Learn FontLab Fast

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2

Learn FONTLAB Fas t

A Simplified Guide to Creating Fontswith FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio

Written and D esigned by

Leslie Cabarga

Techn ica l Ed ito r :

Adam Twardoch

Thanks to Ted H arrison , Yuri Yarm ola , Sasha Petn ro , L isa D evlin , and the Fon tLab team .

A lso , th anks to Th om as P hin ney, Stuart Sand ler, M ark Sim onson , S teve Z afa ran a, H ra nt Pa pa zian ,

S amm y O r, Ja mes G rie sh aber, J i l l B ell, E ric O lsen , Je ff H oltzm an, Z uza na Lich o, John H udso n,

D avid Barlia , R tly La rab ie, D avid Berlow , E rik va n B loklan d, C hristian Schw artz, B rian So oy.

Specia l th anks to Ad am T wa rdo ch for h is expertise , and fo r to lera tin g m y en dless questions .

This book is composed inAdobe Palatine, and inAmplitude, designed by Christian Schwartz for The Font Bureau

© 2004 by Leslie Cabarga. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro-

duced inany form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information

storage or retrieval systems without permission inwriting from the publisher,

except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Printed in the USA.

ISBN 0-9657628-5-8

Published by

rCONOCLASSICS Publishing Co.

253 S. Orange Dr.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tel:323 549 0700 email: [email protected]

website: www.logofontandlettering.com

To order additional books direct from the publisher, call or visit:

www.logofontandlettering.com

Please inquire about bulk and educational discounts.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.logofontandlettering.com/




mailto:[email protected]



Learn FONTLAB Fast

Con ten t sPreliminaries

8 C rea tin g a f on t: B asic pro ced ure • 10 La un ch Fo ntLa b • 11Start a new font • 12 T he G lyph w ind ow

1] The enhanced G lyph window • 14Wha t's differen t in F on tLab? • 15Font e nc od ing s: La tin -b as ed

16 C hoo sing E ncod ings fo r desig nin g a nd gmeratin g fo nts • 17N on -la tin fo nt en co din gs • 18 Sa ve the

font • 19The Font Info dia log box • 2] Cap heigh t c ompar is on

starting a Font23 Ge ttin g Char ac te rs I nto F0 1'ltL ab • 26 Open an existing font • 27 Selecting the righ t fon t to open

27 O pen a Foniographer fog file • 28 Im port glyphs from Illusiraio r • 30 Imp or t b itm ap sc an s from

P ho to sh op • 31 In depth: Preparin g scan ned im ag es • 33 M ake an outline in to a background • 34

Make bitmap scans with Scanhmt • 39 Auto tr ac ed c ha ra cte rs in Fon t Lab . 40 C rea ting glyph s w ith a

digita l pen • 41The Brush tool and dig ital pen • 43 V ecto r Pa int too ls • 45 T racin g w ith P en to ol

a nd d igita l tablet • 46 How to trace a scan

Draw ing a Font48 Glyph W indow deta ils • 49 Alignment Zones • 50 M aking points w ith the D rawing tool • 52

Making and B rea kin g con nection s • 54 How to select poin ts and paths • 55 Sel ec tin g , D e se le ctin g ; th e

Magic W and • 56 W orking with nodes and paths • 58 D rawing Glyphs • 61 H ow to Preview your

draw ing • 65 Pop-up Menus • 67 Tran sfo rm , T ran sfo rm ing , T ran sfo rma tio n • 71 Le tt er spac ing 101

72 Check progress in the M etrics W indow • 73 Working sug gestio ns • 74 Optio na l d rawin g to ols:

Sketch m ode • 75 W orking in Sketch mode • 76 D raw in g w ith off-po int curves • 77 The G rid and off-

poin t curves • 78 M eter m ode

Generating, Installing and printing a Font81M ilkin g a usable f on t; C om parin g fo nt fo rm ats • 83 G en erate a M ac T ype 1ont • 84 Gene ra te aM ac T ype 1fo nt a nd in sta ll it into M ac OS X .3 • 85 G enerate a M ac or PC T rueT ype fo nt • 87 Install

T ru eTyp e, Open Typ e o r Typ e 1fo nts fo r M ac in to M acin to sh OS B .x or 9.x • 88 I n st al l T rueType,

O pen T yp e o r T yp e 1fo n ts fo r PC in to W indows XP or 2000 • 89 Printing test d ocum ents in F on tLab

90 Printin g tests fro m insta lledfo nts • 91 Fon tL ab S tu dio 5 's e xp an de d p rin tin g



4 Contents Continued

5Spacing, Kerning and H inting a Font

93 The M etrics w indow - 96 Spacing and K erning - 97 U sing the M etrics w indow - 98 Auto Me tric s

99 K erning - 100 K ern in g a nd th e K ern in g In fo pa nel - 101R emove e xistin g K ern in g • 102Transform

M etrics - 103 T he M etrics w in dow in Stud io 5 - 104 T ime -saving c la ss -ba sed kern ing • 106 Hinting

108 A uto -h in t a T ype 1font - 109Font Audit - 110 Type 1h in tin g; A lig nm en t Z on es - 112 Type 1hinting;

The P re view p an el - 114 L in ks, R epla cem en t h in ts, A uto ste ms - 116 Beginn ing TrueType h in ti ng

Accents and composite Characters

119 Makin g A cc en ted ch ara cters - 120 U sing Anchors to set up com posites - 121Compo site a n a cc en t

glyph w ith C om ponents. - 121Makin g c ompo site s w ith Gen er ate G lyp hs .

Making a fam ily of fonts123 About font fam ilies - 124 C hange w eights in the T ransform w indow - 126 Makin g families w ith E ffects

127 A utoma te E ffec ts w ith T ra nsfo rm R an ge - 128 Fam ily nam ing set up for M ac Type 1and TT

129 Family nam ing for OT, TT , and W in Type 1-130 T ypic al n am in g pla n fo r a n Ope n T ype family

Making OpenType fonts

132 About O penType - 132 U sin g Open T ype in A do be InD esig n CS - 133 U sing O penT ype in A dobe

IllustratorCS - 134

Add O pen Type features to an existing font -136

Ad.d OpenType fe at ur es u sin g C la ss es. 138 Wh y Open Type fa ilure? • 139 Some OpenType fea tu re s

Features, Tips" Tricks141F in d/R ep la ce ; C en te r C ompo ne nts - 142Pas te S pe cia l; Cont ig uous s el ec ti on s • 143 Ma rk c ells ;

N o nc on tig uo us s ele ctio ns ; A nn ota te c ells ; E nla rg e c ells - 144 P rim itive s (Sm art Sh apes) pa nel: G rid a nd

Star - 145Add /S ub tr ac t sh ap es w ith c on to ur to ols • 146 Enve lo pe ; S ett in g Fam ily Me tr ic s

1 What's NEW in FontLab Studio 5148 La te st fea tu re s and improvement s

1 Using Asia Font studio

152 How AFS d iffers fro m F on tL ab

154 Index



Learn FONTLAB Fast

Don 't waste time reading this INTRODUCTIONif you want to Learn FONTLAB Fast!

F .50% ILLUM:IN,ATION

ontLab is a p ro gram tha: has been evolving and

g ain in g g ro un d fo r ten yea rs. F on tla b L td ., th e p aren t

compan y, rema in s sm all and frien dly. F or users, th is

h as m ea nt a h ig h d eg re e o f a cc essib ilitlJ a nd o pf1 'm ess

to outs ide suggest ions .

The bea uty o f F 01 1fLa b is its ability to perform a

dizzying a rray vf font-related ta sks-perhaps every-

thing a font desig ner co uld w ish Jo r in a fo nt creation

softw are prog ram . A nd yet, this very com plexity canseem somew ha t d nun tin g to .th e b eg in nin g user, espe-

c ia l ly one famil iar l / J a h o ther fon t- cr ea ti on or compui -

e r d raw ing p rogr ams.

The purpose of this book is to i l luminate that 50%

of F01ltLab that will likely be the only portion eoer

needed b y 90% of us. For the rest-you intrepid

te ch ie s- -FolltL ab p ro vid es a f re e 7 0 0- pag e manual- «

choose Mac or W indow$- that is downloadable as a

.pd ffile . A b oun d, h ard -co py is a lso a va ila ble fo r pu r-

chase f rom unouumdemandmanuals .com.

Iave always found that computer manuals only

b ecome comp re he nsib le a fter I'v e le arn ed th e b asic s o f

th e p ro gram. If yo u ca n rela te to th at sta tem en t, 1rec-

omm end that a fter becom ing fam iliar with FontLab

th ro ug h tllis m in i-m an ua l, a nd g ain in g some pra cti-

ca l experience w ith the progra m, that yo u peruse the

Big m anual to learn of Fan tL a b 's ful l capabi li ti es .

OBJECT ORIENTEDP resum ably yo u b oug l1 t t his bo ok beca use yo u w an J

to find out how to m ake a font in Fon .tLAb. T his bo ok

is designed to pravide the answers you need, as you.

need them , for the specific tasks you want to accom-

plish. I have tried to a vo id m aking you m em orize pro-

gram details that you m ight never use. Skip around;

use th e Tabl e o f Con ten ts or Index to find w hat you're

looking for on a need-to-know basis. Later, use th

Ind ex to locate an y info nnation you m ay have m issed

FASTER ISBEnER

This book takes the position that time is of th

essence and the fa ster w e are a ble to a ccom plish ea c

ta sk , th e b etter o ff w ea re . G ive n th e su pe r red u nd anC

o f F on tL ab-a dm ira bly d esig ned to pro vid e d ifferel1

u se rs ih e w id est ra ng e o f o ptio ns fo r a cc omplish in g th

sam e' task-we feel that there still are certa in ways o

d oin g ta sks tha t are faster than other ways, and w

sh ow yo u th ese a s w e g o a lo ng , ra th er than mentioning

e ve ry s ing le avai lab le op ti on .

VERSIO'N?

Th i s book was completed just as FontLab Studio 5

n ea re d re lea se. M o st o f th e f ea tu res d isc usse d h ere a r

so ba sic th at th ey h ave not been altered m uch thro ugh

versions 4.5,4.6 a nd S tu dio 5. H ow ever, w e poitu ou

th e m ajo r a rea s in w hich Stud io 5 d oe s d iffer from ea r

l ie r r el ea s es . Chec k m y website , l ilww, logofontandle t-terin g.com J or u pd ate s to th is b oo k. (Y ou c an .0150 chec

wwwfontla b.c om fo r p rog ram update s.)

MAN VS. MACIHINE.

A s th e bra in ch ild o f a pro gram:m er, F on tL ab a llo ws

us to accomplish every task with minute precision

L e t u s n ot fo rg et th oug h~ th at w herea s im precisio n i

to be a ooided. th e em phasis of the technical a spects o

a font-the ability to move glyph cells in a font win-

dow to custom positions, tire ability to imbed morevoluminous copyright in formation into a font than

ev er b efo re , th e a bili'ty to a utoma te ta sk » w ith P yth on

scriptillg~ ll of these must never override the fact

th at a fo nt is a w ork o f a rt. T herefo re, the appro ach o

th is b oo k is to a vo id technical details as m uch as pos

sible to sho w you h ow to ea sily prod uce fo nts th at are

h op efu lly , w ork s o f a rt.



6

Before we begin ...• Some notes on Mac/Windows differences

T his book w as created from a M acin to sh com puter perspective. T hroughout the book, w e have n otedth ose in sta nces in w hich d ifferen ces exist betw een th e Mac a nd PC v er sio ns . Wh en k ey c ombin atio ns

are listed , the M ac alw ays leads, fo llow ed by W indow s. You will see each instance w ritten in one ofth e fo llow in g way s:

IICmd-B (Mac) or Ctrl-B (Win)" or "Cmd-l Ctrl-B" or "Option-Cmd- or Alt-Ctrl-B"

,

isCommand inMac.

• The Mac Preferences dialog is called Options in W in dows .

• The Preferences dialog is described as being located under the TOOLs menu throughout this book.In MAC asx it is located under the FONTLAB menu.

• TypeTool users:

TypeTool is the pared-down, sim plified version of Fonil.ab, m eant as a lower-cost entree into fon t-cre-

ation software for students and beginners. W hen you see the follOW ing symbol, it indicates that th e

F ontLab features described are not a vailable in TypeTool .

• About clutter:

If the layout of this book seems uoerly busy or cluttered in places, just be glad there are only 160 pages to read

and not 700 . I 'm actU fllly saving you tim e m J lim iting text in favor of pictures that are worth 1000 manuals. I

did this because 1 have no patience for manuals; its the only time I ever experience dyslexia. Frankly, Ielieve

dyslexia is not so m uch neurological, as it is part of a complex (that includes ADD and Touretie's), which I call

SPSD (SelJ-Protective-Shutdown syndrom e). It's a protective m aneuver b y the mind causing a shutdown or

malfunctioning of certain senses to avoid submitting to outside coercion. I'm sure tha: D r. A .M . Skeffington,

considered the father of behavioral optometry, would have concurred. He laid the blame for many visual prob-

lems on what he term ed "socially com pulsive near-point tasks." U nfortuna .tely, when SPSD is subconsciously

invoked on a sustained and habitual basis (such as in reaction to authoritarian tutelage), it can indeed effect a

lingering physical dysfunction. D yslexics rejoice; you're not sick, you've just refused to sacrifice your ethos. But

anyway, just read this book like a comic book: from top to bottom, left to right and it'll all make sense (I hope),



Learn FONTLAB Fast

PRELIMINARIES

Page 8 Crea ting a fon t: B asic procedure

10 Laun ch Fon tL ab

11 Start a new font

12 The Glyph window

13 The enhanced G lyph window

14 What's different in F on tL ab?

15

Fon t e ncod in gs: Latin -based16 Choosin g en co din gs fo r

desig nin g a nd g enerating fonts

17 Non-Latin fon t encodings

18 Save the font

19 The Font Info dia log box

23 Cap h eig ht c ompa riso n



8

CREATINGA FONT: Basic Procedure

How should you begin creating a font? W hat do you do , first? F ollo win g a re some pra ctica l a nd

la bo r-sa vin g g uid elin es th a: c an help yo u to streamlin e th e fo nt-m akin g pro cess and a vo id b ack tra ckin g a nd

d up lica tin g o f ta sk s, w hich w aste tim e. H ere a re th e w ord s o ffiv e fo nt d esig ners e xp la in in g th eir own a pp ro ac h-es to fo nt crea tio n. A lth oug h m an y d ifferen ces a re a pp aren t, it seem s sa fe to sa y th at th e ba sic pro ced ure is rel-

atively similar. And it is up on such ba sic g uid elin es a s th ese th at w e sh all pro ceed i n . th is book to outlin e th e

process b y w hich you m ay create fonts using F ontLab.

Zuzana Licho;Em ig re , In c.

1. Start experimenting with the concept; draw

characters inmy preferred glyph-drawing pro-

gram, decide on ascent and descent.2. Set background guidelines and alignment

zones, including overshoots.

3. Finish rough idea of alphabetic characters (s-z

and A-Z). (The order depends on the design.)

4. Experiment with weights and styles.

5. Finish rough idea of numbers, then punctua-

tion, and all other non-accented characters.

6 . Decide on the weights and styles to be includ-

ed inthe family. (Steps 1-6 = 12months)

7. Finalize all the above, including proofs with

high resolution Linotronic printouts. Check both

small sizes (for evenness of texture) and very

large sizes for smooth curves. (Step 7 = 2 months)

8. Spacing: check and finalize side bearings (fit)

(Step 8 = 1month).

9. Check and finalize kerning. (Step 9 = 2 months )

10. Set up accented characters as composites and

check alignment.

11 . Decompose Composites.12. Run Python scripts to kern accented charac-

ters. Don't do double accents, but do include

conunon collisions. Then check collisions manu-

ally.

13. Run Python scripts to check consistency of side

bearings and kern pairs for ligatures and other

derivative characters (for example: ie IE e f Z J fi f l . ) .

14. Run Python to check for common problems:

overlapping outlines, suspect side bearings, etc.

15. Verify Underlines.

16. Verify Font Names, Family Names, PostScript

and NFNT ID S, etc.17. Verify copyright notice.

18. Check hinting.

19. Generate font files.

20. Merge Mac font families.

21. Iconize Mac files.

22. Add MS font properties to 'frueType fonts

(S te ps 1 0- 22 = 1month) .

Stuart Sandler; The Font Diner

1. Scan in reference material (sketch or inspira-

tional ephemera). Usually it's one word, some-

times as few as two letters.

2 . Enlarge reference on the pasteboard about

500% and autotrace outlines inAdobe illustrator.

3. Clean up reference outlines, make judgements

about glyph shapes and establish rules for the

typeface. Establish guides if precision is necessary

(many of my faces are display, or headline fonts,meant for larger point sizes and are non-exacting),

4. Start from reference outline and flesh out the

entire lowercase and uppercase, then numbers.

5. Draw currency figures, fractionals, foreign

glyphs, math glyphs, then punctuation. I usually

compare glyphs ineach sub-family for consisten-

cy (Currency: Yen, Euro, Dollar, Cent, Florin, etc.).



Learn FONTLAB Fast

6. Copy glyphs to a new document, scale downand print out drawings as a "waterfall" to seeglyphs at different sizes (usually 12,60, and 200-

point) on a letter size page horizontally formatted.

7. Standardize glyph shapes by fixing any incon-

sistencies in my glyph forms, correcting forweight, color, thicks and thins, appropriate shape,and Ise guides to ensure consistent proportionsincluding height and width.

9. Final standardization to correct for any glyphsthat are bugging me in the face (this is usuallypretty picky, subjective opinion stuff).

10. Import the glyphs into font-creation programfrom illustrator.

11. Once all glyphs are in their appropriate slots, I

space the font completely and create all the com-posite and reference characters.

12. Kern the entire font, key in all the font info, setthe ascent and descent, and the Euro via unicode.

13. Hint the font if it's appropriate.

14. Generate the font.

James Grieshaber; P-2 2 T ype Foundry

1. INSPIRATION. I get inspired from historicalletterforms or some thing I've seen or just some-thing I think I want to see. This usually takes thephysical form of pencil roughs, sketches andredrawing.

2. DIGITIZATION. Sometimes I can constructdirectly in an illustration application, but moreoften than not I have to scan inmy sketches to useas templates. Do test print outs.

3. FONTIZATION. Then I try to get the outlines ofthe upper and lowercase into a font generation

application (FontLab) to see ifthe letters play welltogether. Do test print outs of words.

4. REFINEMENT. Create the all punctuation anddiacritical characters, this is where spacing andkerning happens, along with tweaking of the let-terforms so that they work well with each other.Do more test print outs.

5. FINISHING. Make sure all the info inthe head-

er is correct. Generate and test versions for Maand Pc. Do more test print outs of every versionfrom every application, on both platforms.

