Someone willing to write a tutorial on DiNGSFONT?

[Hatonastick]

Maybe I'm mentally deficient but it often feels a lot more like an art form than a science when I use it to make a usable bitmap font from my TTF fonts.   It's the one thing I've struggled with time and time again since I started using GLB and I swear every single font I've used it to convert, I've ended up using different settings (might be the fault of TTF's and how they work though).  So if someone has a handle on how best to use DiNGSFONT, I'd love to see them write a tutorial or (even better) a series of tips on how to get the best out of it please!

Oh, as I'm sure this will be asked, my most common issue is trying to get a font to look right ie. if you look at the ANSI characters in the OEM set, there's a few pattern ones.  In particular the blocks made up of dot patterns.  If you don't get the font scaled correctly, those patterns don't look right.  Also sometimes letters will look like they've been bent a pixel or two out of alignment.  I'm guessing it's all scale/size/width related.  Hope I'm making sense.

[Kitty Hello]

I don't understand. Can you post a screenshot with explanations and the .glfont file?

[Hatonastick]

I can I guess, but I don't think there's any bugs -- just me not quite coming to grips with how to use the tool properly.  Sounds like Ocean has the same issue.  In my experience you can't just load a font up and have it all work just like that.  You have to twiddle with all the options.  It's the twiddling and what effect it has that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.  Especially as it's often different twiddling required on different fonts.  Not a failing of DiNGSFONT, more a failing of the user (and possibly a limitation of TTF fonts vs conversion to bitmaps) as I don't really understand what all the sliders and options actually do.  The help file doesn't really explain it.  How to use it properly might be obvious to some, it's just not obvious to me so I struggle with it.

Ok in the attached picture, the top half is my final version, the bottom half is me attempting to get what we have in the top half.  Now it took me a good 5 minutes (at least) of twiddling to get it to look right (the top half) compared to what it started as.  Is there something wrong with the font program?  No.  I just don't understand how to get the best out of it.  It shouldn't take me 5 minutes of twiddling each time (at least) with every font to get something useful, hence why I'm asking for some hints and tips on how best to use it, preferably in the help file.  Not a criticism, not a bug, just a suggestion.  Thats all mate.

What I don't understand:
- Force Width: I set it, but can still change things using the sliders?  So what's Force Width actually doing?
- The sliders are probably my biggest issue.  They seem to jump at different intervals.  One massively, the other seems to be adjustable in small amounts.  Using them seems to deform things in odd ways.  Sometimes when I think I've got it I look at an R, S or O and notice that they are slightly deformed while other things aren't so I have to adjust things again.
- Dimension = 2 ^ n doesn't seem to change anything for me when I use it.

What I do understand:
- Outline, standard, anti-alias, clear type, colours, output PNG, 256 characters, charset, font face all make perfect sense to me.

I haven't bothered adding the .glfont file as it's not a bug or error (other than user error) and I got what I wanted eventually anyway -- that's not what my posts have been about anyway.

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[MrTAToad]

I have found that the 2^n option gives LOADFONT problems - it displays (or used to) characters in blocks of 4

In addition, the ClearType option leaves a black outline around the characters, which is annoying - I tend to just go for anti-aliasing.

The width option, by the looks of things adds a few extra pixels to each character - but it only does it when the slider is around 60%

[Kitty Hello]

- Force Width: I set it, but can still change things using the sliders?  So what's Force Width actually doing?

It's quick, it's dirty. I apologize. If you enable the "force width", the rectangle for each character will keep the size when you move the "Size of font" slider. Thus, you can make the font bigger, cutting a few unimportant characters a bit off.

- The sliders are probably my biggest issue.  They seem to jump at different intervals.  One massively, the other seems to be adjustable in small amounts.  Using them seems to deform things in odd ways.  Sometimes when I think I've got it I look at an R, S or O and notice that they are slightly deformed while other things aren't so I have to adjust things again.

The "Size of font" can slide from 0 to 100 pt or so. It should be pretty smooth, but I see if I can improve that.
The Width just sets from normal to bold and extra bold. That's quite skippy, but that's the nature of fonts.

- Dimension = 2 ^ n doesn't seem to change anything for me when I use it.

Take a peek at the dimensions at the bottom of the screen. It will make sure that the generated texture is of sizes 2^n x 2^m, which is better for graphics cards internally. Usually you leave that off.

I'll try to improve the font size a bit. I have some issues with that as well.
The black background for antialiased fonts is an issue. I have no idea how to get rid of that. But you can change the background color (use SETTRANSPARENCY then before LOADFONT) to change the black border to white or whatever.

[Hatonastick]

Ooooooh, ok.  Now I get it.  Thanks very much for your reply mate! 

[Hemlos]

When you find the font settings you want, make sure you "save" it.

A GLFont file is created in your project directory..

You can reuse and load this file into the DiNGsFont tool, to reproduce a "saved" font.
I find it useful, mainly when i want to "tweak" the font i have.