cyberdisk.de/)
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Good to hear you're still around cizko and good work with the quick turn around of Enzo's request :)
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Yeah - I'm still around from time to time... :) Even though some of my other projects have kept me busy (like the windows driver that can be used to run virtualboxed machines as a windows service).
And since I do have got some "real life" with work and chicks and fontmaker seemed to be doing all right, I just reduced the frequency of my visits a little... :)
Cheers, cizko
PS: Good to hear from you too, pal.
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Fantastic!
Thank you very much =)
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You are very welcome. :)
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@ all:
I want to take this opportunity to start a "CALL FOR FEATURES" regarding fontmaker.
So if anyone feels that there is just a twist missing about fontmaker, now would be the time to step forward and express your needs.
I am looking forward to your ideas!
Cheers, cizko
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Great offer Cizko, but I guess your FontMaker must be perfect now as nobody has taken up your offer? :)
But here's one....
Can we have the option to type a string to see how it looks in the currently selected font and in the correct size? so an actual preview..
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Yeah I see your point there... Should not be that big of a deal, since the other font-previews are rendered "on the fly" as well...
The call for features will remain open throughout March, since I am busy with another project at the moment.
I will see to your request as soon as I can spare some time...
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Some observations first: =P
- With the lowest size 8 font, and using all caps for font Futura BT Light (Though I think this observation applies to any font), The font looks great, even font_console where it shows the Cham version info, but if I type out boot commands like -x, -v etc, (at the bottom left corner) the font there looks way too small. I'm not sure why really.
- Also, I've noticed that with this thin font, there are some letters that somewhat appear lighter/thinner than others. This is is more noticeable in certain areas of some letters. I suppose it could just be this thin font... because it's at such a small size? or perhaps an antialiasing problem? hmm... though I'm guessing it could be a cham limitation as to how it renders it? but currently, I do wish it'd show up a little sharper/consistent in my theme
Requests?
- I use size 8 for both console and small fonts, and though this is fine, was curious about trying out smaller ones haha. This could also complement the All Caps fonts, seeing as they do take up a little bit more space
- Also would be neat to mess around with closer chracter spacing, negative values?
- And as Blackosx said, a preview would be nice, though not hugely necessary. You could even let the user set a preview background color, and allow the text to be tweaked on the fly for a fully dynamic preview hehe.
Thanks for the great work cizko!
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Hey Enzo,
sorry but I have no idea why your font looks smaller at the lower left position - maybe Zef or some of the other guys could enlighten us on this issue...?!
Thin fonts in low pt values however tend to lose saturation when being rendered to pixels. This is actually nothing I could possibly "fix", since the antialiasing of the individual pixels is controlled from within gdlib and nothing I can affect at all (at least as of my current knowledge) - sorry pal!
Regarding your requests: I have added pt values 4-7 to the size selector - even though I doubt it will produce anything fairly usable... At the given 72dpi picture resolution in the resulting PNG, 4pt sized fonts will most likely be blurry and unreadable. Furthermore I added three negative char spacing options - but using these will BREAK YOUR FONTFILES in most cases... Anyway - have fun! :)
The preview will definitely have background color selection, since it would be no "valid preview" without such an option... ;)
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Feature request:
"Offline" application version
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Feature request:
"Offline" application version
sorry, this is not gonna happen (due to required php infrastructure & setup)....
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sorry guys - I'm not letting you down and some new features will be added a.s.a.p. but I'm currently working day and night on an urgent project in "real life". It will be some more weeks before I will find some time to implement the live-preview feature but I promise that it will be coming some time soon.
Cheers, cizko
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Hi everyone!
I finally found the time to update fontmaker to version 1.3.0! ::)
It now features a live preview of the font based on your current selections (just as Blackosx requested).
Please note that the selectable background color is used only for previewing and the actual generated font file will still be a 24Bit PNG with full alpha channel support.
So give it a spin and I hope you like it: http://cyberdisk.de/
Cheers, cizko
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Hi Cizko
Well done for updating your already very good tool. The option of now seeing a live preview of the font in different colours too is very useful.. Good work. ;D
Note: The preview doesn't update the colour of the font when typing a hex number in to the 'color selection' box, instead I have to click on the colour picker and choose a colour before the preview reflects it. However, it works when typing a hex number directly in to the 'Preview background color' box without having to use the colour picker. I am using Safari v5.0.
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I fixed the updating of the live preview, when hacking the hex-values directly into the input fields. furthermore the according preview fields at the right sides of the input fields are now updated accordingly. thanks for your hint, blackosx! :)
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aw it's down right now... Fix it! =P
Edit: Thanks Cizko!
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uhm ... sorry for the short downtime guys, but i had to regroup some older domains to a dedicated legacy server... :-)
cheers, ciz