Thomas Phinney; Adobe Systems, Inc.

1) Scan my sketches, if any. (Ioften work directlon the computer. This seems to be much morcommon with the YOW1gerype designers.)

2) Do a basic keyword, especially of the lowecase. "hamburgefonstiv" or equivalent, plus, saya few caps.

3) Do initial printouts. Refine spacing,anddesigns, for the keyword letters. Almost everystep after this includes making refinements toutlines.

4) Add period and comma, and graduallyexpand the alphabetic coverage, while repeatingthe refinement process of step 3. This is the poinwhere I'm generating my first actual workingtest fonts, incomplete though they are.

5) Start kerning (but I always make sure that mspacing is done). The number one error made bybeginning type designers is to start kerning toearly. Never start kerning until the spacing i

finalized! Otherwise you're using kerning to fiunderlying spacing problems, and just diggingyourself a big hole. If you make any significantspacing changes later, you'll have to throw ouall your kerning.

6) Do the ligatures, numerals and additionalpunctuation,

7) If I'm doing extended language coverage, thiiswhen I start experimenting with extended Latinand non-Latin letterforms.

8) Generate test fonts for print out. Continue making refinements.

Sumner Stone; Stone Type Foundry, Inc.

My ways are many. All mysterious. I have saidtoo much already.



10

Launch .FONTLAB

Wh en yo u la un ch P on il.a b by d ouble-clickin g its ico n, a sta rt-u p w in -

d ow , right, w ill appea r a nd th en the prog ram w ill open. Fo ntLab can

a lso be o pen ed by draggin g and dro pping a T rueT ype, O penT ype o r

Type 1ont (use th e screen f ont since it co ntains the m eirics) onto its

program icon. You'll know FontLab is open when the menu bar, icon

p an el b ar a nd t o o t o a r , below , app ea r on you r d es ktop.

" . l ! l . . . tOt"{fi ';fi; I

------~

,

FC l1llab Startup _

This is theEdit toolbar. Itis shown here

grayed-out, orinactive,

because nofonts have yet

been opened.

,~ Wekl:om6 10 forrtlilb!

""""" yt> J "" """1Le!l1«1I'O \'01)', .... '"'" "'" ,." """". <nO 01twG~r.,,'or'~~1s

FontLa:bversion 4.6

FontLab has more icons than the Dead

Sea has salt. No need to memorizethem now. Some you may never use.

Those that become relevant will beexplained as we proceed. Refer toFontLab's .pdf manual for a thoroughexplanation of all features and icons.

···

Hover your mouse

over any icon and a

"Tooltips" pop-up

will display its name.FontLab actuallyallows Windows

users to alter the

design and Tooltipscontent of any icon.But for now, let's

design a font, notredesign FontLab.

FontLab's user interface is

more customizable than a '57

Chevy. Drag any of thesebutton panels to any conven-ient location on your desk-

top. When all panels aredragged away from the top,

the docking panel itself dis-appears until one or morepanels are dragged back tothe top dock.

Wi indows users:The first tim e you start up FontLab 4.6, c ho os e th e " Alte rn a tiv e" in te rfa ce

layout to be com patible w ith th is book. If yo u've a lre ad y o pe ne d F on .tL ab

simply go to VIEW>Toolbars>Edi t to open the essen tia l E dit too lbar. (In

F ont Lab S tu d io 5, T he d efa ult in te rfa ce la yo ut is th e A lte rn ate o ne ,)



learn FONTlAB Fast 1

Start a NEW FONTD o you prefer pulling dow n m enu bars, clicking .iconbuttons, or h itting key com binations to accom plz.sh ata sk ? F or man y ta sks , F on tL ab o ffe rs a ll th ree ch oic es.

To begin working on a New font,

click the mouse button on FILE

and scroll down to New.

Or, click the New Font ---t"icon in the top toolbar. t!!::;.t:==;;;;;1

Or, hit Conunand-N (Mac)

or Control-N (Windows)

r

fi

The New command opens a

new Font window contain-

ing a slot or cell for everycharacter in a standard

Adobe Latin-Encoded font,

which is the default font

encoding. Yourjob,should

you choose to accept it, is to

fill each and every cell, in

the encoding of your choice,with its designated glyph.

SaveSave A s ...

Save All

Revert

Generate ront ..,Genel'ate Mar Suitcase ...

font lnfu.,

Page Setup ...

Print...

o o r

O O PQuit s e o

. . . .

n

fi

~IDnt-

, . _ 1 < 1 0 < 1 \ -

1 Z. . . . . . . .

0 I

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V \V

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- w_

I }

,.". ~

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,H p 0 1 <

o p Q R

~ i • •

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U V W x

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*"". . .

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~ · . r . .- .a

.r t

olllosis _

s01 _ ; -1T

1 /'

Note that the Font

Window displays the

Names of every character

because this is the default

Title mode for new fonts.

r: Click here to enlarge I . . .oror reduce cell sizes in here.

, the Font Window. }

~ElI!! l

Character vs. Glyph:

What's the difference?

A character is an encoded slot in afont that is assigned a number when

in codepage or Unicode view. A

glyph is the contents of that slot: theoutlines you've drawn in FontLab.

Some glyphs are unencoded-that is,

they don't get a number assigned in

any codepage or in Unicode. Somecharacters can relate to multiple

glyphs, such as when you make

alternate forms of a given character

and associate them with OpenTypelayout features. For example, the let-

ter A is Unicode U+0041. But you

might also have a swash cap A and a

small cap A and an alternate version

of the A, all in the same font: onecharacter, but four different glyphs.

-Thomas Phinney

\.



12

The G lyph windowDoub le c lic k a ny c ell in th e F on t W in dow. T he n d ou ble c lic k a ga in (fo ur c lic ks to ta l) a nd a G lyp h W in dow fo r

that g lyph w ill open . The G lyph W indows are w here we'll draw the characters for our font. After a G lyph

W in do w h as been o pen ed , o r i f it a lr ea dy c on ta in s a d raw in g, a m e re d ou ble -c lic k w ill o pe n it th e n ext tim e.

~ - " ! 1 lWhen a Glyph Window is opened, the top half of the

!I~'Ultl .. lavenwp.;t •

~LD.1d.IlIll.~. . . . . . : . . . . . l toolbar, left, becomes active and the Editing Layers panel, Q Metric:!

I~ right, also opens. The Outline layer, shown highlighted, is [if GUide$

the main layer. Here is where we'll draw our glyphs. o HinhD I1a$k

' + ~ l + r -r , ; i + ( 0 G lyph • 1651 A from u nn .m ed fon t l!Ie'-'-

I> 41.~ \ 41 ,7S7 ./' . . 6 . ,''\0 ti!.!la;,

~1- ;~, ,I~, ,Ifj~ " ,,', I;'!fl", ,I·,I~I., ,A:" d,,,,I~ I" "r,:, II, '''~' '~,,' '~',I""~"I , r o ,~ ,~" , 1 ' 00 ,tel

. , . ./I~l' -, I / I I

I

I

r : r i I~ The Meter Panel provides j

Our glyph drawings: : digital readouts informing us I( " ' L Q J -:I

will be done here, in the1

~ of the cursor's exact positionI

J

I

center rectangle, asI

'-- within the Glyph Window. ItII

defined by cap-height,ap-height I

~~I . z g r n can be used, for instance, inII-

baseline and right and- ~I

drawing diagonals or meas-I

1 I , ~ I I ~ 1 ~ I

left sidebearings.I~ uring stem widths.

IIIII

l~x-height I

!il-I

-I

- .. - -1I

If the lower half ofI

II

the Edit toolbar isI

This horizontal;II

grayed-out, as above,I

guideline, thatI - - -,pen Preferences appears in red, i

(called Options in Left Right the Measurement

Windows) and go to sidebearing sidebearing line. It is useful

Glyph window. Then I for measuring,the distance ofncheck: Do not show I

I

Glyph toolbox and_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _? ~ _ ~ ~ ~ I ::_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _idebearings

VectorPaint toolbar. I I from a character.I

I II II ,,

I

I I

I

Descent lineI

l~I I

I"I

I

I

-~

I

I

1 4I

Notice this D, and the C, X, and I,I

A above. They instantly inform,

. ; ..d I

• .J~Jus that these horizontal lines are I Cit <f,

the Descen t, Cap he igh t, x -h e ig h tand Ascent guides, respectively.

AFS Note: The AsiaFont Studio Glyph

window has a special Kanji interface for

drawing CJK glyphs. See page 152-153.



Learn FONTLAB Fast 13

The Enhanced G lyph W indowIf the first G lyph W indow you open does not look like the one below , just click the expand button, a, to add

to olba rs to th e to p, a nd th en d ick th e e xpa nd butto n tu b, to open the G lyph s B ar that provides a slightly quick-

er w ay of accessing ch aracters in the Font W ind ow w itho ut having to lea ve the G lyph W in dow enviro nm ent

to c lick ba ck o n the Fon t W i nd ow .

Click to pull down themini-View menu and

choose to view your glyph

from 6.25% to 800%. Orchoose the Zoom inor

Zoom out tool.

These icons are redundant

to the Edit toolbar, but maybe more conveniently locat-

ed here. Beginning on pageSO,we explain the use of

many of these tools.

Use the Magnifying Glass tool

Slow: Pull down a menu, scroll to a preset per-centage. Your glyph is not guaranteed to showup centered as you want it..Fast: Select the Zoom-in or Zoom-cut Magnif-

ying glass by clicking the icon. For this, you

must travel your desktop to change tools.

Faster: Press Cmd-Space or Option-Cmd-Space(Windows: Ctrl-Space and Alt-Ctrl-Space). Drag

a marquee around just the portions you wantmagnified. Or hit Cmd-O (Ctrl-O) to View the

glyph at 100%.Fastest: Hit Z and X on your keyboard. Centersimprecisely; won't work i1the Lock button that ll

opens any glyph you type is unlocked.

Glyphs Bar: cost/benefit analysis

• If the glyph for A is cpen and youwant to open K , use the Glyphs Bar..

·If the glyph for A is open and you

want to open £, you'd have to scroll for

miles through the Glyphs Bar to get toit, or have memorized the key combina-tion, Opt-3 (Alt-3), whereas in the Font

Window, £ can be more readily seen andopened with a double-click.

Tip: U the Lock button is unlocked, start

to type a glyph's nam e,e .g . "Sie ... " , to .

bring Sterling into the Glyph window.

In a New font, untouched, empty cells-both here, in the Glyphs Bar , and in the

Font Window-stay gray until they are opened and filled with glyphs. Then ourglyph appears within the cell and the cell background color becomes white.



14

what's different in FontLab?If you 'v e j us t s to itc he d. to F01 1tL abrom Fon to gra ph er, th e f ir st th in gs y ou 'll n otice a re th e man y d iffe re nc es in

the Fo ntL ab intelface-som e of w hich m ay seem overw helm in g to the eye. Below w e'll outline a f ew of these

fea tures an d a lso tell yo u ho w to tum th em o ff if they make yo u nervo us. B ut yo u may so on fin d th at F on tL ab 's

"d if fe rences" represent, 01 1 th e whole , a q ua ntum lea p in tech no lo g1 j a nd in th e ca pa bilities afforded t he u se r.

GIVph - [83] S from IT C F riz Quadrata

Alignment Zones Lavender

bands show the degree to

which rounded and pointy

letters overshoot the base-

line, x- and cap-height

guidelines. See page 49 for

how to set them. To turn them

off, go to VIEW>Toolbars>

Show Layers. Unless set by

the designer, FontLab's auto-

zones can be too wide and/or

uneven as it interprets incon-

sistently-drawn overshoots.

Control Marks

When any of these

(j)(jj>!Qlmarks are

lit up, a glyph has

< D ruetype hints,lJpe 1(jj>ints,or a

IM\asklayer. ControlMarks also show up

in the Font Wmdow.

Toggle to Edit tool ~

In most programs, you press andhold the Command (or Control)

key to temporarily toggle from

any tool to the arrow tool.

In Fontlab, you just tap th e Cmd

(Ctrl) key once to get the arrow

tool (called the Edit tool), Tap

again to go back to current tool.

Crosshair Move a

node and you'll see

a crosshair centered

on it. Don't like? InPreferences>G Iyph

Window, click Do

not show crosshair.

F

Node connections

K the small circles andI--,--+-~-+-...,;..;;...--t crosses near a node

indicate its connection...........::l.!:~:;::-'::r'T.:F:;:;jmode. Tohide / show

_----___.~;.c_~-'-~-L......!Ti!!lt these, click the Con-nection Mode icon inthe Show LayersPalette (open it: VIEW>roolbars-show Layers).

Sh ow L a ye rs

Nodes Instead of "points,"FontLab calls them "nodes."In this book I use both names.

A bo ve. L to R : u ns elec ted n od e, m arq ue e-

selec ted no de, a nd E dit to ol selec ted no de.

When a node is

selected its position

is displayed. Turnthis feature on or off

in Preferences>Glyph Window>Show

Node Position.



Learn FONTLABFast 1

Font Encodings: Latin-based

B efo re be gin nin g w ork o n yo ur fo nt, yo u'll n eed to ch oo se a n e nco din g. If y ou r fo nt is fo r th e Eng li sh language

or f or m ost E uropea n lan guages, and it co nta in s th e c ha ra cters 'i1 BCDEFG; a bc defg ... " w ith o r w ith out th

a dd itio n o f a cc en ts , it is a Latin-based font. F or m ost Latin-en coded fonts, the M acinto sh R om an enco din

s hown b elow p ro vid es a ll th e r eq uir ed g ly ph c ells . Its c ha ra cte r c ell p os itio ns a re v en J s im ila r to th os e o f e ar liefont creation softw are program s, w ith w hich you m ay already be fam iliar. M ac R om an just refers to the layou

o f th e ch ara cte rs in th e F on t W in dow. F or PC u se rs th e d efa ult e nc od in g is "D efa ult E nc od in g" ---a g en er al p ur

pose enco ding w hich m akes the m ost com patible fonts, hotoeoer "M acinto sh R om an" w ill w ork for P C, too .

If your font will be non-Latin, suck as Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Kanji or Bengali, see page 17.

~' 'fDnt -lI......u

1

v

p p

J

•

The gray "Template"images in Font Windowcells provide a basic ideaof how each glyph looks.

The gray images disap-

pear once a cell is openedor filled with a character

drawing of your own.

,"

. ,.!

R( .

B c o f a

II

• f

D E F f :J

u y v z

,. , 1 I <_

m n • •

J R S T L

I m II p q

T t

r <

e f h J

6 0 a a

1 3 ( ;

a

0 . U

c c

ii u t L

j' n

pi 11"'1

B ~ © TJ.I

1_1ollr......."

.IE

/_

o

....mes""Icode r.ngesCDdep.,eJInd...

-l S ~ ¥ Il It . J

W hether your font w ill eventua lly become Type 1, T rueT ype o

Ope nT ype to be used o n W in dows 01' Macintosh is n ot imp orta nt n ow

T he se issues n ee d o nly be co nsid ered a t th e tim e o f completio n, w he n

you generate the fo nt for use. Then w e ca n ea sily g en .era te th e sam

fo nt fo r use in a ll fo rma ts in clu din g Ope n.T yp e, w h ic h is d is cu ss ed o

page 131. How w e draw a font is ba sically the sam e for even) form at

Click on Mode to chooseNames, Unicode or otherencodings that may be appliedto fonts. Each Mode listed pro-

vides different options, as dis-cussed on the next page.



16

Choosing encodings for designing and generating fontsB y A dam T ward och

Q: S I,o uld b otll M a c a nd W in do ws users c ho os e th e D e fa ult

E ncoding in th e F on t W in do w?

A: In choosing an encoding, consider these three aspects:I. Desisn process: Planning th e g ly ph c ov er ag e;Wha t g ly ph s

w tL l b e in my font?

During the design (drawing) process, encoding and font for-

mat are unimportant. My recommendation: Ifyou're making

a Western font-whether on Mac or Wmdows, and regard-

less of the final font format-work in"Macintosh Roman"

encoding. This will always provide the glyph coverage (or

range) you'll need.

II . Encoding: Wha t sequence ( codes) w i ll b e assigned to my glyphs?

Leave "Macintosh Roman" selected inthe Names mode for

your fonts regardless of the font format you're making. After

finishing the design, choose Glyph/Glyph Names/Generate

Unicode/Standard Table/OK. When making a Western font,

regardless of the font fonnat, make sure that you've set the

following parameters:

1. For a type 1 font, go to Preferences (called Options in

Win}>Type i-rvpe 1 Export>Encoding Options and select

Always write Standard Encoding in the pulldown, as below.

FontLob Pl"'.... n < : . .

Type 1 Import

:J~tompo . . a ll tomJ>'>slI e gl yph ,

C•• or .. .. U"'«><I . Ind." . .. ro .oIl glyphs

oMlk . PFMII I. 0M.h ArM and I,.f 1\1.

I ! i ! I U.. , WI.. . .. . . n' "n d W lnO O K... ' .s fo n, •• rtlal slu

EII<Odlng op"""o:

[ A lw a ys Wf~e S . . r u ll I td En<odlnll j 1l!!I"ulOrn1la1lpDrt glyph.< 0Open TVpe 1 bepo" T.rml .....

Un: 1 8'ui!t ill

2. For a TrueType font, go to TrueType>TrueType Export>check to enable Use Unicode indexes as a base for TrueType

encoding. (See th e s cr ee ns ho t o n to p o f th is p ag e.)

a) Under Use following codepage for first 256 glyphs, select

Do not reencode first 256 glyphs (and therefore, Export only

first 256 glyphs will be disabled, as it should).

b) Still in the. TrueType>TrueType Export> section, disable

Put MSChar Set value ...by unchecking it.

c) Under Use following codepage to builldcmap(l,O) table,

select MacOS Roman (default) from the pulldown.

