EQX: A tool for visually evaluating font quality

A new way to test your typefaces, track your progress, and work with teams when designing families: EQX is a tool for visually evaluating font quality.

EQX was made to replace the typical type design workflow: web searches, ad-hoc testing strings, and reaching for things on our bookshelves. In its place is something faster and more useful for type designers, their collaborators, managers, and consulting experts.

We are excited about EQX because it already does a great deal, and it's libre license empowers anyone to use it and build on it.

22 minute introduction presentation at ATypI 2020 by Eben Sorkin:

youtu.be/L61M-rU43ec

Eben is a type designer, teacher, type design reviewer, type art director and now software package designer. He served on the board of ATypI from 2010-2018.

Demos

EQX App

======= http://35.237.163.30
Username: [email protected]
Password: example

Content API

http://35.237.56.88/admin
Username: [email protected]
Password: exampleAdmin1

Getting Started

We use Docker to setup the EQX environment. Please open terminal, and running docker-compose up in the root of this repository. Docker should do the rest!

docker-compose up # Timeout issues? COMPOSE_HTTP_TIMEOUT=1000 docker-compose up

Frontend: http://localhost:3000 Backend: http://localhost:1337

Resources

Creating HTML visuals with EQX's Visual Generator

This is a tool to help create visuals for use in EQX. It was created to be used with variable fonts to quickly update a package of HTML testing resources. You can learn more about it by visiting its repo at https://github.com/quitequinn/EQX-Visual-Generator.

Stack summary

• Material UI Components for React
• NextJS for the frontend framework
• Strapi for the Headless CMS
• PostgreSQL for the Database

Secrets

We use kubesec and Google Cloud KMS to store encrypted secrets in this repo. To add a new secret, first decrypt, then add secret, and then encrypt.

Secret Encryption

gcloud auth application-default login
kubesec encrypt -i --key=gcp:projects/eqx-host/locations/us-east1/keyRings/eqx/cryptoKeys/kubernetes-secrets base/secrets.yaml

Secret Decryption

gcloud auth application-default login
kubesec decrypt -i base /secrets.yaml

Debugging

Step 1

Stop and delete instance. Makesure you are using Node 14.

nvm use 14

Step 2

Navigate to backend (/EQX/backend).

npm cache clean --force
rm -r build
rm .yard-lock
rm .yard-lock
rm package-lock.json
rm -r node_modules

Step 3

Navigate to frontend (/EQX/frontend).

npm cache clean --force
rm -r .next
rm .yard-lock
rm package-lock.json
rm -r node_modules

Step 4

Navigate back to root (/EQX).

docker-compose pull
docker-compose build --no-cache
COMPOSE_HTTP_TIMEOUT=1000 docker-compose up # This increases timeout length (incase your computer is slow) Repeat step 1 and 2 if necessary