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.

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

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

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

• 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

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

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

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

Enter the Command Line.

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 converts a SVG Font to separte SVG files.

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

• 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