3. Go now to the Font Info window (Cmd- or Ctrl-F).

a) In the page called Encoding and Unicode, look down

______ ~_.....,.;Fo~"~lub PIor~",.c.o.

~F~T~ro~~~W~.~_-L~~---------------Tru.Ty,," , Import

oC o . " " " Tr•• Type ""tli".. In!o T~ 1 ou"I ...

o sale tht r"",.o l UOO U l 'M I i ! ! Sa . .. . Tn..Type hlnllnlllnform;;lIlol1

o~<ompo se c.ompo<iteS 81ml'ort ..... bedd.d billNP

0511" . cuS IOI l 1T IV"Typ e . .. Il l.. D A l I l a " " , ! ' t l 1 ! > O r t o c ! r " " t

Tru.Type Expor t

Export hinl.d Tru.Type F a . . . K e . " exi.ll11g TrueType 'nUNctlons

Export ....... T",.Typo hh'l> I!!!AU,ohln, " nh ln ,. d 1 I1 '1 '1 > h~

I i ! ! Export ombtdd.d bitmap" D o " ., r.ord.r 9 f yph.

oCopy HDMX d o , " h"", b.u. 10 <_polite glyph

8u... U.l<ode ind .. u .. ,. bHe fa, T eue T'(p •. f tlcod I"g

UK foltOWi"9 < 0 < 1 __ " for ~TSt 256 ~lyphl:

~ncod' nr.. 256c1wactors J~C'POi'" r J o M ~ h r(1 ZS6 a'rpt:U" Qf.hl: ~1"£1M [EJ.!:ti'pllji l:

oPur '-15 0,., SO l valu.'"", r .Seloclion ~.Id

U.., follOWing cod'""g.'" b!l;ld wt,pll.Q) tobl.,

( (Moe OS Ro..... n (det.wll)! A l l ( . . . . .'ohlnllfl9 O.,.lon~,.. )

~ (Ca.cel)~

toward the bottom for Microsoft Character Set and selec

Western (latin 1)CP1252/ANSI.

b) Under Mac script and FONDID,Choose Roman.

c) In the Available codepages column above, select: 125

latin 1 and scroll down to select' Macintosh Character Se

Click the right-pointing arrow to include these selections ithe Supported codepages field.

d) G o to the Font Info page "unicode Ranges" (no t pictured)

Click to enable both Basic latin and Latin-l Supplement.

• H...,.. . . d CO......lh't "',".iO,. inc! ttl tnUftCilf ..I4"1

. ' M t : u1 ' (- J , l'I'Id o a 1M",l4n!i...r~_1)rII<_

U i I l l k o d ' 4 : f.mgol9i

• HI"dn~ Sollln~.

fYpt l-t'#,Kffk Itnit'lgt.

. . T 'I J. tT y p e_ s ,p K lt If :: I lt 'E t .m g io

Fo n c " 0 4t

1 25 0 L a1 1r 'l:& n •• 1\ Europe1 251 C. . o I I i <1~S3 C J . . k

1254 T l .l tk .U I \ .1255HlI>_

1256 AR.blc12SJ W i . _ & , , , .

-4 1251l...1tl" I- i !¥ \i l.ci ft ;mhCh.. .'~r

I ' F " Dcf....' d>onctll'

"'.<>olp' ond FOND ,0, r ' " " . . . . ...-..,---------=>tj

m . Font format: I n w l1 ic1 !Oi l t fomult will I generate my font?

When making a Mac 'TYpe1 or Win 'Iype 1 font, switch fon

to Names mode. When malting a TrueType or Openfype-

CFF font, switch font to codepages mode.

F or m or e in fo , se e G en era tin g a nd in sta llin g a fo nt, p ag es 8 1-8 8.




Non-Latin font encodings

M ost likely, the f ont encoding for the script o f your language is am ong the hundreds listed in the Encod ing pull-

down menu shown below . If you are no t certa in which encod ing to choose, use FontLab to open up an existing

fon t in your language that works correctly on your computer. In genera l, it isa good idea to open an existing

fon t or two-in wha tever language-and study them . You 'll find clues about bezier construction , character spac ing and more . And the font w ill con tain encod ing in formation upon which to base your own fon t.

"H ow ever," cautions fon t designer H rani H. Papazian , "It may be dangerous to rely on encod ings o f th ird-

party font designs. There 's no guaran tee *they* know w hat they're doing. So choose the source carefu lly."

Historicletters

With Unicode Mode selected,

click to view the Encodingpulldown menu that offershundreds of Font Window

layout options for creatingfonts in almost every conceiv-able language. Refer to thePontLab online .pdf manualfor more info on Unicode,Code Pages and Index modes.

Go to www.unicode.org for

further nitty gritty.

Coptic-unique lettersAdditions

~illI(

Bued on ISO 11859-5Bnlt Rllnl.n .Iph.bet

Bued on ISOI1859-S

Historicminellilneolls

ExUndd Cyrillic

U.iluioned lone ~0521' Keep scrolling,there a re lotsmore choicest

IJDDerc:ilse letters

Modif ier letters

lowercu~ letten;

Pun~tlliltlon

Hebrew

. . . .By the way, if you prefer these

menus and tools to appear at

the top of the Font Window, asshown, click this little button.

I ~o I - , I ~2 I ~ I = . I cr J35 I CS!6 I !m7 ! om I =~ I 09~ I ~ I 0= I ~!~ I 0= I ~r I ~ I _ , I - ~ I

C l -------

http://www.unicode.org/

http://www.unicode.org/



18

Save the font

Saving your new font can be done now or la ter, but it o ug ht to b e d on e so on in :ca se a cra sh sh ould in te rru pt

yo ur pro gress. F on tla b itself is fa irly sta ble , but computer c ra sh e» c an h app en fo r m an y rea so ns. A fte r Sa vin g

the f ont file, a s explained below , w e'll run-through P ontl.a b's F ont Info D ialog B ox w ith U s m any section s. Apotentia lly huge am oun t o f inform ation m ay be added to yo urfon t d ata in these sections,thoug h not all ofit i

n ec es sa ry . T he re fo re , w e h av e c ho se n to e xp la in o nly th e mo st impo ria n t fields. I f yo u pla n to mark et y ou r fo n ts

.thro ugh an established fon t foundry, you n eed only con cern yourself w i.th add ing th e m ost basic info an d lei

tin g th e fo un drt) fill in th e rest w ith its sta nd ard bo ile rp la te (sm all prin t) a nd n am in g c on ven tio ns.

New

Open ...

CI05e

CID5e All

8 B N

a B O

HW

Step 1 To save a font, hit Cmd-S (Mac)or Ctrl-S (Win), or click-hold on FILE,

then scroll down to Save, as shown at

left. The Save window, below, opens.

1 1 : 1 My OW n CoolFom

Revert

Gene rater 0nt ...

Generate Mac §uitca5e ...

Font Info...

Page Setu .p ...

Print ...

8 G F

8 B P

Qui t

St.ep 2 of the Saving process isto click once again on FILE, thenScroll all the way down to Font

Info. In the dialogue box thatopens (see next page), you will

input the rest of the informationneeded to properly identify andsave your font.

f,vfb is FontLab's own file format name,

as .fog is fo r a Fontographer document.)

But this is only a partial Save because inthe Font and Glyph windows your fontwill still be referred to as "unnamed."

How to QuitDiscouraged already? Hit Cmd~Q (Alt+F4)

whenever you want to Quit FontLab or

Scroll down to Quit. But come on, show

some spunk, keep at it.Ihought your

dream was to be a font designer!




The Font Info dialog box

You've just saved your new m aster :vjb fo nt file , b ut n o p ar ame te rs h av e b ee n e sta blis he d to id en tifij it o r d if

ferentiate it from other fonts w hen it is lo ad ed in to a fo nts fo ld er. T ha t's w here Font Info come s in . C lic k 01

FILE>Font Info, as show n on the previous page or just h it C md-F (M ac) 01' Cirl -P (Win) . Font Info o pe ns tth e Names s ec ti on , wh ich is perhaps the m ost im portant o f tho se listed in the colum n at left. M an y fields a r

s elf- ex pl an a to ry . T h e o th er s th a t a re mo st r ele va nt will b e e xp la in ed h er e.

" " \

Technically, you should go through each and every item Type the basic font name here,

here and fill in all fields to define your font. But actually, For now, we'll name a single font

many sections can be left at default, as we'll see. rather than a family.

/

Fonl Inro - Untilled /

Bilsicsel of font names /Click-hold here for

• Names and COPVl'ighi'l

pull-down list of stan~ Version and Identification/'Metrics and Dimensions ..". dard weights, choose

~ Encoding and Unicode ........ Famllv Name: I&mkum »: Normal or Regular foi) Hinting Settlng§

Weight: Demilbld a single-style font, orTvpe I-specific settings I

-type in any appropri-

i) TrueType-specific settingsWidth: [medium

UllniLigh

Font noteThin ate term you want.ExtreLigli

119htBook

Style Name: Demiibid Regular Style NameNormal

Medium

]ont Name: DemlBold

Semi Bold

Full Name:Bold

JxtraBold

Menu Name:Heavy - - . . _ "lec!:

UllreFOND Name: I UltreBlecl< - 1

Fet

I'" Build Names ExtraBllIcl:

After you've put in basic name and weight

Unfo, click on the two magic emerald icons ( Can~el) ( Applv ) : = .".- . . . . . "7

to automatically fill in the remaining fields

according to proper naming conventions.~

r

How to Name Fonts in a Font FamilyAfter you've completed your "key" font in what will be an

extended family of different weights and styles, go to

FILE>Save As and re-save the key font with a different Style

Name such as Bo ld , B lack, I ta li c, e tc . Then·hit Cmd- or Ctrl-F to

open 'The Font Info window and make changes to reflect the

name of the new family member. S ee p ag e 128fo r c omp le te in fo .

N ow tha t you ve filled In th

Names section of the F011t InfoD ialog box, above, yo u could clic

OK to dose the box and start actu

a lly draw ing your fon t. H otoeoer

the fo llow ing pages explain a few

other im portant areas of the Fon

Info D ialog box that really should

befilled in before proceeding. --



20 The Font Info Dialog Box

F ont Info - U ntille d

~ Names and Copyrlgh

~ Version and Identificatio·n

~ Metrics and Dimensions

~ Encoding and Unicode.H~i~~nm~ ,

OK, you've clicked

the magic emerald but-tons, and all fields are

filled properly for asingle font. This will

help your fonts to loadand function correctly.( Se e page s 81-85 for how

to g en era te a fo nt, a ndpag es 1 28 ~1 30 o n th enam ing o f fo n t fam ilie s.)

Basic set of font names

Fami lV Name: IBunkum

W e ig ht: [ D em iE b ld

W i dt h~ [m e dium

o Font is italic

o Font is bold

M ore S ty les •

Style Name: [DemiEbld

Font Name: IBunkum-DemiBold

Full Name; [B un kum Dem iE b ld

B u n k u m

B uild S ty le N am e

B u n k u m

Note: Avoid weight values lessthan 250, which can cause problems inmany Windows apps .

• Build Names

( CoPY... ) ( C ancel) ( A pply )

C lick th is tria ngle to revea l o th er pa ges in th is ca teg ory. Skip th e OpenType names pages f or now (w e cove

th ese in th e fa mily n am ing sectio n on pa ges 1 28 -1 30 ) an d click on Copyright Information.

Font Info - Untit led

Font copyrililht informations and Copyright

OpenType-speciftc names

Additional OpenType names

Copyright information r--:-+-J~ Created by: F re de ric k B un ku m

Embedding~--+-"'-creation y@ar: 12005

Designer Information

Ucense informationCopyright:. Cop y riQh tF r e: de :r lc k : B unkum, 2005. All r iQ llt 3 r eser ve d .

Type your name or com-pany name and year thefont was created into the

top two fields.

Click the magic emerald -+-++--------1-+to automatically create

properly formatted text inthe rest of the fields.

This field can contain a

repeat of the copyrightnotice.

Trademark: IBunkum O em i B old i3 a tr6 d em ark of F re de ric k B un kum.

~ Build Copyright and T ra dema rk re co rd s

C op yrig ht F red erick Bunkum , 2005. All r iQ llb r es erv ed .

REMINDER: Download FontLabfree .pdf manual for a full explana

tion of any item I've skipped oveHowever, some the details I ommay be overlooked for the momen



Learn FONTLABFast 2

C lick on Embedd ing in th e le ft c olu mn . T o a llo w yo ur fo nt to b e emb ed de d in d oc umen ts like A cr ob at .p df file

is helpful to users, but doing so makes it possib le for a font pirate to extract your font from the docum ent. O

c ou rs e, th e b ea uty o f a .p df is that users can view the doc as you designed it, f onts and a ll. Click a to vie w embe

d in g c ho ic es. T he o ne be lo w w ould be o ur ch oice fo r g en era l use.

Font Info - Untltl~d

.8~. Names and Copyright

IFont embedding settings

OpenType-spedflc na.mes

Additional OpenType names...... d;ng_n", ("T",.. ~

Copyright Information

EmbeddingI'

t Only printing and previewing of the document Is allowed (read-on .•. tiJ-n.."tln",r . -~-

ow c lic k Des igne r In fo rma t ion in th e left c olu mn . T he ba ckw ard s/fo rw ard s butto ns a t b w ill a lso ta ke yo

from pa ge to pa ge _ P erso na lizin g a f on t b y adding your nam e and w ebsite uri not only gives cred it w here i

d ue, but a llo ws use rs to find you, buy your fon ts and/or h ire you for custom w ork. K now ing that a real perso

n ot just a f ace le ss c orpo ra tio n, h as c rea ted a fo nt m ay d issua de some po ten tia l fo nt pira tes. If yo u w an t, u nd

Vendo r URL. type the webs ite a dd re ss s uc h a s my fo n ts .c om or ve er .c om wh er e u se rs c an p urc ha se y ou r fo nts

Font Info - Untitled

fnformation aboul font de.signer. Names and Copyright

OpenType-spedflc names

Additional OpenType names

Copyright Informa.tion

Embedding

Designer fnfOrir i it IOn

Ucense Information

• Version and Idl 'ntif lcation

• Metrics and Dimensions

Desl.gner: [Frederic C. Bunkum

Designer U R L :

Vendor un:

Click L icense I nfo rma t io n . Type here the term s of your legal agreem ent w ith the purchaser of the font

T ypic al fo nt lic en se a gre em en ts sta te th at th e fo nt is n ot to be a lte red , re so ld , o r g iven a wa y a nd that it is to b

used on just one com puter, unless negotiated otherw ise. T ype in the L ic en se UR L w here the text of the ful

agreem ent m ay be found on your w ebsite (if yo u'v e g ot a w eb site , o th erwis e le ave b la nk).

Font Info - Untltled

T here was a fo n t pi ra te fro m D u rn i n gW h o sto le fro m fo nt a utho rs tnel r e arn i n g.S a ta n h ea rd o f h is tr ic ksdra gg ed h i m d ovn R iver S ty xno w he s pend s a ll e tern ity kern i ng .

.. N am es and Copyright

OpenType-spmflc names

Addit ional OpenType names

Copyright information

Embedding

De.signer information

Liainse Information

~ Version and Identification

• Metrics and Dimensions

• Encoding and Unicode

• Hinting Settings

Typt. l -specif' ic settingslIcense URl: 1~ ~~~ 1

Uc:ense Information

Ucem;e:

-



22 The Font Info Dialog Box

T he next im porta nt section in the F on t In fo w ind ow is Key Identification Settings. T he n um bers a nd co de

yo u p ut h ere w ill e na ble c om pu ter o per atin g systems to d istin gu ish b etw ee n yo ur fo nt a nd o th ers. U ltim ate ly

you w ill w ant to supply your font in a variety of form ats to suit carious u se rs. T ha t's w hy w e usu ally in clud e

TIJPe1, T rueT ype, a nd O pen Type d ata in our f on ts to cover a ll bases w hen w e fin ally g enera te th em .


.. Names and Copyright

Version and Identification

KeVIdentlflcatlon settings

Panoseidentlflcadon

IBMand MSIdentification

Use this field to identifyTrueType fonts. It may

include the creator's name,

font family name and cre-

ation year. Click the magicemerald button, at right, to

fill this field automatically.

FontLab suggests you type 0(zero) in this field. Althoughthere is some debate on thesubject, this ID system for Type1 fonts seems to be obsolete.

Font identification values

TrueTyp!. Un.ique ID record:

o . . . . ( Unnecessary. )r--~Type 1 XUIO numbers: ~ - -

TrueType vendor code: FBI

Click here to view astaggering list of VendorCodes for establishedfoundries like The FontBureau. Ifyou want to

identify yourself herewithout registering withApple or Microsoft, entea four-letter vendor code

in lowercase only.

Font creation date; ,11/12/05

7:41 AM

Can

Move along to Metrics and Dimensions. UPM m ean s "units per em ." It refers to the size o f th e basic squa r

in w hich w e d ra w o ur glyphs. Just lea ve th is at 1 00 0 UPM regardl es s o f t he fo rma t y ou 'r e c re atin g. On ly iJ yo u

a re spe ciJ ic ally r eque ste d to do so b tJ a client, for exam ple, sho uld yo u cha nge th e UPM to a d iffer en t o ne, e .g

20 48 . F or in fo rm atio n o n T ru eT ype fo nt g en era tio n, se e p ag e 8 5.


~ Names and Co.pyright

Version and Identification

Key identification settings

Panose identification

IBMand MSidentification

... Metrics and Dimensions

Key dimensions

TrueType-spedfic mettles

Subscript and Superscriptj, .111 rorj ..

Font UPM value

Font's UPMis: 1000

8cale all glyphs according to UPMchange




Key Dimensions sh ow s m ostly vertica l m ea surem en ts like h ow h ig h o ur ca pita l letters w ill exten d comp are

w ith h eigh t o f lo wer case letters, an d h ow lo w our d escend ers, like the tails of g an d y, w ill fa ll b en ea th th e b as

line. If yo u use a cap heig ht sta nd ard o f a bo ut 7 00, it'll m ean that at a given point size, your font will m ost lik

ly b e th e same h eig ht a s o th er sta nd ard fo nts so , in a p ara gra ph se ttin g, a ll fo nts will a pp ea r a t a bo ut e qu al siz


Traditionally, italic letters are

designed differently than their

"regular" counterparts. To make an"Oblique" font (a fake italic in

which the regular font is just slant-

ed), fill ina number for S l an t a n g le .This slant can 't be seen in your glyph

w ind ow s an d it w ill o nly w ork in fon ts

g en era ted in T yp e 1fo rm at (n ot IT or

OT). W e suggest that you not mess

with S la n t a n g le . In stea d use th e

T ra nsfo rm atio n w in dow (see pa ge 6 7)

to a ctu ally , p hy sic ally s la n t g ly ph s.

Mo5t importarlt font dimensions

Ducendu: r ~Recalcu';';-,

• Names and Copyright

... Version and Identification

Ke y Idenllflcatlonsettlngs

Panoseldentlflcatlon

IBMand MS Identification

....Metrics and Dimensions

_L-"---- 'K.,_e-Y.. . :ld . . .m-e-n-sl-ons.......~ ,---- .......caps height: ~

OCopy values to TrueType metria

Itallc~n9Ie: ~

~Syndw~!e

nFont is monospaced

ThI5 option Is s~nchroniled With llle P

Font &8ox.: (32767,32767) - (-32767, -3276

.--

Slantangle: 15

Highlight any field, likx-height, and this win-

dow shows the x-height

in relation to the x glyp

The 15° of slant we spec

ified isalso shown.

