Re: [WikimediaMobile] SVG to font (WAS: The future of skins_

2014-09-04 Thread Monte Hurd


 On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:46 PM, Trevor Parscal tpars...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
 The font-to-SVG workflow was an idea to try and make it possible for 
 designers to use their font is the source workflow.


Not quite. The point of the conversion scripts (which are done and seem to work 
pretty well) is to make it possible for designers (and me) to use a svg is the 
source workflow and pipe these svgs through the scripts if we happen to need a 
font representation. 
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Re: [WikimediaMobile] SVG to font (WAS: The future of skins_

2014-09-04 Thread Monte Hurd


 On Sep 3, 2014, at 6:43 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflasc...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 
 WikiFont (which generates font file output from SVG source code).


tl:dr SVGs yay!

The problem was WikiFont did not generate itself (magic?) from svgs. The svgs 
had to be fairly painstakingly imported into a font forge project which was 
then used to generate the font.

The font forge importation workflow was sticky enough (importing svgs and 
mapping them, etc) that small visual tweaks (baseline offsets and such) ended 
up being made in the font forge project itself as well, thus diverging from the 
source svgs. 

I think this workflow stickiness was what led the designer to see the font 
forge project as canonical. 

So... the 2 scripts I wrote. 

One automates creating a font from a folder of svgs. Svgs are canonical as they 
should be, but hey, you want a font? You got it.

The second script, just for fun, reverses the process and creates a folder of 
svgs from the font.

I've been dogfooding these for the last week for a supplemental font the iOS 
app uses. 

I'll post them hopefully next week when I get a chance to document them. If you 
can't wait and are in the SF office stop by my desk and I can demo it in about 
2 minutes. 
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Re: [WikimediaMobile] SVG to font (WAS: The future of skins_

2014-09-03 Thread Matthew Flaschen

On 08/27/2014 05:51 PM, Monte Hurd wrote:

I've finished the SVGs-to-font and font-to-SVGs scripts. I'll document
and post these in the next couple days.


Is this just a temporary solution since the SVGs for some fonts have 
been lost?


If not, why do we need a font-SVG workflow?  My understanding is that 
SVG is always the source code, even for WikiFont (which generates font 
file output from SVG source code).


Matt Flaschen


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Re: [WikimediaMobile] SVG to font (WAS: The future of skins_

2014-09-03 Thread Trevor Parscal
It came out in a meeting about icons, that a major impetus of Wikifont was
the workflow for designers being easier if all icons are sourced from a
single font file, and not individual SVG files. The SVG-to-font workflow is
helpful for the iOS app which uses the font (apparently the Android app
does not). The font-to-SVG workflow was an idea to try and make it possible
for designers to use their font is the source workflow.

I personally believe that being a designer at Wikimedia should mean working
with open formats (SVG, CSS, HTML), checking assets into git repositories,
and seeking to make community contribution easier, not more difficult. The
idea that a font file, which is a big blob of binary data, be the official
source of all icons just doesn't scale, and makes contribution much more
difficult.

In the meeting we seemed to agree that it was worth developing further the
tools to have more features and an easier workflow when working with SVG
(with PNG fallbacks). Work is already underway to achieve this, and I am
looking forward to us having an easy to use, easy to contribute to and well
performing system for designing, refining and delivering icons.

- Trevor


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflasc...@wikimedia.org
wrote:

 On 08/27/2014 05:51 PM, Monte Hurd wrote:

 I've finished the SVGs-to-font and font-to-SVGs scripts. I'll document
 and post these in the next couple days.


 Is this just a temporary solution since the SVGs for some fonts have been
 lost?

 If not, why do we need a font-SVG workflow?  My understanding is that SVG
 is always the source code, even for WikiFont (which generates font file
 output from SVG source code).

 Matt Flaschen


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