fonts-for-trails

Fonts and how to obtain for making backcountry maps. You can find the original git repo at github.com/roblabs/fonts-for-trails

See the script go.sh for an example on how to use the command line tools.

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Federal Fonts

The National Park Service and the US Forest Service both provide TrueType Fonts that they use in their cartography.

• The NPS Fonts are stored in Zip Archive File ESRI.style (400 KB)
  • Copyright is Copyright (c) 2012 by Esri, Inc. All rights reserved.
  • Designer is Tom Patterson NPS and ESRI Cartography and Symbology
• The USFS Fonts are stored in an archive called Layer files and FSTopo fonts (517 KB)
  • No copyright info

How To Use Federal Fonts

Using these .ttf files out of the zip archive is a little chaotic. In macOS, if you double click on file, the native app FontBook will display a summary of the glyphs.

But the character set mapping is not clear. A character set map can be thought of as

when I type a on the keyboard, I expect an a to be typed in my text editor

But for these NPS & USFS fonts, when I type an a what should I expect to get? How do you map these to the QWERTY Keyboard?

campground
snowmobile

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FontReport

Enter fontreport

FontReport is a tool that allows the user to generate a report about a given font (TTF or OTF) listing its features in the plain-text (default) or PDF format.

fontreport USDAFS3_.TTF USDAFS3_.pdf

generates a report that looks similar to

You can find the fontreport in the folder fontreport

NPS Font Report

• esri_665.pdf — visitor assistive
• esri_666.pdf — tour stops, road signs
• esri_667.pdf — shelters, cars, restrooms
• esri_668.pdf — recreation
• esri_669.pdf — campground, skiing

USFS Font Report

• FSPOD___.pdf — marshes & playas
• Uslogo__.pdf — USDA, Forest Service & USGS logos
• USDAFS3_.pdf
• usdafs2.pdf
• usdafs30.pdf

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Glyphr Studio

Glyphr Studio allows you upload a .ttf and download an OTF or SVG Font. Glypher Studio also gives you the character set map.

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RoboFont

RoboFont is a Glyph editor along with a bonus Python engine for scripting. Incredibly powerful stuff.

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Node Tools

Enter the Command Line.

ttf2svg

ttf2svg converts to SVG Font. But note, from the Mozilla MDN on SVG Fonts:

SVG Fonts are currently supported only in Safari and Android Browser.

ttf2svg USDAFS3_.TTF USDAFS3_.svg

svg-caster

svg-caster converts a SVG Font to separte SVG files.

mkdir svg-caster
svg-caster --svg-font USDAFS3_.svg \
     --out-svg svg-caster

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Tools for viewing Fonts, Glyphs, SVG Fonts

• npm install -g ttf2svg

• npm install -g svg-caster

• RoboFont — Glyph editor and Python engine

• Glyphr Studio — Web & Electron based Font Editor

• Glyphter — The SVG Font Machine

• Discussion fonts & icons on Caltopo.com