Interstate Regular

Cap height: 700, Ascent: 729

Bernhard Modern


Gill Sans Light


Cap height comparison Cha ra cters from th ree d ifferen t fo nts w ere p asted in to o ne G lyph

W in dow. A ll th ree h over a ro un d th e 7 00 ca p h eig ht sta nd ard , b ut th e ch osen h eig hts o f a scen t revea l in terestin g

considera tions of des ign . The h ig he st p oin t o f I nte rsta te's lowe r ca se v er tic al stem is slig htly h ig he r th an c apA bu

th at's o nly to m ak e b oth a pp ea r o ptic ally e qu al in h eig ht. B ern ha rd Mode rn 's a sc en de rs e xce ed c ap h eig ht. I n Gil

S an s, c ap a nd a sc en de r h eig ht a re th e sam e. A fo nt's k e y dim en sio ns are never set in sto ne. C ha ng es m ay be m ade

la ter, e ith er in th e F on t In fo w in dow sh ow n a bo ve, or mj d ra gg ing bars in th e M etrics la yer o f a G lyph W in do w.



24

START.INGAFON

Page 23 Getting C haracters In to F ontLab

26 Open an existing font

27 Selecting the right font to open

27 Open a Fontographerfog file

28 Im port g lyphs from Illustra tor

30 Im port bitm ap scans from Photoshop

31 In depth: Preparing scanned im ages33 Make an outline in to a background

34 Make bitmap scans with ScanFont

39 Autotra ced characters in F ontL ab

40 Creating glyphs with a dig ita l pen

41 The Brush tool and dig ita l pen

43 V ecto r P aint tools

4S Tracing w ith Pen tool and dig ita l tablet

46 How to trace a scan




Getting character drawings into FontLab

Most likely you w ill use one althe fallouring m ethods to input character draw ings, or "glyphs" as FontLa

calls th em , into your font. D ecide U pO ~1ow yau w ant to get character draw ings in to Fon tLab an d skip rigl

to th e a ppro pria te sec tio n. A no th er tim e, w he n yo u may w an t to use a no th er m eth od to im po rt o r in itia te d ra win gs, yo u ca n g o to th at a ppro pria te se ctio n a nd fill in yo ur un de rsta nd in g o f a n a dd itio na l pro cess.

open An Existing FontA great way to become familiar

with FontLab applications is to

open an existing font to study its

structure and play around. If thefont is one of your own that was

designed with older font creation

software, you can generate it in

such a way as to bring it in to

FontLab while still preserving its

spacing and kerning.

See page 26

Import scans from PhotoshopMany of us like to start with

something to guide us when we

draw letter shapes. We may scan

our own tight or rough sketches,

top, or we may scan letters from

an older source, like a book or

magazine. Ifyou base a font upon

a type or lettering sample that is

not your own, be sure you are not

infringing upon someone else's

property.Seepage 30

Create glyphs with a digitaltablet and FONTLAB'sPen or

Brush tools

Digital pen tablets offer a means

to achieve freehand flourish and

drawings that can resemble pencil, pen and brushwork drawn b

hand. Wemay also use the digita

pen to roughly trace our pencisketches into FontLab, instead o

scanning them.See page 45

Import drawings from

IllustratorFor those who ate most comfort-

able drawing glyphs in a drawing

program rather than in FontLab,

there are just a few simple steps

you must take to get your outline

drawings pasted into FontLab.

See page 28

Import scans with Sca n Font

ScanFont is a separate program

from the folks at FontLab that lets

you can scan alphabets, optimize

the scans, automatically separate

individual characters, and Auto-

trace them for export into Font-

Lab, TypeTool or AsiaFont Studio.See page 34

Draw glyphs in FontLab

The process of drawing, whether

with pencil, digital pen tablet omouse, usually involves previsu-alization. That is, we must star

with some idea in our minds o

the shapes we wish to create. Thi

section explains the Drawing tool

bezier curves, selections and

other aspects of drawing glyphs

in FontLab applications.See page 47



26

Open an existing font

W e've suggested tha t opening a few preexistin g fo nts a nd stud ying them is a great w ay to g et fam ilia r w ith

th e F on tL ab e nvir onm en t. R em embe r, h ow eve r; th at it's ille ga l a nd /o r immora l to mod ify, d is tr ib ute o r s el

un de r a d ifferen t n am e a n e xistin gfa nt th at isn 't yo urs. T ha t sa id , h ere a re a few ways to openfont s .

The simplest way to open a font is to drag itsicon on top of the FontLab icon, as seen at

right. It doesn't matter whether the font itselfor the FontLab icon or its alias is on the desk-top or within a folder,

The most common way to open anexisting font is to Open FontLab then goto FILE>Open (or Cmd-O Mac/Ctrl-OWm), locate your fonts folder (or wherev-er else you've stored fonts) and double-

click to open a selected font.

Type 1 fonts contain two parts,

either of which FontLabcan open.However, the better choice may be

to open the .bmap screen font (Mac)or ..pfb (Wm). See top of next page.

save

Save As,.,

Save AU

Re~ _I ~

XS

oKS

FILE>Open

causes a windowlike this to open.

Scroll around to

G@ne ra te F o nt ...

G ene rate M ac S Uitcase ...

Font Info ... X F

Page Setup...

Print.. X P

Notice that recently openedfonts and .vfb files are listed at

the bottom of this menu.

Reopen one by scrolling downto the font name.

. Kobal t- ·Kal1oon .bma.p

Show ~$: : . A ll FO l lt F i le s I ! i t 4

FOllt n am e : K o ba lt-B la dc .

( Options ... ) Type 1 c pt: ions, make Uri<ado;

TTIOTF aptJans: 0nsttul:tlon5;

Com:

( Add 10 fav oritll!S }



learn FONTlAB Fast 2

Selecting the right font to open

I . r yo u're a ttem ptin g to o pe n a n existin g M ile T yp e 1o nt in F on tL ab, it's b etter to o pe n th e scree n fo nt (.bm ap

suitca se ) ra th er th an a prin ter fo nt. W h en yo u o pen a W in dows T ype 1( .p fo ) fo nt , b e s ur e t he c or re sp ondin g .p fm

or .afm file is in the sam e folder. O pening other fonnats is easy since they only have one file per fon t. In thP re view /M etrics w in dow, sh ow n be lo w left a nd rig ht, spa cin g a nd kern in g a re a ssig ne d. A t a, o nly the M but

ta n is d epressed so n o ke rn in g is d isp layed. A t b, th e K butto n h as bee n d epressed so ke rn in g sn aps in to pla c

c lo sin g u p th e h ug e g ap s b etw ee n le tte rs . If y ou o pe n a n e xis tin g fo nt fr om its p rin te r h alf, d ep re ss in g th e K but

ta n w ill r ev ea l th at n o ke rn in g is p re se nt. F or mo re a bo ut u sin g th e P re view/Me tr ic s w in dow, se e p ag es 9 3-1 03

Open a Fontographer .fog file in FontLabMacrom edia 's Foniographer font creation softw are, once the dom inan t force in the industnj, has not bee

upgraded s in ce 1996 a nd h as be come in comp atible w ith A pple's O SX so ftw are . M a ny d esig ners th ere fo re w an

to c on ve rt o ld fo g file s in to F on tL ab 's e qu iv ale nt :u fo file s. U n fo rtu na te ly , F on to gr ap he r file s c an no t b e d ire ct

Gen.rAt. Font FIlII __ ly imported in to FontLab. But here 's the

tuorkaround: Open a .fog file then go t

FILE>Generate Font Files. U se the Fon tog

rapher settings as shown, left, to export

Post sc r ip t t yp e 1ont for P c. F ontog ra pher w il

generate four files o f w llich only th e .pfo w ill b

usefu l to us. O pen th is .pfo file in F an il.a b a nd a

th e point inform ation, ala ng w ith spacing and

ke rn in g, w ill be preserved , th oug h bitm ap sca n

in th e o rig in al fo g a re n ot s alv ag ea ble . Howe ve r

B itF onte r, a s ep ar at e a pp li ca tio n fr om Fon tl.a b

Ltd. is designed to open and save bitmaps a

se pa ra te f on ts o r a s p ar ts o f o utlin e fo nts .h .: .•..iD]

oEasy eArtvanced·· • I:-----:-~::::;;=====-..;--=-~_:-,--------- 'Generate IComputer: 1 PC . . , . 1 EncadlnQ: 1 Custom .... 1 I ClInc.1 1

rOutJlne rGntto output: -

I format: 1 PostScript Type I

l I D : IMt30 1 1

l~nclude hints

D Use "Rex" If possible

---------- --------_., .. , . ".,. . _ , , _ -------

~

OtI1er optlDns: Where to DUtput the rents: - - - - - jIiJ OVerwrite existing files Leslie1Desktop Folder:

. ~OutputAfMme

~ Output PFM flIe

~ Output 1101'ile [ se t Folder_I _ J

Illtmllp font to output:

. . . . 1 Format: 1 None " : 1Dont care ....

1CFamlly: 1



28

.Import art from Illustrator: wrong way

If yo u a re a f on t d esig ne r w ho p re fe rs to d raw c ha ra cte rs in A do be Illu stra to r, h er e's h ow to pa ste Illu stra to r

a rt in to F on tL ab . F irs t, th efo llo win g a re some o f th e w ro ng w ays to im po rt illustra to r a rt in to F on tL ab .

Illustrator

o

If you Copy drawingsfrom illustrator, left/thengo to FontLab, right, open

a Glyph window andPaste, the illustrator art

imports as a weird bit-

map, too lousy even to betraced with the Pen tool.

-- - -- ---- ------

I1-~mtIJ··· ;

r-: \J, Ii""'-'J ~' \I~i',,"," t,- J ;~"i§ 1 1 1 '

--~~~-nt~ 1~_~~h "' ir l "l'.j';'~. 'i,

Iir

t II

-----------,r--..-:c--~-------.-----~---! ~

Instead, go toillustrator's Prefer-

fil . htences e, rIgJ,(EDIT>Pre ferences>Fi les & Cl ipboard)

and change the

Clipboard to AlCBjL , ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~; ;

Preserve Paths. •..This is a step inthe right direction towardimporting art from illustrator into FontLab,but it is not the only necessary step.

o EI1.:t>r.v ron Co. ( M M o o - . . )

! ! ! ! U.. ·low alutlo<> I'ro"" ro , lr "'« 1 E PS

U""oto ~. I...........MO<!I~'" I:tt

I ~Wtd "" Q,j. "

CQoyA~ OPllf

B" 'CD " '" n " " . pa ro l 'O C Y ' " • .~nl

81,PrIl!~Pollh:lll

C"'........""'.......<~ond 0..'111 ....

One solution to the problem of

pasted art being too small might

be to drag the characters to the

baseline, a, select FontLab's Scaletool, b, and begin to scale the art

to cap height, c. But this is not

ideal ..After all, you'd have to scale

every subsequent character you

paste into FantLab to that exact

degree, so scaling or positioning

inconsistencies might result.

I",

[OJ- j

bl~t-I I~j~~

Now Copy from illustrator,then go to FontLab, open a char-acter window and Paste. As yo

can see, the characters import asvector paths, but ina seeminglyarbitrary size and position in

relation to the em square.

I'llustrato rI

,,I

- - - . - - - - -------,i




Right way: 1. In FontLab, below, draw a box with the Rectangle tool", a, (or just draw

a line) from baseline to cap height, b. The width of the box is not important. Copy this box and Paste i

into illustrator, C. The box from FontLab pastes tall-ahnost as high as an ll"x 8.5"page in landscape.

z . In. illustrator, select the characters tobe pasted into FontLab and move them

into alignment with the lower left cor-ner of the big rectangle. Use the Scale orFree Transform tool (hold the Shift key

to maintain proportions) and drag theletters, d, up to cap height, which is thetop of the rectangle. Copy the character

art and Paste into FontLab, e. The artwill come in at cap height. Draw allsubsequent letters in illustrator to thesame scale, they'll paste into FontLab at

the proper size.

(*Rectangle tool disabled? For c on sta nt a cc ess to

th e fu ll t oo l ba r, o pe n Preferences>Glyph Window andenable Donot show Glyphtoolbar and Vector Painttoolbar. Che ckin g th e bo x mea ns to olba rs will show.)

Illustrator into FontLabHere's a slig htly d ifferen t m eth od for im portin g a rt

fr om I llus trator CS ( or fllu str at or 9+ ).

1. InFontl.ab, go to Preferences>General andclick to enable Do not rescale EPS files.

2. In Illustrator CS, go to Preferences>Units &

Display Performance. Change General units topoints (1 point is e qu al to 1un it in F on tL ab).

3. Also inillustrator's Preferences go to F iIehandling & Clipboard and change the Clipboardto AICB/preserve Paths.

4. In illustrator, make a rectangle 700 x 700

Note: D rag the D -pointIl lustrator's ru le rs to th el et te rs' base line so they wpaste to FontLab 's base li

Note: Paste a string ojcharac ters a t once to sa vetime . L ate r, y o u'll C u t a ndPas te e ac h c ha ra cte r intoits ow n G lyph w indow .

points and scale your drawings to that height.

5. Assign any kind of fill to all your illustratordrawings (FontLab won't import paths with nei-

ther fill nor stroke).

6. Press Cmd-/Ctrl-R to show Illustrator'sRulers. Drag the rulers' D-point to the baseline oyour letters so they will paste at FontLab's base-line. Select then Copy your illustrator art.

7. Open a FontLab Glyph window and Paste.

You can now Copy /Paste between FontLab andIllustrator without re-scaling your outlines.

(Impo rt IIIu s tra io r file s w ith S ca nF on t, s ee pa ge 3 6.)



30

Import bitmap scans from PhotoshopM any font designers find it easier to ba se their d raw ing s of fo nt ch aracters o n a sca n or sketch tha n to begin

blin dly placin g poin ts in m id -spa ce. H ere's ho w bitm ap sca ns m ay be a dded to G lyph w in dows fo r tra cin g.

FontLab File Ed it V iew Glyph Tools Window

When a Photoshop image, such as a .tiff,

.bmp or .jpeg, is pasted into FontLab, it isautomatically placed in the Background

layer. Go to VIEW>Toolbars>Templates to

open the palette of icons (above, with all the

bitmap Bs)relating to the Background layer.

Next, you'll need a scan of something, like these

initials, below, taken from an old book. First,

straighten the scanned image so you won't bebringing crooked characters into FontLab. Use

guides to ensure the baseline of all letters are

straight. (more about preparing scans can be

found inmy book, L og o, F on t a nd L etterin g B ib le).

Note: When scanning an image, let the height of

caps come out at 700 pts (9.722 inches). However, likethe fancy serifs above, many parts of letters stick out

beyond the base and cap lines. Therefore, the total

height of your Photoshop scan should be more than

700 points-like perhaps 975 points-as in the Photo-

shop Image Size window (IMAGE>lmage Size), right.

Though a 72 dpi scan resolution would be too low for

print usage, if a scan is the right height, 72 dpi pro-

duces an amply sharp and clear bitmap inFontLab.

E 01(

Width :12070 I ( plx~Ls :1]1 ( Cance

1975 I ( pixelseight: :1 { Auto..

1207Q I! pointsidth:

Height: 1975 I ~ polnl~

Resolution: In !( pixels/Inch

t 1 I Con~train Pfoporti0l158Resamp l e Im ag e: t 81cub lc .1




In depth: preparing

scanned images

Im ag es in ten ded fo r tra cin g m ust be sca nn ed a t a la rg e-en ou ghsize a nd reso lu tio n to en su re fa irly sm oo th ed ges. O th erw ise w e

a re a lw ay s w on de rin g w hic h p ar t o f th e b itm ap py , s ta ir -s te pp ed

edge is true. R ight, a t a, sm oo th er im ag e th an b, which was

sc an ned to o sma ll then s ca le d up to ca p h eig ht in F on tL ab .

,d,.tiilt ~•.nba•.

Above, wood type from an old ad will

succumb to the scanner's nondiscriminat-

ing gazei the letters to become bitmap

background images for tracing in

FontLab. I plan to use the smaller, under-

lined caps as my lower case. Of course, I

will have to invent the missing letters

1.Before scanning, measure cap height of original.

Ours is less than one inch (25.4mm). Itwill eventu-

ally have to be almost 10 inches tall at 72 dpi. to

paste into FL at proper cap height. Your original art

may be larger, but shouldn't be smaller or detail willsuffer, as my own murky example above reveals.

The idea is to set the scanner's resolution high enough so thatthe scan may later be enlarged to FontLab cap height, and resdecrea.sed to 72 dpi without increasing file size much or at all.

2. Open your scanning software.

Marquee only the area you want to

scan. Omit superfluous margin area as

it needlessly increases file size.

3. Scan ingray scale, a, at sufficientresolution, b, for later enlargement

(see chart, far right). Don't scan below

300 dpi because the pixel information

gathered may be insufficient to ensure

a good image (even though dpi will

be automatically reduced to 72 when

the scan enters FontLab).

Scan Software

Dooument Sourct':

I m a g o ( ' Type

"...7Bla<lk & . White PhO~ 1

11oo~ ri:l- ~

O o ( 's t l na t io n

Resolution·

W 1 5 . 0 0 H 1 100 inches ... IS C < l ' e : [ ! ] ~ ~ 1 1 0 0 $

Preparing Scans continues on next page

Capheight

1" /25.4 nun

2" /50,8 mm

3" /76 .2 mm

( N 1 . " U e I " scale u

SCIlIl, e . g . : 200

w it /wu l a ls oi l1 c r e l l 5 in g s c a" ing reso l tl ti oExcess f ile iu /b e d is ca rd ed ,

In su ff ic ien t i rmak es th e imaqua li ty s u ff er .



32 Preparing Scanned Images

IVULOAlVITE:':MRy"UV!!§.1

4. When the scan is made, as above, adjust it by using Photoshop's Curves or Brightness/Contrast filter to remove gray background, pump up the contrast and maybe add someUnsharp Mask to sharpen it.Icompacted my scan by removing redundant letters in order to

reduce file size and conserve hard drive space.

Width: 9.122 i n c h . . . .Height: 700 p o l n b

s. Now press Cmd- or Ctrl-N to open ablank New Document in Photoshop.Make the width and height 700 points

and the resolution 72 dpi, as at right. Hit

OK. The idea is to establish actual cap

height, then paste OUf scan in and scale

it by e1Jeto this height (without resort-

ing to higher mathematicsl).

Namot : IUltlU.d-l I II 01( IIm.veSlu:479IC I (ancol

P re s et S II os : ICustom ; I

Width:§C]IpOint< ; II

H.lght~1 points : I

""s oluU on : ~ Iplll.ll/lnch ; J

"'ode: IGrayscale ; J

r-r- New Size: 6.18M

Width: 1 3 0 IIInches ~·l

Ht19ht : IHlOo I I ~ p = D h = ' b = = * ~ 1

o lie loJ"tIn

6. In the new Photoshop document, Select Althen Fill it with any gray. Go to IM AGE >C an va s S iz

and increase the height and width of the document

allow ample room for pasting your scan.

