Re: [seul-edu] looking for fonts for teaching handwriting

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@reedmedia.net>]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Just to let you all know, I found some free fonts for teaching children;
some are made up of dots so they can be used for tracing. The following
are links to the fonts, and some notes on how I used them in X.

About's School Fonts for Teaching Handwriting Skills
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/fonts/bl_schoolfree.htm
vicmodcu
http://www.cheap.net.au/wa_school_font.html
learningcurve
http://www.reflectdesign.com/bvfonts/fonts7.shtml
printclearly
http://www.reflectdesign.com/bvfonts/fonts6.shtml
jardotty
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/fonts/hs/jardot.zip
Zyia Learns Letters
http://www.billybear4kids.com/fonts/zyia-learns-letters.zip
school
http://home.hetnet.nl/~e1104373/graphics.html

Also, About.com has a good page about School Font Styles.
It mentions that D'Nealian is both a manuscript and a cursive font.
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/fonts/bl_schoolstyles.htm

Now I am working at converting some of these fonts for use with X (and to
print). I am not using any truetype font server (not XFree86 4.x).

I converted and used jardotty (and the other fonts) by using:

 ttf2pt1 -b JARDOTTY.TTF
 type1inst
 xset fp+ /home/reed/fonts/jardotty/
 xset fp rehash
 xfontsel -pattern \*unknown\* # to look at it

Then used gimp to use. (I noticed with the gimp, even if I do a "xset fp
rehash", the gimp doesn't see my new fonts; I had to close and reopen it.)

ttf2pt1 converts True Type (and some other formats) to Adobe Type1 format.

With jardotty, ttf2pt1 reported many problems, but most characters worked.
L, Q, S, a, k, p, and y were not created (or at least don't work in gimp).
(I also tried -Ou, -Os, -Oh, and -Oo options to try to get these missing
characters to convert correctly.

"print clearly dashed" font appears to work great, but it is missing some
symbols, except period (.) and exclamation mark (!).

"learning curve dashed bv" also works, but it is missing numbers and
punctuation (I guess not needed with cursive though).

SchoolKX_new also works great. It comes with a full set of punctuation. It
is not made of dots -- so not for tracing.

"zyia learns letters" is missing L and some punctuation.

vicmodcu is a complete and good font. Not anything against Australia, but
this manuscript font is a little different than what is used in United
States schools. Also, it is not made of dots -- so not for tracing.

(Note that the missing characters and symbols may be caused by using
ttf2pt1 incorrectly.)

I think I'll keep looking for fonts and ask on the ttf2pt1 mailing list
for suggestions on how to make some fonts convert better.

type1inst scans Type 1 PostScript font files and generates a fonts.scale
and a Fontmap. (With "Zyia Learns Letters" font it generated three
fonts: "Zyia", "Learns", and "Letters", so I renamed it to
"Zyia-Learns-Letters.TTF".)

I am hoping to be able to use these with LyX, Ted, and AbiWord (I haven't
tried Ted or AbiWord yet with these.) I know I have seen docs for LyX and
Ted -- I need to look for them. Again, my goal is to print out the fonts
(so my children can practice tracing them).

I am reading throught the Fonts HOWTO, but it doesn't say much.

Can anyone share any ideas or point me to some documentation on converting
and using fonts?

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/