Font Engineering QA (Quality Assurace) PhD.

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Hi, my name is Jan Charvat (http://renegadefonts.com) and I'm doing PhD. thesis on a new human (non coder) usable open source QA* tool for font production free to use to everybody. First of all thank you for your time and expertise to help me start with my project. It will take you max. 5 minutes to answer.

Here's a questionnaire that will help me understand different opinions and thoughts about QAing fonts. Please share this form to as many font designers and engineers as possible, so I can get the best view on the process of other people.

Thanks to you I will be able to build great QA tool which will be available to everybody. If you want to contact me here's my mail info@renegadefonts.com and down there PLEASE FILL YOUR CONTACT and I will SEND YOU ACCESS TO BETA TESTING SITE and TO FINAL PRODUCTION SITE later on.

*QA means Quality Assurance, QA is a way of preventing mistakes and defects in manufactured products (fonts), thanks Wiki

Personal

I don't want to collect names or any personal data, but in case you willing to chat about this topic, leave me email down there and I may get in touch with you, or invite you for a beer or so. And I will thank you in my PhD thesis (isn't that nice?) and send you the final link to the webpage (that is actually nice)

Your field / Job Title / What do you do?

How you consider yourself? (I know independent designers do all of that, but let me understand what is your expertise)

Type Designer (TD)

Font Engineer (FE)

Quality Assurance (QA)

TD/FE/QA (unspecified font related work, ie. touching fonts)

Management / Sales / Marketing (related to fonts, but not actually touching fonts)

Other:

Clear selection

Independent / Foundry / Employee

Major Foundry (20+ people)

Independent Solo / Independent Foundry

Employee of a Foundry

Other:

Clear selection

How many fonts you produce per year (not only for yourself, overall)

1-5

6-10

11-20

20+

Clear selection

How you consider your skills? (points like stars 1 - least true ,5 most true)

I do type design with ease

I understand concept of metrics / kerning

I understand anchors and building diacritics

I know what features do

I can setup a font before export

I know some font standards

I know how to test fonts in apps (InDesign, Word, etc...)

I know how to test fonts in commandline

I know how to test fonts in browsers

Clear selection

What Font SW you use

Most of the time.

Glyphs

Fontlab

Robofont

FontForge

Other:

Clear selection

QA specification

Do you use any kind of QA to test your fonts?

By ANY I mean litteraly anyting, even trying to install the font is kind of a QA, or opening InDesign and seeing the styles is some sort of QA.

Yes

Clear selection

Do you test your fonts before you export them from Font SW or after?

Only in Font SW (Before)

After Export

Before&After

Do you use internal / external QA tools?

which you can answer in next question

Internal (tools developed by you or company you work for, not considering Font SW)

External (tools developed by other people, including Font SW)

What do you test?

HINTS: Design QA (diacritics, outline errors, alignment zones, mixed glyphs, ...), Charset, (glyph order, ligatures, duplicates, spaces, hyphens, unicodes...) Font Info (masters, stems, inerpolations, style linking, instance naming, italic angle, vertical metrics, ...), Metrics, Kerning, Features. After export: Indesign, Word, style naming, style linking, features working, kerning working, hinting, ...

What would you like to test and you don't have the tool or the knowledge or the time to do so?

What QA tools do you use?

name, authors, web address pretty please

QA Tool

Would you be interested on a new website giving you QA testing in one place or you feel comfortable with your tools?

Yes, I would at leas try it

No, I'm fine with what I have at the moment

Clear selection

Would you be interested in a publication/wiki explaning font standards and QA testing?

Yes

Clear selection

Would you be interested in Foundry Specific testing of fonts (metadata, charsets, etc...)

Yes

Clear selection

There could be more levels of user interaction. What level you think would be apropriate for you?

If you choose other option, please describe your expectations

Easy / Beginner (only essential must have checks, so the font is not broken, easy explanantions, not using much of a slang)

Intermediate / Advanced (more checks, deeper explanations, use of some slang)

Expert / Profesional (all checks, full explanation, specification citations, use of slang, on server checks, downloadable results of external tests)

Other:

Clear selection

Where would you prefer to use the tool?

Fonts on the server will be deleted after testing anyway

Upoload font to server / server/side = more checks

Browser side check, no upload / local = less checks

I would install it on my/our server and test it locally / self-server

Clear selection

Do you miss some kind of test or functionality related to QA? Anything that would make QA easier?

Participate

Your e-mail:

AND YOU GET TO BETA TESTING AND LINK TO FINAL SITE

Do you know any nice tool, that is not necessarily QA, but it is uselfull or pleasant work with in regards of fonts?

Would you like to participate with any kind of test you use regulary? I may implement it or we could cooperate on that.

Yes, I would like to send a detailed description

Yes, I can implement it

No, sorry

Clear selection

Submit

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