-~11I,

, I "

7. Paste your scan into the new document. Press Cmd- or Ctrl- T toscale your scan to cap height, below, according to the height of the700-point (cap-height) gray rectangle, a. Hit Return to complete theTransform. In the Layers Option palette, Flatten Image. Marquee-

select one or more letters, Copy them and Paste them into FontLab.

a

Notes: Uyou require several scans to get your characters into the computer, make sure you follow thsame procedure-using the same numerical settings-in processing each scan. Paste the contents oeach scan into the document with the gray cap-height box, as above. Itis usually preferable to pastestrings of letters, rather than one at a time, and perhaps even to draw all letters in the string inth

same Glyph window to compare them as you draw, then paste them individually into their own cells




Make an outline Into a BackgroundThis might be useful i f you w an ted to refer to the origin al chara cter shape w hile altering its conto ur or if yo uw ere usin g the existing fo nt as a tem pla te to create a differen t style of fon t, but w ith sim ilar proportions. This

would also be a way to get I l lustrator d rawin gs, p as ted in to F on tLAb , to b ec om e b itm ap b ack gro un ds .

1. Click the Create Background icon and a bitmap copy of

the Character drawing in the Outline layer forms in the back-ground layer. Notice that the bitmap is rough and doesn'tseem to perfectly adhere to the contour of the outline. Let's fi x

it. Double click anywhere on the bitmap background ..

2. A four-handled box forms around the

bitmap. Grab a handle and drag to scale

the background, but to retain original pro-portions-unlike at a-hold down Shift.

3. Here is the "refitted" bitmap. The scalingmethod described is the same for any bitmap

background, whether created from the outlinelayer, as above, or from a Photoshop scan.Bitmap scan tips

F la tten P ho to sh opfiles co nta in in g la yers o r th e resultin g pa ste in to F on tL ab , a, w ill b e un usa ble. Im ag es th at

a re no t 100% black, b, will pa ste fun ky. D arken up g ra yed im ag es w ith Phatoehop's Brightness/Contrast and

they w ill p as te n ic ely , c. A Background b itmap , d, c rea ted in F on tLAb f rom an o utlin e d ra un ng (a s described a

the top of this page) with

Create Background will

, be rendered at a less ea iis-

factory resolution than ab itmap bac kg round pas te d

from P ho io sh op (c)..One

way to tighten d's re s

would be to sca le th e o ut-

line to 400%, hit Create

0d

· Background, then scale

r;1 rj]l both ba ckground and out-~ L:.J line back down to 25% .



34

Make bitmap scans with. ScanFontFor a utoma tiza tio n o f th e sc an /impo rt pr oc ess , th ere

is n o fa ste r m eth od th an th ro ug h S ca nF on t,.a s epa ra te

pro duct fro m F on tL ab. T he fo llo win g in structio ns d ono t in clud e m en tio n o f a ll Sca nF on t's m any so ph isti-

c at ed c ap ab ilit ie s. Ou r g oa l is to show how to sim ply

and quick ly scan, prepare, and export bitm ap charac- ,

fe r im ages into P on ila b apps.

e 'Workf low

lt~

Open, 5e-parate Export

S c a 1 ! Y f t ! n tversion4

Double-click the The ScanFont icon to open the pro-gram. The toolbar, left, contains drawing tools and image

editing tools such as eraser and paintbrush to create orimprove scanned images before importing them intoFontLah. These tools are similar to those fOW1din

Photoshop and illustrator, which could be preferred

choices for accomplishing these same tasks, especially ifyou are already familiar with the Adobe products.

This is the intu-itive 5cANFoNT

Workflow toolbar, a

brilliant conceptwith endless possi-bilities for emula-tion by other soft-

ware programs.

This toolbar makes

using the program

as easy as a, b, c.

Tips for Preparing images to b e scan ned

• Carefully line up the book page or paper sheetstraight against the scanner's glass edge. If you'rescanning an image that is printed crooked on thepage (not uncommon), try turning the page slight-ly. Trick: Xerox a book page, then draw a thin,

straight line (not touchlngany characters) on the

page. Use a bleed-through marker or press hard'Witha ballpoint pen so the line can be seen on thereverse of the sheet and then line it up with the

scanner edge. Or, if the image on the page is not

aligned with the paper itself.frim one edge of thepaper straight in alignment with the characters.

duce a cleaner image but making letters larger

than 4 inches (10.16 ern) is not necessary for goodresults. Scan smaller characters at 600 dpi, largerones at 300 or 400 dpi.

• Paper should be white with a strong black imagepencil or thin-point pen sketches won't show upwell and the resulting scan may have a broken-up

image. Trick: play with the density settings on acopier to darken the lines of a weak image or tolighten a gray background before scanning.

• Scan in gray scale, not RGB color, for a smallerfile. Color is irrelevant, anyway, in.outline fonts.

• Make sure no two characters in your image-to-• Size of original character image can be as small be-scanned touch or overlap one another becauseas 0.5 inch (1.25 em). Larger characters will pro- ScanFont will assume them to be a single character




Use ScanFont to access your regular Twain scanning software

1. Place your original in the scanner and hit Scan-

Font's New button (inMac as X) or Scanbutton(OS 9) to start up your Twain scanning software.

Note: ScanFont can't scan in Mac OSX. So

Quit ScanFont, click on its icon, hit Cmd-I

to open the Info window. Then check the"Open in the Classic environment" box.

S c a n F o n t F i l e

2. If your scan is

absolutely straight

(all characters sitting

upon 0° horizontal

baselines) and if the

background is 0%

white with nice black

characters, you are

ready to move to

step 4. Otherwise, goto EDIT>Transform

and choose any of

these functions tooptimize your scan. -f---------+

Cut X Angle:

Copy ~~c t I 1 j I I I

-180' 110'

Pa~te ' l - : V

Clear I X >

Du I care D

Se lec t A l ii M AEnlarges orreduces window

'\~I!"({ Inv{ t S tr A view of scan.

Deselect 1) D

Fill Selection «}~F

Transform •

3. If your scanned image is not sharp blackagainst white, go to IMAGE>Brightness/Con-

trast. Play with the sliders until the image in

the preview window looks right. After this,

you could use the Eraser and Paintbrush tools

to remove spots and fill in holes (otherwise, a

spot may end up in its own cell, autotraced).

,\

e 1Oct :

----til--- 8_lt~ 1 0 I I 1 0 0 .

Tra".p.,.ncy;

(Ignore trans-parency setting.)

'.".',.~ I O U ! '

using S c .a nF o nt c on tin ue s o n n ex t page

View Window

Scale .•. Drag the Rotate

window slider

Shlft .._to straighten the

"eXT scan. If a single

Rotate 180· "eXIcharacter inthe

Rotate 90· CW "eX2 scan has beenRotate 90· CON "eX3

marquee select-

ed, it alone willFlip Horizontal "eX4 be rotated.Flip Vertical ,,\:XS

Skip steps 1 through 3by hitting

"open" in the Workflow palette and

scrolling to a previously-scanned and

optimized Photoshop image (tiff, p.icor png) to import into ScanFont.

Note: A n abun da nc e of pra ctical an d a rca ne details

c on ce rn in g Sc an F on t may be h ad by downloading t . h e

free Sca nF ont .pd f m anual from www fo ntlab.co m.



36 Using ScanFont to Import Characters into FontLab

4. If your scan is optimized, hit Separate in the workf:low 0 Workflow

palette to "auto split" the individual characters in the scan t - = ~ ~ - - - ~ ~ ~ ~ - I " ' "- - - - - - - I---"'""'i'into sep..arate cells as shown below. The Separate Shapes , , c . -

8D .', 0>window (not shown) will open. Inthe Separation Method

pulldown, select Book Smart (try other options too, or ,Open ._~ ~ I < I t ~ ; Export..

read about them in the ScanFont .pdf manual). Click OK.

5. Choose the Cell tool,a, so you can drag thebaseline bars appearingunder each cell to aproper position so allcharacters will sit uponthe baseline whenimported into FontLab.Shift-click two or more

cells to drag their base-lines simultaneously.

o

op

".gf;;;" " "!Do

Left, a few letters with their baselines

raised. The cell' tool is seen under letterD. Allow for "overshoot," the degree

to which pointy shapes, b, and round-ed shapes, (, should extend past base-

line and cap height to visually appear

level with characters whose stem ends, align square and flat against thoseguidelines.

F G H I J K

( I ' • i • I : '~ ~

Z bracl<~ t Ie '« t>. ~l(slash brIICk~tr ight ,8()'II~;rc.... underSCOf"cf 'g r

1r T /\

ScanFont can recognize that the letter Ii and its dot belong in one cell as a

single character. But beware of the

occasional oversight. For example, at

right are Adobe illustrator vector let- .......-----------------------ters brought into ScanFont. (Save the illustrator doc as .eps,

clickOpen inthe ScanFont Workflowpalette. ScanFont doesnot autotrace in this case because the vectors already exist; it

just exports your paths into correct FontLab slots.)

But here's what happened: After I'd

exported the cells to FontLab, left,Irealized that the two narrow barsalongside Hhad been given separatecells that had naturally fallen into theH,Ind }slots inthe FontLab Fontwindow. Back inSeanFant, Imarqueed

Hwith its three cells and went toCe lls >Merge cells and then I re-exported to Fontlab, this time successfully




Placing Scan Font characters into FontLab.II

6. Choose the Scale tool, d, to check cap height relative to fontItr I I height. Drag the tool so its 0 point aligns with your cho-

L I . ~ sen baseline. If the number 7 is not aligned with cap

height, place your cursor within the bar at number 10 til

-==ld it becomes an arrow and (hold the Shift key) drag thebar up or down, e until the 7 aligns with tops of caps.

To Scale one or more letters differently than the others (for instance,ifone letter was drawn too large and needs reduction), click a cellto select it, then drag the Scale tool up or down.

So:When no cells are selected, changes to the Scale tool apply to all

cells. But when one or more cells are selected and the Scale tool isadjusted, the change applies just to those characters. The rest retainthe scaling applied to the /Igroup."

Prer.~nce.

7. Before you finally Export you must tell[ ~oot1ab ~" ' . .. . fij-- D.•

ScANFoNTwhere its seeds will be sewn. Goto FILE>Preferences>FontLab Server. Click

~ n , , , . . .1OpllDftS

Use and hit the Select button. This will @ .klJvali! !i~rvf'apphc.tion i.utomallt.aJly

allow you to search your hard drive for Siun:hOptiono--- -- -

FONTl..AB,I 'YPETooL or AsIAFONTTUD IO and o .t.uu.m otlully ,~ •• d> ro • . """" on I( lCl JJd 1 .1<s

Choose one of them as the program to U s . I ! : M..;(In'OI~ H"OCAtJpll(: 'IdIClnJ;JOI 'I 'Laib 4 .E i :F o ti tL l b ~ ( Seltoct ... )

receive the 5cANFONrBackground bitmaps

and autotraced contours. Then click OK .

e Apply) CaM"I) ~

Export To FOIl1~b

8.Hit Export button in the Workflow palette.( Clyph5 wiNlutomalicaUv II~ Unicode Indexes -lII1 The Export To FontLab panel, left, comes up

Stl.rt from: 0041 - (hex, offering the possibility to assign names to the~1II ~I ' ll' l1I"'e UJt~ gl!lHDI:ed fro. O:rJIDJdI!: idb.u cells for identification when exported. This" _ I A I > I o . . . . . . . . . . <aOJ""

means that each of the characters will end up

inits own correct slot in the Font window.

The most reliable way to do this is to choose

< . ! J E port all cells ( Cancel) the top selection, Glyphswill automatically ...•

shown at left, and type in the unicode that the

Note: If the characters in your scan are inrandom first character inyour scanned sequence will

order-not sequential like A, B, C, or 5, 6, 7,etc.- "Start from." For example, the unicode for

you can always manually move them around to character A is0041 i a is0061;and! is0021.

their proper Font Wmdow slots, so the above stepisnot essential (though it isan efficient timesaver).

Using Scan Font continues on next pag



38

Tradng Options

9. The final step before your scans get export-

ed is the Tracing Options window, right. Skip

Luminosity unless your scan is RGB (scanningingrayscale is always preferable),

Under the little preview window, Click + toenlarge the image to 200%. Then, when you

experiment with Trace to le rance and othersliders you'll be better able to observe which

arrangement seems best. These sliders mayi also be left at their default settings. Click OK.

Happy :Medium: The more paints (also called

"nodes") inyour autotraced outlines, the more

accurate will be the tracing, However, too

many excess nodes can be a pain to remove.

Black&Whlle Canvenlon O,plJons

I!l 5018

, , .

1 0 0 1 C

:t f JOur rC i nt l :: lib~fk IIwhl t~ V O , " , d o n 't n e ed 1 :0 w.~thr~ nprian10 b C l f o r o ! ' C - o- rr Y U :: Ii [. gn t D o U l l I n e f'Ofmn; a . u r jf ycRI ,ul! o po rtin -9 ' ~ 9 1 ' : \ 1 !Y 1 - r 2 ~ o r col or bltrna.p

f o nt ' ll an . yOUmoO ! .po<!f\r t ho < "n "" , " I " . m •• ho d InrliI... <:tjoll.

ScANFoNT will now Open the target FONTLABapplication, and create a new font with the new

characters and their bitmaps in place inthe font

window, as shown below. Or you can have

ScanFont export into any currently open font.

I,I

I,,,,

ii

~ - - - ~ - - - - - -..--~~, I

!Bzo_EJ

Preset : Custom

, 3

I ~I

SU'lI.ghtw an£llt:

- - ~ - M . ~ - - - - - - - - - -s - - -V .. I f

25I

! ! ! I i May g I!Ilerale Ctlm! 5 wh ll e t ra ci ng

! ! ! I i M uSf !Ienerale nD:e mt p o l nts on cu~s

OA lw a y.s u se .these settl~g5 fo . rc ur rent Image"dII,~p;rIgill:ii.iII ""'!dldll ' l l l ' l lof.h!C_ ~"III:q ''WfllIit~lf 'Igi : 1 ' H I I f t . K r I t To klit.... aam~ UlI1 j:Inl. tl'i.. ,41"'~

• • ~ e I: 'D,

F 0 H I ~ K ~ M ~ 0

( i i J & ~ - ~ ~ ~ - I I I . ~ ~ [ l. W . [ 1 1 0_/

,0 R S T u Y '0 1 M V 1 br_~1t ~~sh

_.~ .. I!r~.HCIUC~ md!rr'~

~

-f

,H

l t J ' i 7 W I T f [ \ ]/\

-• n,i ' • ~ • '. • I • . ~, I • I . .

"0

Itf.lJ ~ ~n.I- Untl,r~

~ 1 ~ N o " ' . . 1 1 II!;OIf",,~....od"'~ 3 F = I l : ! ! 0 I1i!- I " : ; i lr.;:;;- - '" - II)(-~ . . . . I - Y . . . . . .--.0 ( < 0 ' o ) (;) L U ( L \ I [j

~ , . . ."

, , , ._ .

a 3 a a 'I :) ,'ll ~ e'"

C e I

>- ,~It . . . ri", - . . . . , ~-" I I I , " ' " - -I o I " (0 0 I)

"u Ii u fl

•_ .

" j II ~ < !t p l @ P " f G U U U ! >,

J( 1 1 -~

.Will two or more scans be required to get all your

characters into the FontLab application? Just be sure

to scan each time at the same size and resolution" fol-

low the same steps, and use the same settings as you

export additional character cells,

10" H you filled in the Start From field in

the Expo r t To FontLab window (page 37),

your autotraced sequence of cells-andtheir accompanying bitmap scans in the

Background layer-will fill the appropri-

ate FontLab slots, as shown above.

If you left the Start From field blank, your

characters will appear at the bottom of the

Fon t window, left. Then drag (or cut and

paste) them into their proper slots,

Drag/Drop Option for exporting:

In ScanFont, click on a cell to select it, then

drag and drop it onto a character slot inan

open FontLab Font window.




Autotraced characters in FontLab.Despite the resolution quality of the Background image, a,that SeanFont imports into FontLab, the p

gram's autotraced vector outlines, b, are excellent. Using only the default trace settings has resulted i

very few excess nodes, and those present are correctly placed in"extrema" (that is, at the extreme

NORTH/SOUTH/EAST/WEST edges of the curves), so our editing of the outline will now be relatively eas

,

II

~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I

I

I

Many would stop here, consider the charactersdone, and move on to spacing and kerning. But

autotracing, even at its best, rarely produces ade-

quate point placement and lettershapes. When we

are working from scans of old logos and fonts, or

from hand lettering found inold books or maga-

zines, remember that such examples-for all their

spontaneous flair-are typically sloppy and im-

precise in execution. Compared with lettering,

high-quality, modern fonts require precision. And

stroke widths, angles and proportions must usu-

ally be more regimented and consistent inorder toachieve an even 1/color" when typeset. At c, right,

my improvements to the autotraced contour

involved removing redundant points and align-

ing almost-straight lines, sharpening comers by

removing bezier handles from comer nodes,

equalizing widths and angles where strokes

become thin, improving interior. and exterior

curves, and so on. See pages 46, 50-53 for more.

II

I

I

iI

I

III

I

iI,I

Ii

II

I

I

I~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -II

:



40

creating glyphs with a digital pen tabletFrankly Speaking...

"Friends, ifyou've ever tried to draw with a mouse or track-ball, you know just how clumsy and imprecise that can be. Take

it from me, a seasoned professional: A digital tablet is a wiseaddition to any graphic arts computer set-up. Itdoesn't have tobe large. A modest 6 x 8-inch model has long served me well.Some designers=-perhaps even you yourseU-eschew themouse entirely for the digital pen. And if you are experiencing

nagging carpal tunnels, you can 'toggle' between pen and

mouse to offset repetitive motion problems. "

T here are several reasons you m ight w ant to input character draw ings into FontLab w ith a digita l pen tablet

(such a s a Wacom ta blet): 1. T o use the Brush to ol to c re ate s cr ip t, c as ua l, h a1 'ldw ritin g o r fu nk y fo nts ; 2. To

trace yo ur ow n sketches w ith th e Pen tool, especially if th ey w ere d rawn to o lo os ely o r lig htly to s ca n we ll. 1.

T o "in put" a sin gle letter sketch quickly, ra th er th an sca nn in g it ; and 4. T o c aptu re a n e lu sive c urvin g le tte r

shape with the ease of hand m ovem ent when you just can't seem to m ake the bezier curves do what you want.

W e 'll e xp lo re th es e p ro ce dur es in th e f ollowin g p ag es .

