There are a number of free and paid programs out there that can help you do it. The fastest way is to find a free "handwriting" font site, print their template, fill in your letters, numbers, and other symbols, and upload it. However, the downfall of using a free website is that while you end up with a useable font, any problems with the scan can end up showing in your letters, and your letters will be irregular in size, shape, and spacing. I found this out when using Paintfont.com. I also had a problem with uploading. My printed page wasn't dark enough, so I had to use my image handling software to darken the picture so that Paintfont could read it. I also tried the free online site Fontstruct.com. It has a simple grid based design platform you use in your browser, and while it has a number of different shapes and allows you to adjust the spacing of your font, it can be challenging to use to make a rounded font. I did design a font using Fontstruct.com, which for a free website gave me quite satisfying results. I then looked at free and paid font programs. I'm not a total computer geek, but I have studied computer science, and I don't find most font programs to be user friendly. I found the price on FontCreator had gone up considerably, and therefore tried two free programs, FontForge, and Birdfont. FontForge is no longer being updated, and it didn't work properly on my computer, though I had the most recent release that was supposed to work with my version of Windows. I then looked at Birdfont, which has very little documentation in English so far (it's a newer program and says on the web page that is seeking help translating to different languages, including English), and the tutorials I saw didn't show the info I needed.
Since I really wanted to program a cursive font, I realized I needed to use a free website that would convert my handwritten images into a font and after that a font program to modify it. I used Birdfont to modify the handwritten font so that it looked more cursive. All the tools in Birdfont are labeled, but instructions on how to perform simple actions are sparse as of my writing this. Here's what I figured out through trial and error: The first thing you need to do is save your file under a different name, so if you screw up, the original scanned font file is available for you to try again. You should hit save after every letter is edited, so if you mess up, you don't have to redo a lot of your work. You can move the baseline and top line around the letter, but you can't save the moves (bug report sent on this). To move your letter onto the bottom line, you need to use menu commands. First, you need to see what you're doing. On the right hand side are a bunch of buttons. About two thirds of the way down on the right, you'll see an F. Directly above that is a button that when highlighted says "show grid". Click on it. You should now see a grid in addition to the basic top, bottom, and side margin lines. Under Tools, select Move, then under Edit choose Select All. Once the entire letter is selected, you need to use the arrow keys to move the letter around. You can't go diagonally (unless you use the mouse, but I found moving letters with the mouse gave me unsatisfactory results) but I found movements with the arrow controls fine enough that I could move the letters around where I wanted them. You can adjust the width on both sides of the letters and save that, which is important because a cursive font needs its letters to be right against each other with no space between them. To get rid of unwanted marks generated by the scan, you need to left click on them, and when they are highlighted, press the delete button. Note that if there is a mark in an open area on the letter that it sits behind the open spot, trying to click on it to delete it won't work, and since I didn't want to move the letter and open space independently so that they weren't centered on each other to get to those tiny marks, and the marks aren't visible in the font at font size, I left those in place. If the mark is close to the letter, you also need to be careful--if the entire letter gets highlighted when trying to select a small mark to delete, you can accidentally delete the entire letter, and you can only use undo ONE time to change an edit and the letter back. All is not lost if you've been working carefully and saving regularly, so if you screw up and can't undo your changes, you need to exit the program without saving and restart it to bring your letter back. If your letters are too small and you want to resize them, on the upper right of the screen is a button that reads "resize and rotate paths". If you click on that button and then on your letter, an arrow will appear, and if you left click and hold down on the button and move it away from your letter it will enlarge, but it will NOT enlarge the entire letter--any open spaces in your letters, cursive or print, are considered separate pieces, and if not selected before you click on the arrow, they will stay the same size. To enlarge an entire letter, you need to click the "resize and rotate paths" button, click on the letter, then go to the menu on the top left, and under Edit, click Select All. A second arrow should appear in the middle of the letter. Once it is showing, put your mouse's pointer over the first arrow that appeared and drag it up and to the right to enlarge your letter. If your letter is too large, drag it towards the letter to make it smaller. Once all your editing is done, if you're not sure if you got all of the extra marks deleted, look on the right hand side, and about two thirds of the way down is an F. When highlighted, it says "show full glyph". Clicking on this will make the entire letter show up in your view. If there are any marks that got scanned in that didn't show up in the view when you displayed the letter to edit, they will now, and you can delete them. Once your font is edited to your satisfaction, go to the menu on the top left, hit File, and click on Name And Description. In the window that pops up, rename your font to the same as the saved file's name so that when it's exported in its edited form you can easily find it. Save that change, and then in the same menu area, under File, hit export. Find your new font and install it on your computer. Note that while I can use the true type fonts generated online with any program on my system, those edited with Birdfont only work in newer programs--so my cursive font doesn't work with my older version of Word (bug report sent on this as well). However, I only use Word to work, which is why I haven't upgraded my version, so it's an acceptable loss to me, and hopefully one that will be fixed in future versions of Birdfont.
See a screen shot of my fonts in use below.
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