Font that creates charts

[micheljansen]

This is really quite genius. It uses ligatures (normally used to replace multiple letters by a single, nicer glyph, such as fi fl ae etc.) to replace "55+24+31" with a chart. You could theoretically use this on the web, and people who use screen readers or text-based browsers can still see the data. Cool!

[uncoder0]

Why do people still insist on doing this? I prefer to remap all fonts to two (a serif and a sans) that are much easier for me to read. When people use these silly font+glyph combos I never use their software. The one rare exception is GitHub. I still wish people would just use SVG.

Edit: Why was this down-voted? Is this not a legitimate concern? It is worth mentioning that I remap my fonts to help my dyslexic brain keep track of the baseline.

Edit2: It is also worth noting that this font does degrade quite gracefully and my problem lies more with the paradigm than this particular font.

[sp332]

"Insist"? Because it's fun, and useful. "When people use these silly font+glyph combos I never use their software." That's fine. Don't.

[TorbjornLunde]

I imagine this is primarily meant for creating static content such as print posters.

(I see that they are working on a web version, and regarding that I have to say I agree.)

[brador]

Should we stop using green because some people are color blind?

[mobweb]

I totally agree. It's a cool proof-of-concept but shouldn't be used beyond that IMHO. I think that just as CSS should only be used for presentation, fonts should only be used to render text.

Not only does it create accessibility and cross-platform issues but there are already dozens of other and cheaper ways to create nice looking graphs.

[polshaw]

    >Why do people still insist on doing this?

HTTP requests. 'silly font+glyph combo' is the vector version of sprites.

And it's also nice to be able to change the colour of your monochrome vector graphics.

[Timmy_C]

I see this as a designer-friendly graphing library. In the video he demonstrates how to use the font using InDesign. And last I checked InDesign doesn't have graphing tools that are this simple.

[gfodor]

R -> C -> P -- this isn't for publishing but as a way to avoid drawing graphs in InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator.

[thiagodotfm]

Art.

[jsiarto]

I love this set--we've been using them at Loudpixel for quite some time (even before they were bought by FontFont). I use them primarily in Illustrator for our custom research reports and publications: http://loudpixel.com/sugarfree/

[seclorum]

I'm also a fan .. so much so, that I'm mid-way integrating harfbuzz into MOAI so that I can use Chartwell in games with ease and pleasure ..

[vessenes]

What is the license like? It looked like per-user. Does this mean they do not wish it to be embedded on a web page? Can web browsers parse these OTF ligatures? Anybody have any experience here?

[tptacek]

It would probably be a bad idea to embed this in a web page just for technical reasons, but for avoidance of doubt: fonts that you have to buy licenses for are virtually never embeddable directly. As a rule of thumb, if a technically capable person could in a short amount of time recover the original font from your web page and use it in their own work, you're materially violating the font's license.

This isn't just how this graphing font works; it's how virtually all professional typefaces work.

[neonkiwi]

I'm not sure about embedding per their license, but I was also curious about whether or not ligatures will render in browsers. Apparently it's hit-and-miss:

Firefox has supported this since version 4, and but until recently it was the only browser do so. Now Microsoft has joined the party by announcing OpenType support in Internet Explorer 10, along with Chrome on Windows (not Mac yet).

(per http://blog.fontdeck.com/post/15777165734/opentype-1 with Chrome 16+ mentioned for Windows support. I haven't verified this.)

[stephencanon]

This is a really cute hack.

That said, the pricing is absurd. There are numerous data analysis and graphing programs that produce better looking, more customizable charts and graphs with a simpler UI, most of which cost significantly less than $129 despite being much more powerful.

[sp332]

It's not really about producing charts, it's about putting charts where you normally couldn't. World primary energy use by %: Oil 34.77, Coal 29.36, NG 23.76, Nuke 5.47, Hydro 6.63 █▇▅▁▂

[tptacek]

The pricing is completely in line with what professional typefaces cost.

[kmfrk]

Could you list some of these?

[duaneb]

I thought this was really cool, until I saw that it cost $129.... Realistically, who would buy this? I'm assuming that because it is proprietary, it can not be used on the Internet, and if you don't have to cater to arbitrary OSes, why not use grh software?

[karlshea]

$129 is actually very reasonable for a font. I've seen individual fonts several times that and you could only use them in print.

[kmfrk]

What software aside from Adobe products would allow me to use the font like this?

[mikeklaas]

TextEdit has great support for OpenType

[ta12121]

Is there any particular reason the link is HTTPS, especially considering that the page contains no sensitive content, and a warning about non-SSL content when it's loaded?

[tptacek]

Because it's on a site that accepts credit cards and has a prominent "Buy" link on the page itself.

[kondro]

What an interesting idea. Surely this must take advantage of some in-font scripting… if I remember correctly there is some type of ECMAScript variant inside OpenType.

[snorkel]

Cool idea, but should offer a free version to spread the adoption. The premium version could offer more chart styles.

[roymabookie]

FONTastic

[joering2]

This is really nice! Any case studies, preferably HTML, where I can see this in work? :)

[jsiarto]

This isn't a web font and is mostly used in print (InDesign, Illustrator, etc...). Not sure if it's even licensed for the web.

[davidcollantes]

Something I do not understand. Is Photoshop/Illustrator needed for this?

[seclorum]

The chart items are implemented in the font as ligatures, which are (in a nutshell) elements that can be overlaid over other fonts in order to give them special inflection/meaning .. instead of a carat or so on, the ligature elements of the font file are filled with perfectly scaled graph figures, per datum, so that you can address the values for the graph in ligature terms .. +20+10+30+20, etc.

When you do that, and select Chartwell as the font, you get a working font - in Illustrator, or any font-display program that supports setting the Text style for .ttf fonts ..

[thegarside]

This is rad!

[zenogaisis]

I wish it was free :(