.00

c: : : : Jc: : : : J

~: . . .. .

Before using your digital tablet,open its Control Panel and select

either the Proportional or One ToOne aspect mode.

Position your printed image orsketch on the tablet straight. Beforechoosing FontLab's Pen, Brush or

Drawing tools, use the digital pento touch the extreme edges of thesketch to make sure all points fall

within the open Glyph windowslimits (as seen in the standard tech-

nical diagram at left).Otherwise, you will have to stopdrawing in mid-sketch when thePen goes off the window edge.

Reposition your sketch so that theentire drawing can be done withinthe window's limits (you can alsoopen the Glyph window to its ful-lest extent for more room to draw).




Brush tool and digital pen tabletAside from dipping a real brush

into ink, the second best way to

a ch ie ve th e lo ok o f b ru sh le tte rin g

is to use the Brush tool found in

the V ector Paint toolbar (VIEW>

roolbars-vector paint). Sure, you

can use the vector paint tools

without a d ig ita l ta ble t, but by

u sin g a mou se to d raw, yo u'll p ro b-

ably g et s ha ki er s tr ok es , wh ic h ju st

m ea ns mo re c ur oe e ditin g la te r.

• Round brush" / Flat brushse the Brush with the "Transparent"

paint mode. It's the only mode inwhich

successive strokes aren't automatically

merged with their predecessors. As

demonstrated below, It's easier to edit

curves and retain "follow-through"

when they haven't been merged.

• 20 units

• 40 units

.80nits

,f 120 units

Paint Options

Other optiOnS:

:JAulDm"lIcally activate Transform operation after any pal

Automallcally switch edillng layer5 when entering the Ve

Brush opdons:

Width: f40l Angle; 6 q

Clp: 0E!l 0E!l

Join: e 0 F .-

Body:. _ ...,

Roundness: 100

Os e

Om

PoIY90n tool options:

Norm al (con lour) po IYlIon C a N sh Uil(e

Click the Brush Options tool, above, a, tochoose a brush shape and width or scroll

down to Options, b, to open the Paint

Options dialogue box, left, containing all the

paint settings. To create the script below, Iused the Brush tool with the calligraphic IIflat

brush" setting and an angle of 60°. Itwas, of

course, done on a digital tablet. Experiment

with the settings in the Paint Options box to

see which ones suit your specific needs.

The Transparent paint mode I chose in creating this lettering (written

across a single, wide-open Glyph window) shows all my overlappedstrokes. Since freehand work never comes exactly right, I'll tweak the con-

tours, merge strokes and eventually remove overlaps ( se e n ex t p ag e) .



42 Processingthe Brush tool results

One n ic e th in g a bo ut u sin g V ec to r P ain t to ols is you ing existing con tour shapes or even im proving themdon 't have to manually place nodes; it's done auto - (th is seem s to o ccur na tura lly w hen no des are put inma tic ally , th o ug h n ot a lw a ys a d eq ua te ly . So th e f irst pro per extrem a p ositio ns). B ut O ptim ize d oesn 't w an

th ing I d id-a fter using the Ed it too l to make a f ew to mess w ith your in ten tion by removing too manyin itia l tw e ak s-wa s to use Fon tLab's marve lous po in ts. And it can 't know w hen you 'd pre fer a sharp

O ptim ize fe atu re (TOOLS>Outline>Optimize or corner to be rounded or tha t som e excess po in ts arCmd - or Citi-Es-no: o ffered in TypeTool). O ptim ize causing bum ps in a curve that should sooth .m oves n od es in tp extrem a w hile generally m ain ta in- F ixing th ese is yo ur jo b.

Here's the lettering after being Optim-ized. Compare node placement with the

virgin lettering on the preceding page.

RemOVing excess nodes generally results in strokes were merged (TOOLS>Outline:>Merg

smoother curves. Notice above at a, how when all Contours), C , and final edits, like deleting the extrthe nodes with arrows were removed by deleting point (top arrow), were done. By editing node

them (go to TOOLS>Preferences>Glyph Window; and contour shapes before merging, you can bette

leave Edit/Delete command breaks contour avoid "follow-through" errors (lower arrows

unchecked) , the remaining nodes, b, were allowed where a brush stroke does not seem to line u

to express their curves smoothly. Finally, all brush- properly as it crosses a stem or other stroke.




vector Paint tools

e

The Pen tool (looks

like a pencil) is for free-

hand contour drawing

Let's look at a few more of the Vector Paint tools , and con

sider when they m ight be useful, either in conjunction

with a digita l pen tablet or w ith deft

mouse manipulation. Note that most

of the Paint tools are also available in

the vertica l E dit to ol pa lette , fa r left.

The polygon, Ellipse and Rectangle

tools are most commonly used in con-

junction with the Drawing (pen) tool, not

for freehand and digital tablet drawing.

The....~t-+--I- Line

tooL

The Drawingtool (looks like

a pen) is for

placing nodes

manually (see

pages 50-53).

A: The Line tool used with Round cap stroke ends and black color (w hich m ea ns

strokesa uto -m erg e w ith previo us o nes). B: Press the Shift key to force the Line too

to make straight horizontal or vertical lines (square cap ends used this time). C

The Line tool (with Shift key) was used for the vertical stem, but I had to switch

to the Brush tool for the curved bowls of B . Notice how difficult it is to draw nice

accurate curves by hand! D:The R was drawn freehand with the Brush tool and

digital tablet. Although there are already thousands of such fonts, you could use

this technique to make yet another funky, handwriting or "school-daze" font.

~ The. Select lasso tool is~ like an eraser that can be-..... used to encircle, a, andthen Delete errors such as an

unwanted bump (d ou ble- click to

stop la sso in g a nd close th e lassoed

selection, b). But even with the

added accuracy of the digitalpen, it is difficult with this tool

to achieve a clean result (en-

larged area shown at c).

Problem above resolved on top of next page



44 Working with the Line tool and Brush tool

What you should have done: If you select theTransparent paint setting-not Black paint-each

stroke remains an individual, a. Then you canselect stroke-ends to lengthen, shorten or adjustany under- or over-reaching strokes, b. Finally,

you'll select and merge all strokes (TOOLS>Out-line>Merge Contours), c, because final glyphs

can't contain overlapping contours.

As you'll recall, the A above was created with th

Line tool. To draw a letter in this style, whereaccuracy is important (notice that the two slanti

ng sides of A are not symmetrical as they shouldbe), it would be better to use the Drawing tool t

draw Single paths with precisely placed nodesand bezier points (see page SO), and then to MakParallel paths (see page 60) to fill them out.

using the Brush "Body" Options

... Smooth Left

... Point Right

... Point Left

- Simple Curved

_ Si'mp.leflat

_ Shaped

~ Options ...

The Brush Style tool menu, left,

offers various shape options forthe Brush tool. These Body shapesmay also be found in the PaintStyle dialogue box (click mouseon Options). When the Brush

tool is in use, the in-progressstroke appears disconcertinglyfat and gray, a. The final stroke

is revealed when the stroke is com-

pleted, b. At C, a sample created

with digital tablet and Point Rightbody style reveals that major edit-

ing must be done before suchstrokes are acceptable. So it maybe better to compose such shapes

point by point with the contourDrawing Tool, d. Are paint toolsmore trouble than they're worth?




Tracing with Pen tool and digital tabletWe have seen how FontLab'sBrush tool (like Illustra to r's B rush to ol) crea tes a w eig hted stro ke, w hich th en

a utoma tica lly becomes a clo sed co nto ur. T he Pen tool allow s us to create single paths that we may dose (b y

dragging the f inal path node on top of the first one) or lea ve open an d use Expand Strokes to fill out.

I

We'll use the Pen tool to - ; : : = = ; : : : : ; =

trace a printed image or Ipi'I ~sketch that we've placedupon the digital tablet. This is a way toget it into the computer without takingthe time to scan (making a scan takes

longer, but an actual scanned image is,of course, superior to any tracing youcan do with the Pen tool or the mouse).

FIGURE 80

1. Start with original printed images or your own sketches, right. Iftracing from a book, Xerox the page and place the copy on the digital

tablet. Be sure to position your image straight on the tablet's platen, eitherunder the plastic cover, or taped on top of it (d rawil1 g w ith th e d ig ita l p en

touc hing pap er , r a th er th an th e p la stic c ov er , p ro vid es mo re fr ic tio n to s low down

th e a ctio n o f th e h an d a nd m ay h elp p ro duce a tra cin g o f g rea ter a ccura cy). _ ...'----------

iting Layers

2. With the digital pen

and FontLab's Pen tool,~ trace around the perimeter

of the image, a, into anopen Glyph window. Tryto edit as you trace to im-prove the contour, if nec-essary. You'll probablyhave to Transform (Cmd-

or Ctrl-9) by scaling, rotat-

ing and/ or slanting the

tracing to get it into prop-er position at cap height.

--=:::::~.------->.--L.-"'-r-- ---

". Toproceed, here are two approaches: 1.With the Edit tool; begin tweaking the traced contour to

place nodes and curves as they should be; adding/subtracting points as you go. 2. Copy the tracedcontour, click the Mask layer, b (M a sk n ot a va ila ble in T yp eT oo l), and Paste into it. Then go back toOut l ine layer and use the Drawing tool (see pages 50-53) to redraw contours neatly, from scratch.



46

How to trace a scan B efo re lea vin g th e subjec t o f sc an s a nd tra cin g c ha ra

te rs w ith d ig ita l ta ble ts, h ere a re th e be st tips I've fo un

fo r w orkin g from sca ns to c rea te h ig h-qua lity co nto urs

Most letters can 'be broken

down into series of parts. The

Rectangle tool makes a stem, a,

which ca n thenbe copied and pas-

ted to become a sheared stem, b,

which maintains consistent stem

width. Hold Shift to make a per-

fectly square rectangle, then

;;;;;;;;.=;-+ Rotate it 45D to make c ..For any

shape even remotely elliptical, d,

El l ipse tool will conjure perfect

ones, segments of which may beused to create well-curved con-

tours: Shift-click the two paths

on each side of node e then hit

Cut (Cmd- or Ctrl-X) to delete

top segments. Some glyph con-

tours must be drawn with the

. Drawing tool, f. The top arrows

point to where the intrinsic wis-

dom of the bezier curve cures

the defects of the scan image.

Note: Windows users must access the Rectangle and Ellipse tools through the Vector Paint toolbar

(Enlarged view)

Background layer scans may be traced with the a digital tablet,the results will always require lot

Drawing tool starting from a point and working of work to repair, and tight comers (like the comeyour way around, a, and back to the start. This just below b) are often rounded over and lost. Bustraight-ahead approach is usually less accurate you can capture tight turns by exaggerating you

than using the parts method shown above. When pen's path by drawing too far beyond a comer,you trace a Background scan with the Pen tool and or into a comer, d, and later push the nodes back.



DRAW NG A FONTPage48 G lyph W indow deta ils

49 Alignm ent Zones

50 M aking po in ts w ith the D raw ing too l

52 Making and B reaking connections

54 How to select poin ts and pa ths

55 Selecting , D eselecting; the M agic W a nd

56 W orking w ith nodes and pa ths

58 D raw ing G lyphs

61 How to Preview your draw ing

65P op-up M enus

67 T rans fo rm , T ra ns fo rm in g, T ra nsfo rma tio n

71 Letter spacing 1 01

72 Check progress in the M etrics W indow

73 Workin g s ugge stio ns

74 Optiona l draw ing tools: Sketch m ode

75 W orking in Sketch m ode

76 D raw ing w ith TrueType curves

77 The G rid and o ff-curve po in ts

78 M eter m ode



48

Glyph w i,ndow deta.ilsLet's prepare to dra w glyphs-that's the point of all th is, a fter all! F irst w e m ust open . a Gly ph w in dow.

(Ifyou're im:patient and want to get to the Drawing part., go to page 50.)

IT"nn,.... FDnl ITC Fr.mkl,;~800 Cll',ph [65] A from ITe Franklin ...'"

_Ell> .tII L<...... I' . ... h i ! ~ ~l5UI \ .152.91 i" " 4.H it Open (Cmd-O, Mac or

Ctrl-O, Wm) to open an exist-

ing font: Locate your Fonts

folder and select a font by

.double-clicking its name or

icon inthe menu.

\/ A \

jj

Next, double-click one of thecells in the Font Window to

open any Glyph Window.

A A Q E ! N ~::J.I . . . . n . 11 4 0 , _ ~ . • ~ . ,

i i in 6 ,,6 € . . . . . . ~ r-t-Expand the

IT_ ....rt.. d_i~'""u .10[ 1~ Editing Layers

" ' ~ I ~ } ' ~ _ . _ : ~ _ ; _ ' J~~1 palette, to Show,~'L~ ~~.,.:_- me , ... ,,~ _. ,,~u._ - = 0_~lIng lal'm. J Snap-To and/or

To be able to change the ~ ~ ~~:~:: ~ ' - i ' iZ~~r~y or all

character in the Glyph . J 0 Guld.. I . . . _ : : ; " '""....,:---r-----

I ""ialI~f ~\\-- ~ ~ ~ o o ~ ·H.~'~~.I'ks;;;;;;;;;fiL:J~~~-.~ r · · ~ · · · · . I 1 ·: : Jindow by typing it (or .._ ~~ r--·i·...

its name) on your key- _ O Editing tavers··- -,_

board, click the Lock icon-'t-- Click the I-b~ icon to \ ' 1 . , • . - ,- . . , - , " . ~ c . ' " Ii ~

so it becomes unlocked. make the Meter panei j 0!3All/ayers l.!!lJ

disappear or reappear. . ~ 00Outline

_---------__:::::=========-----~ ..J0 C;uldellnuO(J~Hlnts

Similar in function to the Ed.iting Layers palette, the Show Layers QOCMaskpalette, below, contains many icons best deciphered by hovering the 00_Grid

mouse near each one, as shown below, until its "tooltips" caption [;)Q~ Vertical metncs

pops up. Eventually you'll memorize the icons you tend to use most. g[]~Templal't

--------------------------t 9G J ~Glyph memesOCornponents

~ . D J : ! .A ! !C h o r s and cacrets

. ! ! ! t . c : : ( ~ ) n g n m e ,

ll_!

Click here to

. Layers palettes and A!ignmentZones not available in Type Tool.




Alig.nment ZonesUnd erstan ding A lig nm en t Zo nes is im po rta nt b ec ause 'W h en yo u o pe n a n e xis tin g fo nt, yo u m ay se e s tr an ge

la oe nd er h or izo nta l b ar s r un nin g th ro ug h th e c ha ra cte rs a nd a sk y ou rs elf, "Hey, 'What th-?"

In a font, rounded or pointy-ended char-

acters like G , 0, V and v should slightly"overshoot" the baseline, x-height and

cap-height. Otherwise, such characterswill appear smaller than flat-top / -bottomcharacters such as E or x.Amount of over-shoot is established in Alignment Zones.

FontLab can automatically calculate Align-

ment .zonesbased on the average over-shoot values of the character drawings. If

we draw our own fonts, we can, early on,specify the Alignment Zones, which will

aid us inmaking all overshoots consistent.0eGlyph - [7910 from unnamed font

./' .~Fon.mfo - Unti!!ed

• Nimu ..ndCol'I'I'Igh!• V.,.I"" and Id.ntiIiCil! Ion

• " '1 \ 1 l' .10 ;o .nd 01"" , n.lons

t &0<001 "11a n d U " I<C < l~

• Hlntin!ls..tMg,Type I-specific settings

• True·T·vpe-s l)e .cll lc nil Ing5

Typ. land Tru.1)I~ .hlnllflll' allgn ..... nt ZOIltlS

So. oIIOj"menllor Ik~ master: ~n2g:,_I' . . : . ; .".: . ; ,r: ,_ '_ ~

S ella ,.1 iIlig "m ~ nt z on es 0S el r.m Llv alig nm e.n ! z on es

Note: Alignment Zones can also be

changed by hand. Just uncheck the.. Lock button (circled, opposite page) inthe Editing layers palette, place cursor

near top or bottom line of any zoneand drag it to where you want it.

:In the Font Info window (Cmd-E Mac or Ctrl-E Win),

click Hinting Settings. At a, type the minus value for thebaseline overshoot zone ..In the second field, 0 represents

the baseline Itself, Hit the + button at b to add your nextzone. My second zone was 700 (cap height), 717 (the same17 points of overshoot as from the baseline down). My

third zone provided overshoot parameters for x-height oflower case characters, and for additional zones Ised the

Secondary Zones field, C, to put in an Alignment Zone fordescenders. To check.the placement of Zones as you work,

hit the Apply button, d. Click OK when finished.



50

+ ' " Making points with the Drawing tool\ V Select the Drawing Tool' to crea te stra ig ht pa th s a nd curves. As you draw, the tool in tuits the prope

style of node by the way you draw your lines. FontLab classifies nodes in two ways.: b y curve o r path type=b y c on nec tio n h jp e.

An exercise in dra.w ing v arious kinds of Postscript Type 1points.

1. 4.~------------IjI.Create the firstpoint or "node"with the Drawingtool by clickingthe mouse buttonanywhere withinan open Glyph

window.

Click again.Now we havea second nodeforming astraight pathbetween two

points, Click to make node 3.3. Now hold Option (or Alt,Win), and click node 3again but keep mousebutton pressed down anddrag upwards. A beziercontrol handle, 3, willemerge.

Click node 4, but keepmouse button down, holdShift key and drag towardsthe right Bez ie r control

handles emerge equally onboth sides of the node andthey're straight horizontalbecause you held Shift.

Keep , reading straight ac

An. 'i'n-depth look at th e point con:nections that were created above.

Bezier handles72. also called~-------.------~------fjI"Bezier Control a----=::;:::===_---&--:--....::::;;::::::Start point Corne:rpo.int Po ints" o r B C Ps. Curve pO.in, tis a blue square is a red" square. I looks like a greenwith a large X Unfortunately, t circle, has two handlesthrough itand holding the Shift emerging from eithera hanging key when you side of the point. Botharrow" that draw a point handles are connectedreveals the does not con- so, like a teeter-totter,direction in strain the next 3. lowering one side will

which the path point to absolute Cornerpoint with raise the other. This is awas created. vertical or hori- one bezier handle Smooth Connection.(*Don't w an t zontaL (*Don'temerging in the out-arrows? G o to want color nodes? going direction.TOOLS>Pref- G o to TOOLS>erences>Glyph Preferences>Window then G.lyphWindowuncl'leck Show t hen chec k B.lack/Contour white node Icons)Direction.)

.1.4.

Keep read i: ng straight ac r



Learn FONTLABFast 5

C~ - - - - - - - - - ~_~ ~ - - - - - - ~ - - ~ ~ - - ~ D

Click node 7, releasemouse. Hold Option (Alt),click the point again anddrag out a handle. HoldShift too to constrain the

handle straight. This timewe added the right-sidehandle, e after thenode had been made.

Click for node 6, but keep themouse button down. Hold Shiftkey and drag out a bezier con-trol handle towards the right.Let up mouse. Hold Option (or

Alt, Win) and click node 6 tomake the right handle disappear(the left handle, b, remains).

6.

5. Click to create node5 . Immediatelyrelease mouse but-ton, don't drag outany handles.

Tip: Make a more perfect arc.: If you pressShift-Option (or Shift-Alt. Win) while click-ing on a curve, its adjacent bezier handleswill snap to equal lengths. And technically,that's how they should be.

9.Click tomake finalpoint.

8.Click node 8, hold button down and draghandle downward. Release mouse. Clickthe node again while pressing Option (Ato delete the outgoing handle. Press-holdOption once again, click node 8 and dragnew outgoing handle, d, to the right.

Curve point that transitionsfrom a curve into a straight

path. Ideally, the Connectiontype for this point is Smooth. 9. End poin

has no behandles. Ita green squawith a large Xthrough it. Sithere is a startand end point

~~::""'_------IEI this path is nodosed. Finish

fonts must nohave open pa

To close a paDrag the endpoint on top othe start pointjoin the two aclose the path

7.Corner pointthat transitionsfrom a straightpath into acurve. Shouldalso have aSmooth

Connection.

Corner Point with no handles:5. surrounding points bear the

entire bezier burden, which isnot optimal for PostScript, and-it imposes limits on our abilityto finesse curves since onlyone half of each adjoiningcurved segment is served bya bezier handle.

Corner point withtwo handles inopposite directions.This is a SharpConnection.

On the next pages we'll alter these point connections



52

Making and breaking connectionsAs in s oc ia l li fe , ma kin g p rope r c onne ct io n s is ve ry im po rta nt. Sh arp co nn ec tio ns th at sh ould be sm oo th , a nd

sm ooth conn ections w ith B eps on co rn ers that sh ould be sharp, will u su al ly p ro duc e u na ttr ac ti ve c on to ur s.

Adjusting paths and changing point connection types.

~--------------IjI--.- '...straighten a.path Whenyou drag any point, youl1 seea crosshair centered on thepoint enabling you to visuallyalign it with any other point.(Tohide the crosshair, go toTools>Preferences>GlyphWindow and check the Do not

show a cross hair box ..)

Straight.en a path .2

Marquee or Shift-click twoor more points to selectthem. Control-click (Right-click, Win) the selectedpath to open the menushown below. Scroll toAUgnpoints. Done!

Ht!

CUI

Copy

Delete

Reve rs e co nto u rs

Convert

ConnectIon

PropertIes ...

FontLab Tip: To toggleto the Edit (arrow) tool,while in another tool,give the Command key(Ctrl, Win) a good swifttap. No need to keeppressing the key. TapCmd again to return toyour original tool.

~ Break. a.. . sm.ooth.conn.ection

Double-click the node, thendrag handles independently.Or Ctrl-click (rt-dick) thepoint. In the menu, under

Connection. uncheck Smooth.

1Change BCP directionDouble-click the node. BeforeOr Control-click this point (Right-click,

.• Wm) to open the menu shown below.Scroll to Connection>Smooth. The out-going BCP handle will jump into align-ment with the preceding straight path,becoming, in effect, a "transition point."

After

Help

M a ke n od e firs tFontLabTip: Virtually every opera-tion you want to accomplish will befound listed in the many contextualpop-up menus accessed by Control-clicking (Rt-click, Win) a node, pathor open area. See page 65 for more.

conver t

Delete node

Duplicate node

Retract BCP s

Reverse contOI l.r

Br~'k centeur

Make cornllr

Contou : r

.Keep readingstra ight a .c ross

(After you let your mouse up onsmooth, you would find that it hasbecome checked, above, were youto go back to the menu and look)




N.ode Code: A small circle or cross near a point indicates its connectionmode. To hide/show these, click the Connection Mode icon inthe ShowLayers Palette (VIEW>Toolbars>ShowLayers).

x_ , . a -

~SHARP CORNER' SHARP CURVE • SMOOTHCURVE • SHARP TRANSITION' SMOOTH TRANSITION' .PLAIN CORNER

iii

Make a sm.oothconnecti .on sharpDouble-click th e node.Or Contr 1 lick (R• t -clickono_-c .' _ ..,Win) the node to openthe pop~up menu, godown to Connection.Smooth will bechecked. Releasemouse to uncheckit . Handle willbecome uncon-strainedand canbe bent in anydirection. asshown above.

Make a sh arp connec tio nsmooth Click on the left sideof the point above, hold Option(Alt, Win) and drag out a handle,as shown below. Again. holdOption, click and pull out the rightside handle. Ct rl -c li ck (R t- cl ic k ,Wm) the point, scroll to Connection>Smooth (or double-click the node).Both handles now twist together asthough connected.

Notice the numbers inthescreenshotabove? Ifyou don'twant to see digital readouts ofevery selected point's exact posi-tion, go to Preferences>GlyphWindow then disable Shownode's position.

Why the numbers? Ifone pointat cap height reads 116, 700 andthe next point reads 422,. 702,then you'd know that the pathdefining the top of your glyph iscrooked. You could fix it bydragging the second point down2 units until it read 422, 700.

Make a sharp connec.lion by removing handles

Control-click or Right-clickthispoint to open the menu, go dow

to Retract BCPsand click. Bothhandles fr

this pointwill be gonso that thefinal pathsegment wno longerbe curved.

Help

M ak e nod e firs t

Conver r

D ele te no de

Dllpll(a~e r!Ddt

b

~\\£ y'\\

\

Or click on one handle to selecthandle point itself,a, then hitDelete. The result is shown at b

What is 'Flixed'? It's relevant onlywhen you edit a curve by dragging

the path between two nodes, not thenode itself. Go to Preferences>GlyphWindow and enable AllBCPsare fixed.Then, if you drag a curved path, a,adjacent handles are constrained to

../ their original angles, b, even if youdrag the curve inside out, c. (A c ur ve d

-"'11""'------ pa th can of co urse be ed ited w itho ut F ixedhandles . ) If A ll BCPsare fixed is not enabled, Ctrl- or Rt.-click a node for the pop-up menu, go to Connection>F~xed,to assign this state on an "as-needed" basis.



54

How to select points and pathsI n some w ays, F on tL ab h an dle s th e se le ctin g o f n od es (o r "po in ts" ), pa th s a nd co nto urs d ifferen tly th an o th er

fon t and illustration program s. This can be confusing until you learn the logic of it. B ec om in g fam ilia r w ith

h ow to m ake spe cific se le ctio ns is im po rta nt be eause yo u w ill be d oin g lo ts o f it, in th e pro ce ss o f d ra win g fo nts.

select/move a point

Click the point with the Edit

tool. The BCPs are revealed

and a bigger circle surrounds

the point. Now you could

Ctrl-click (Rt-click) the point

to open the point options

menu, drag the point, or use

Arrow keys to move it.

Shift select a path

Press the Shift key as you click

a path or contour segment

between two points. Itwill

hun red and, as shown in the

next picture, can be dragged

without affecting the BCPs.

Select a path, show

Beps

Click a path to show the sur-

rounding points' bezier han-

dles. Then you can pull them

in or out to edit them. See how

the point at the tail of the Edit

tool changes to a tiny line as it

approaches a path segment?

How to drag a path

Once the path is Shift-selected,

the points move as though

locked together; Bezier Control

Points (Icall them ''handles'')

don't change. Multiple nodes

can be selected this way.

Select multiple points

Hold down the mouse button

and drag a rectangular marque

around one or more points to

select them. Selected paths w

become red and selected point

will lose their fill colors toappear hollow. Bottom of Edit

tool gains a little marquee.

How not to drag a path

Ifyou click a path without

holding Shift, then try to dragit, the above will happen. A

curved path can be tweaked

this way, by purposely drag-

ging it-though less extremely.




Selecting, Deselecting; the Magic Wand

Select all

Hit Command-A (CtrI-A,

Win) to select every point andpath in the Glyph window.

Now the entire glyph can be

moved or Transformed as a

unit. A slower method of

selecting all is to go to EDIT>

Se le ct A ll inthe top menu bar.

Magic wand Select All

Ifyou've accessed the Wand

thru the Edit tool with the Cmd

key (or Ctrl, Win), then alsopress Opt (Alt) to Select All.Ifyou get the actual Magic

Wand tool from the toolbar (I

try to avoid switching tools

because it wastes time), hold

Option (Alt, Win) as you click

the Wand to select all a glyph's

contours at once.

select All .2

With the Edit tool, double

click any path or contour seg-ment-not on a node--and

the entire path or contour will

become selected. Hold Shift

and double click again to

completely select an addition-

al path like the counter in g.

Deselect, add Selection

Whether with Edit tool or

Magic Wand toot clicking

while holding the Shift keyreverses the selection state

Gust as invirtually every

other draw program). So, a

selected path becomes unse-

Ieeted and vice versa. And if a

node or path is selected, hold

Shift and click more nodes or

paths to add to the selection.

Magic Wand select

While in the Edit tool, you

can hold the Command (CtrIWin) key and the Edit tool

temporarily becomes the

Magic Wand tool, which, wit

but a single click, selects any

nearby open path or closed

contour.

Deselect All

To deselect everything that's

selected, click with the Edit

tool anywhere that's not apoint, path or contour. You

may also (if you have a lot of

extra time on your hands) go

to EDIT>Dese lec t .



56

working with nodes and pathsH ere are m ore details on using nodes, especially how they are af fected b y ke ybo ard sh ortc uts . R emembe r th a

F on tL ab us ua lly a llows more th an one m ethod of doing a task, and it's up to yo u to d isc ove r yo ur p re fe re nc es

Move a node along a

curved path

Press Option (or Alt, Wm),

select a node, a, with the Edittool and drag it along a curv-

ing path. The original curve

remains basically preserved

(gray line, b above), thoughnodes may go out of extrema.

r-~,Oi 0 ; Ci !, . . . ,.._ . . . . ."

.

Delete a node, open the

contour H Edit/Delete com-

mand breaks contour ischecked, click a node, a, hit

delete, node's gone, but con-

tour remains closed, b. But ifyou marquee the node, C, then

hit delete, you'll remove the

node and break the contour, d.

Remove a node, leave

path intact

If Edit/Delete commandbreaks contour is uncheckedin Preferences>Glyphwindow,

then selecting and deleting a

node removes the node and

leaves the path intact, hence

the contour remains closed.

b

"

Delete a path, open the

contour With Edit/Deletecommand breaks contourchecked (enabled), marquee

one or more nodes, a, hit De-lete and those nodes and paths

will be gone. Also, Shift-click

any number of paths and hit

Delete to vanquish them, b.

Remove a path, leave

contour closed

With Edit/Delete commandbreaks...unchecked, clicking

and deleting one or more path

segments, a, will remove the

path and the next point awayfrom the click, b, But the con-tour will stay closed.

Shortcut: Break contou

To break open a contour,

whether or not Edit/Deletecommand breaks... ischeckedShift-click a path, a, and Cut

(Cmd- or Ctrl-X), b. Or Shift-

click two paths bordering a

node, C, Cut and the paths are

gone along with the node, d.




a ~.,. .. ,

I

constrain drag direction

Hold Shift while dragging a

node, a path, anobject or

many nodes, paths and

objects to constrain theirmovement to vertical, a; 45°,

b; or horizontal, c . Items willsnap to these preset angles as

you Shift-drag them.

Drag BCPhandles sym-

metrically Drag one BCP

a, and only that handle will

move. But Option- or Alt-drag

one bezier handle of a curvepoint and the adjacent handle

will move symmetrically, b-c.(But if tried on a com er poin t,

bo th handles S rLapto co li nea ri ty .)

ConstrainBCP handles

Hold Shift, then begin to drag

a bezier control handle, a, and

its direction of movement will

be constrained to its originalangle, b. This ishelpful whenminutely tweaking a curve the

angle of whose handle we

like, but not the length.

The Node .Properties palette

This palette pops up when you Cmd or C trl-c lick a node, and then it hangs around , morph ing in to the

G lyp h P ro perties a nd a th er a pp lic ab le p alettes, u ntil yo u c lo se it. Its p urp ose is to p ro vid e d ig ita l r ea do ut

and shortcuts for perform ing actions tha t m ay also be done w ith the Edit too l and through other m eans.

These numbers are the If the BCPs box ishorizontal and vertical coor- checked, the nwnbersdinates of the selected node. above it will show the

s coordinates for the

( Move the node with these- . . "

~lode Propernes

1-node's bezier handles,~ -r-

arrows. Hit the Return kef) Straight line #12(20 r I instead of the node.

to enact yonr changes. I ~ .. ,,"::~ .. r /". 62 ..!,; .s: l102il.!.,i

A represents a node'slJIif00 =."'!CPs- Use these button

- or the Page Up IPrigin point. Alter the ct i~1

numbers above, pressI'"' 1 r r 1 l!]

Down keys to sw

Previous or Next, then oSelected to the next or pre

Return to apply changes.

\ l!.l~. . . . . . ous node.

Retract one or both of the \

node's bezier handles with r Click these to change the

these buttons. node's connection type.-, ./

Node properties

Control- or Rt-click anode for the sub-menu,below. Scroll to Propertieto open this palette.

'.ti11p•Make node first

Convert

Delete node

Duplicate node

dd( rReverse contour

Break contour

Make corner

Connection ..

Contour ..

Propert ies



58

Drawing GlyphsPerhaps the best way to explain how to draw a font is

to do it and demonstrate in context many of th e tools

and proc edure s that yo u'll be m ost likely to utilize.

2. For the sake of comparison, IusedScANFoNT to import the duplicate 5,

above at C. What you see is Scanfont'sauto tracing of the sketch, that was

exported as vectors into FontLab. IhitSelect All (Cmd/Ctrl-A) and thenCreate Background (Cmd/CtrI-B) to

make the contours into a background.

1. I started with a sketch, above at a, of a string ofrandom letters. It's a loose sketch with lots of ambi-

guity that'll be resolved in the drawing process as Iproceed. The Photoshop scan was selected and pasted

into the Glyph window for lowercase letter a, whereFontLab automatically placed it into the Background

layer, b. (See scans on page 30.) As these five lettersare drawn, they will be pasted into their own slots.

3. Itarted with letter b be- 17ri3Tr¢.~~,.~tjcause its bowl will be reused in

many other letters. Choosing 1--+--1the Ellipse tool, >I - I held Option Q0

(Alt) and clicked on the spot r,:=::;-'-

chosen as my center point and L D I

dragged out the circle. I alsoheld Shift to constrain the ellipse to aperfect circle. When in the Ellipse tool,

I the arrow cursor sports a circle at its tailend. (> l-Windowsuse rs : ac ce ss t he E l lip se

to ol fr om th e Ve cto r Pain t to olb ar , Alt- 3.J

Note: Without the Option k ey , a , anellipse drags outward from the click-

point, which makes it harder to

anticipate where the finished ellipse

will fall. Then you have to reposition

it. But with the Option key, b,the first

click becomes the center point from

which you can more predictably po-

sition the ellipse as you drag itout.




Help

M ake no de first

conver tD e le te n od e

Du pli ca te n od e

Retract BepsRevers " ! con tou r

4. The circle (ellipse) needed to be split upinto two parts to create a .

lozenge shape. With the 1Ii:~~:i!tltiS:6!i.ti~~!iI Left side

Edit tool, I clicked the "9 0'clock" point to has already

p-:::-.==' select it, held the Ctrl (Right-click, b;:~ r : ~ : ! 7 - 'f'ATAl Win) key to open the contextual indicating

~ point menu and scrolled down to unclosed

a t I Q J B rea k C o nto ur. I then did the same paths?

.#.. thing by clicking the 3 o'clock pointL--...L...-'..J and breaking that contour. This

means that I'd created two open crescent-

shaped paths from one closed ellipse.

Break (CH1'OU'

Ma le t corner

Connection ...

C ontour ...

r,

Thebottom Y

half-circle wasdouble-clicked toselect it. Shift keywas held so [could drag itstraight down.

b

I used the AddTangent tool,though it's no •

• different thanthe Add Comertool, because thee point is onethat transitionsfrom a straight

to curved path.The Add Tan- 0

gent is actuallya sort of ersatzpoint tooL

5.Idragged the lower crescent to a .. ! I i i i i . . . . QiiII•• ;tliiiiiiw:n.a;;~~iJiiiijiiiii6iiii;i_temporary position (final position lIEi=:!lftil~~iIIIII~~~W~)iI;~~M,;isn't known yet), selected the point at a, got the

lit . ~ . Add Tangent tool and clicked a

point, which extended the path to b.

I then dragged the b point on top of

+ 0 + r -c where the two merged into one.

~ ~ Why not just select point a, thenuse the Drawing tool to click directly on C to

close the path? Ifwe do that, the BCPs in the

merged c point will mutate, as shown at e. o

6. If you've been wondering .!iiifii1iiiiliiiiil... ~.m~iI1why Irew this lozenge shape asa centerline through the bowl of b, it's so it canbe expanded to a specific stroke width that can

be applied to all subsequent narrow stems so. they all w ill be perfectly m atch ing . Select the

lozenge and go to roots-ourune-exoanoSt rokes . My settings were as shown at right

(try playing with the settings yourself, to learn

what this feature can do). As you can see, my

results are poor: nodes have been moved to

weird places, paths are lumpy. Expand S t ro kesmay not be the best way to go.

Stroke Olnl..ns:

Width: ~ Ar\glf:! -0 - 'toundnui: ~

C~.p.8E!I 091 0B 0Ei)

Join: e e 0 iii! 0~

Body . I iiiiiii:?]

Drawing glyphs continues on next page



60 Make Parallel Path • Arrow Keys• Rectangle tool

7. Let's try analternative toExpand Strokes. Go to TOOLS>Outline>Make

Parallel Path. This setting produced a satisfac-

tory result, right, with proper point placementand perfect parallelism. In the Parallel Contour

dialogue box, far right, Ichose to expand thecontour by 20 units on Both sides of myorigi-nal contour. By example, a, b and c show theeffect upon a simple right angle path when ithas been expanded Left, Right,or Both. IfIadchecked Remove the original, the original cen-

ter line would have been eliminated.

( r . , . . J t c J Contour

CLe n 0 RighI 8 Bo th

2 0 1 ;d 20 : ! ! ! I U n ' f a r - m

JJJ]abc

Ccuuol.lr oPrHt:

8.With the Edit tool, Imarqueedall the bottom nodes of the com-pound contour (now expanded to 40-units,which is to be the standard thin stem width).Then Ihit the Down Arrow key several timesuntil the lowest node touched the baseline.

You'll know it's touching when the lowest.bezier handles become, ineHect , invisible, a. (Ifan Arrow key's incremental steps fall shy of, orovershoot yow' destination point, then manu-ally drag the point to the desired position.) Atb, I selected the bottom three nodes of the inner

lozenge and Arrow keyed them upwards.

Note: Holding the Shift key willincrease the Arrow key increment bylOx,hastening the pace of movement.

Note: go to TOOLS>Preferences:.Glyph

Window>Copy!pasteOffset to offset thePaste somewhereother than over th eoriginal. Otherwise,when you Paste, theCopy will come outon top of the origi-nal, which you mayor may not want.

9.Ihose the Rectangle tool fromthe toolbar and dragged a rectangle,a, downward from the cap-heightline to make the top serif. (Noticethat I'm not following the scan

exactly-I'm revising as Igo.) Theselected rectangle was Copied (Cmd/Ctrl-C)and Pasted (Cmd/Ctrl-V) and then (with the

Shift key held) the new Copy was draggedstraight downward to become the bottom serif,b. With the Edit tool again, I Shift-clicked theright side path of this bottom serif and usedthe Left Arrow key to narrow its width.

Drawing glyphs continues on page 6



learn FONTLABFast 6

How to Preview your d,rawing ln progress

=~~~==~~===t " Editing layers Panel

Transformation Panel

Fit! '\ II , (" 0 Po 11"1

OpenType Panel

Output Panel

Go to WI:NDOW> Pre~v iew P a ne l, A high-qual-ity image of your workisdisplayed in the Pre-v,iew panel, which maybe left open, beside yourG l y ph window to checkprogress ..

f O 0 0

,Font Map Panel

Prl!vl_

II

.g •iOJD.t I<123J 1 " .M : : . q l i l i ~ DtcIW!I f ' C r . l l : j u ! ' l " l p e Q : ~J , n c o InVdDg

~mbu~1'~e""ONS

~~~~aooooH C l - i t t t : O H C O O , " O. . . . . . . . . . . _ . . -

In the Previewwindow are var- ~

ious icons that • , ~~ )~ (K

will announce __ _ _ _ _their functions if you hover the cursor over them sotheir captions come up, a. The Preview Options win-dow, above, provides ready-made previewing options,like the alphabet or useful character strings like HAH-

HAAO.You can also click to specify a "waterfall" pre-view, b, so you can inspect your glyphs at different sizes.Awaterfall will look something like th i sssssSS.

Work inPrev.j.ew Mode; go to VIEW>Show layers>

Preview Mode, o r S hift-Cmd -P (S h-Ctrl-p ,W in J to see yourd rawin gs filled bla ck a s y ou work in th e G lyph window.

A'nd, For a black-filled preview in the open glyph w indowitse lf, pr ess th e tild e (-J key (0 k eJ ) on G erm an keyboards) .

Or, go to WINDOW>New Metrics Win-dow to see, not only a high-qualityrendition of your glyph, but to be ableto preliminarily adjust your spacingas well as (click the K box).

Note: see page 93 formore about the MetricsWindow and the subjectof Spacing and kerning,

By default, the Metrics window, seenabove, opens to show the currentlyopen Glyph window character pre-ceded by a slash, c. Ifyou try to typeadditional characters, they won'tappear in the window unless youdelete the first slash .

Why the slash? Any glyph name mustbe preceded with a slash and followedwith a space (see page 97). So type aspace after "/a"and you can continuetyping other characters. Without theslash, the Unicode character 0026typed into th e Metrics window would

"0-0 2 6 II th th '''&''ppear as - - , ra .er . an "

At d, the values for slot width, andleft and right sidebearings are givenfor each character. If you've clickedthe M, the kern value will appearbelow the other values. There's nokern value here because only our in-progress l ett er b is showing, so there'snothing kemed to it yet.



62 overshoot- Align Points· Parallel Path • Closinga path

10. Checking Preview mode, I Ii__n:::::::~realized that the bottom of the ~~~~~~~~

bowl, a, needed to overshoot the baseline to

make it appear level with the bottom of the

serif, not higher than it. The bottom part of thecounter (the "hole"), b, also needed to be low-

ered so it would appear to be in line with the

top of the serif. So the inner and outer contours

were marquee-selected then lowered with the

Down Arrow key. (Since the marquee encom-

passed the right-side comer nodes of the lower

serif, they each had to be Shift-clicked to dese-

lect them before the bowl could be lowered.)

"\ I

11. I drew a single path down the ~ 1J;.u)A11iiI r . = - HeIn

Ib" I ~ J middle of b for the vertical - I. . .t~ +r- stem. Using either the Drawing tool a CutI " " '

or the Add Comer tool next to it, I Copy

'r +(drew a line from a to b. Since Delete

-----1 - ---- -- ~

I.e.! Pi.! Drawing tools are not constrained i

I T

Transform ...

by the Shift key, if a path we've drawn isn'tI

Retraa BCPs

absolutely straight, we can Shift-click the line, C Align points

then click it holding Ctrl (Right-click, WID) to Reverse contours

open the menu shown at right. Click on Align

I ....--Convert

Points, c. Note: This feature always aligns to Connealon

the left- or bottom-most point(s), and itworks I

with any amount of selected points. - f - - - - - . . - . i ' - . . / PrOperties ...

I

12. With the straightened verti- riiiiiiifi:;:;?~~..mii9~t;;:;n:"'Ical stem shown above selected, Iwent to TOOLS>Outline>MakeParallel Path (see

step 7). Since this process yielded three paths,

totaling 40-units wide, I needed to connect.. them into a closed contour. Here's one way:

Drag bottom point of middle stroke, a, to top

point of left stroke, b. Drag top point of middle

stroke to top point of right stroke, c. (P lac ing th e

point of an open pa th on top of another open path

po in t a utoma tica lly m erg es ihem.) Click-select

bottom point of right path. Draw a point any-

where, d, then drag it closed, e.




Q&A:In step 12., Why were t soo dif fe ren t

m eth od s used to join th e to p and

bo ttom o f th e vert ical stem?

In FontLab,there are usually many ways toaccomplish any given task. It's up to you to figureout the most efficient strategy for getting a jobdone. For example, at a, the Add Comer tool wasused to insert a new point onto the right-side path(the tool takes on the appearance of a knife). Thebottom right comer point was dragged on top of

the left comer point, b, which merged them intoone, thereby closing the contour. Then the bottomof the stern was straightened,c, with A lig n P o in ts

(see step 11.). Here's-another approach to straight-

ening a crooked path: chop it off.Draw a rectanglelike d, that overlaps the crooked stem end and

select one of the rectangle's nodes, e. Control-click(right-click, Win) that node to pop up the menuScroll to contour-subtract con tour . This knocks

out the rectangle and whatever lies within it,f.

13. Now it's time to start putting

it all together. With the Edit tool Idouble-clicked the vertical stern, a,and dragged it over to S na p to per~feet alignment with the thin left

stern of the bowl, b. (In the expand-ed Editing Layers palette, S nap topoints is on by program default.)

Next, to drag the right side o f theupper serif into line with the vertical

stem, Imarqueed the right side ofthe serif, c, which also selected the

upper right comer point of the ver-tical stem. Normally, we would not

(. want that stem point selected, but inSee step 14 . before Merging.)

~--------------------------..... this case we'll use it: Remember thatA lig n P o in ts always aligns to the left-most point,so that by applying .A lig n P o in ts (s ee step 11.),

the right side ofthe serif that stuck out teo far is

drawn into. alignment with the vertical stem.The next step is to merge (TOOLS>Qutl.ine>Merge

Con to u rs ) th e assembled parts. At d,two excess

nodes have resulted from merging the over-lapped stems, which also caused the curve andits BCP handle to distort, e. The nodes can bedeleted, but I hit Undo (Cmd/Ctrl-Z) and movedthe point at f off the curve and then re-Merged,

Y ou m ay have noti.ced that much of what I'vedrawn so far has been roughed-in, For example,

the position of the "lozenge" I first drew, the

widths of serifs, and the length of the line that I· just expanded into a vertical stem were alldrawn to rough sizes with the intention of repo-

sitioning them later when their proper positionscould be determined. r call this "putting in the

knoums;" I knoui my stern width will be 40 unitswide, Ijust don't know yet how tall the stem will

need to be until I assemble all the other parts.



64 Mask Layer • Metrics Layer • Horizontal Mirror- Pop-up menus

14. In step 13.. IMerged all character parts,but before that, I saved them to the Mask layer

to later be reused or even revised in the sameglyph. To get drawings into the Mask layer, go

to TOOLS>Templates>(opy to Mask. You canhide or show the Mask by clicking its box in ,JL~ Editing layers or Show'

Layers palettes, left, And

you can Clear Mas.k (a,right), or Copy to Template,

b, so the same grayed5~'I1=~_:iliir:::.'ii'. , u : ' : ' i , r = , . image will appear globally

.1 y ; ;; :~ f i i l l in a ll Glyph Wmdows.

15. After merging the parts to make the let-ter b,Iut/pasted it into its own character slot:the Glyph Wmdow for lower case b .

Now lean preliminarily adjust the

metrics by clicking on the word "Metrics" inthe

Editing Layers palette to take me to that layeritself. Here I can slide the right sidebearingcloser to the b , leaving about the same visual

EdI,lng UV"" space as between the letter

~ and the left sidebearing.Final spacing must be doneinthe Metrics window withother characters to compare.

8 1 0 1 . " 1 "I ! ! ! CU J d . .

0111111<

OlolUk

16. I'll now draw more

characters. In the b Glyph ~---~window I went to TOOLS>Templates>Paste

Mask, to place a copy of the unmerged b partsfrom the Mask layer into the Outline layer. I

Cut (Cmd-X or Ctrl-X) the parts, which were

still selected from the paste, opened the Glyphwindow for a, and Pasted (Cmd-V or Ctrl-V), Ithen went to TOOLS>Outllne>HMirror to reflect

(also called flopping) the b parts, and as youcan see, right, the mirrored b already lookssomething like a (and like d, too). (TheCtrl-/Rt-click pop~up menu also gives access to Mirror.)

Iolul~~"h!.n.

""Ig" M On . ..

1\"~1"9.... I".nc•.••Me t r ia A i -S i ln i " .o e . r.

. . M : . a ! it . [0 Masru

exw.nlll ' . , 1 1 1 1 !IIo. '

Copy , ,, l' .mpl ar~ b\ " 1 : 1 1 "I

0..,... ' $-~ ~ In I II!

itT

Drawings appearin the Mask layeras a neat, grayed-down image,

@Q.6

Above: results of usingHorizontal Mirror, a,and Vertical Mirror, b.

(Toview your work inthe Glyph window asblack-filled contours,shown above, hit ShifCmd-P or Ctrl-P: )

Drawing glyphs continues on page 6




Pop-up menusA s briefly d iscussed o n p ag e 5 0, F on tL ab co nta in s d ozen s o f co ntextua l p op-u p m en us th at serve a s a sh ort cut

m an y o f th e m ost useful comm an ds. D epen din g upo n w here yo u C trl-click (R ig ht-click, W in ), th e pertin en t m en

changes. If you can't get the correct m enu to pop up, it m ay be that you're not clickin g on the rig ht spot.

Copy Outline , .

~4"

Delete Hints . .Convert Templates . .Delete node Transform ...Duplicate node Retract BCPs Transform ...

Retract Beps Align points Add Note ...

Reverse contour Reverse contours Add Anchor ...

Break contour ~ Conven . . . Add Component ...

Make corner Click an Connection II > f De omoose

Connection II > unselect- Properties ... Open Font Window

Contour II > ed path Properties ...

Above is what you'll get when you Ctrl-click:a:a node; b: a line that isn't selected (all yousee is a read-out of the exact position youclicked; c: a selected path; d: anywhere that'snowhere, Le.,not a path or point. When you

Set scale 100%

Scale proportionally

Delete

see arrows in the menu, such as at e, that indi-cates there are further available options whenyou roll the mouse over them. When a menuitem is grayed-out, I, that indicates an opera-tionthat cannot be performed with the pres-ent selection status.

These pop-up menus are available for mostoperations. The pop-up at left, comes upwhen you Ctrl-click on a Mask layer.

Again, H you can't get the desired menu topop-up, you're not clicking the right spot orthe relevant condition does not exist. Forexample, if you want to Align points, but thatoption isn't available in the pop-up menu, itmay be because you haven't selected two ormore points to be aligned.



66 Remove/Delete paths- Transform· undo- ClosePaths

17. I deleted the top parts of the b, leavingthe bottom bowl and serif, far right, fromhich : buil d th a W·th· th Elli . tilto. ..e .1 .. _e __ pse00 ,, 'Of' held Shift to drag out a perfect circle

" T and then selected the node at a..Ctrl--,O 0 clicking that node opened the pop-up menu and I selected Break Con -

r ; _ tour. That created two unconnected

endpath nodes, b, where one had been. I mar-queed and deleted the nodes shown and then

chose the Drawing tool to extend a horizontal

and a vertical line from the remaining points ofthe ellipse, e and d. I put the path inplace at e.

19. The curving stem !c~~~~i!ii~~path that I made into two !JIII!!II.iI!~~~iCiiIWII~unconnected paths, a, must now be joined atboth ends to become one closed contour. I'll do

this, as I did in step 12., by selecting an endI node, clicking a new point with the DrawingtDOI,b, then doing the same at the other end, c.

Then I'll drag both new points on top of theiradjacent endpath points to close the contour, d.Notice that I raised point e of the contour toclear the bowl's counter so when the just-made

curving stem is merged with the bowl, the BCPhandle won't go awry (see step 13..).

(I lowthe b

topthe dArrke

o· r b-'

Aneasy way to

!...--..---- ..~

remove the pathsegment(s) andopen a contour:Shift-select theunwanted pathsand hit Cmd- orCtrl-X(or go toEDIT>Cu t ) .

Transform

a

18. Make ParaUel Path (see step 7.) was

used to expand the new path to our standard! thin stem width of 40 units, a. But I don't likethe radius of the curve: it's too large. Why notjust scale the two paths smaller? Be- 1\1r"-~~

cause then the width, b, becomes less 1!JI": :~~::a1

than 40 units. So hit Cmd/Ctrl-Z or EDIT>U ndo '

to revert to a single line. Ctrl-click on a node orselected path and choose Transform from the

pop-up menu, c. Hold Shift to constrain pro-

rtion and dr h dl d t d tho on an . .agan ie, ., upo reuce •ecurve. Choose Make parallel Path again. Widthwill be 40 units, but the curve radius, e, is less.

D raw ing g lyp hs c on tinues o n p ag e 6




Transform, Transforming, Transformat·onThe re a re s eve ra l d iffer en t ways to t ransform (al ter th e sh ape ofJ a selected d raw in g, a selected portion of a draw

in g or eve ry glyph in a font. E ach method is acces sed d iffe rently , and has s lightly d iffe rent capab ilitie s.

The single-function Rotate Help

and Scale tools located in Outline

the toolbar, a, are trans- H lnu ..Templl.tes ~

forming tools, but you'll bhave to. leave the Edit or Transfonn ...

Add NOIe...

Drawing tool to get one of Add Anchor.••

them, and that's a bother. Add CO!ll""n~nt .•.o..compol~

Instead you can Ctrl-click Op.mFont WIndow

(Rt-click, Wm) a node or P"'IM'n.le....

any selected contour(s) to

choose Transform, b (called "Free Trans-, form" in Studio 5). This will cause a six-

handled bounding box to form around the

selected drawings, as shown far right, c.

Drag one of the four corner handles on the

Transform tool to Scale (enlarge or reduce)

the selection. 'The slanted center-top handle

is for "slanting" (also called shearing or

skewing), and the round handle at center-

right side isfor rotating the selection.

To transform from any spot-not just the

center point - dragthe center axis, d, toany desired location.

This versatile Trans-

form tool may even

obviate use of the Ro-tate and Scale tools.

Fastest way to g e t th e

Transfonn. tool: Double-click on a path or con-to ur th at is selected.

The Transform tool described above allows

manual transforming to the eye's standardonly, which is fine 97% of the time. But ifyou want to set specific values--such as

12°-to alter either a part of a contour orone complete glyph, go to WINDOW>Trans-formation panel ( th is panel not p ic tu red) .

But to transform an entire glyph, or many

glyphs at once (eg: to make a font italic), use

the Transformation dialog 18 0 6Fonl-ITC Sllnl Jnllle: ~ SI.nt!O fM right OS'Ant , .. the: t..fI" It!

window, right (go to TOOLS> '............ _ ~1 ~r/."-' I (OO·) ...

Transform (or Cmd-/Ctrl-T), 0 1 2 3 ~anIunt<!, ' w'II'" po nj. ...:::::__

Among other actions, like spe- ........., . .....,.,... If ' ~ -ial Eff t ilbl . t h o . . f!f~pIYlow Dlefo"1 Cill1<~1 'I:: .,....- ~

C1 ec s ava a e III IS < = ·8() Cwindow, you can Scale, Rotate, P . ~ f f t ' f t 1 ~. . . . . . ..:p;:",.~_~~;_*.",~.;;_q:.;;:-"",---------_....J.Mirror or Slant, e, to your exact ~ ~ (J:l 2:~ 5 6 7 L &numerical specifications. T U ....1_ ...... '> 4 f A a C 0

Check the Apply to whole font '~.. ~, ~ .~~ ~ ~ ~ ~

box, to transform every glyph a H I .I K I. M N 0 Pin the font, f. A warning will ''" u V 'rI ~ Y l __

I pop up that this action is un- I _ ~ . T U J V W X Y Z I I

doable. You ca n undo, though.Close the font (Cmd-/Ctrl-W),

but don't Save. Then reopen it.

Tran~fgrmillion

, . " . . . • b

SelMt An I.ctlon:

-;ConfDI'---------

S.,lft (0.0) l@ r 1[1 1 Studia 5, thisis called the , IActions p a l l e l I I

. a II c

Mirror [HJSQllt~(80.00, 1OO.CO) HM I

lIotlitt (15.0C· CW) t ! J 'SlulllU.OO·R)Z eDecompose

_ Convert to Typ~ 1

CUmlnt &alon: Slant glyph

" .

Note: Transform affectsthe selected parts of the

current glyph. Ifnothing is

selected, the entire draw-

ing will be Transformed.

See page 124 for more on

the capabili~es of theTransformation panel.

r.

e f g



68 ReverseContour • Break contour • Optimize • Rotate Tool • Merge Contours

20.When I checked the a glyph inPreview mode (Shift-Cmd- or Ctrl-P) ~~~~~~~~~~_JIdiscovered that the direction of the curving L___---L___

stem contour, a, was reversed. Every contour

has a direction---€ither clockwise or counterclockwise-based upon the direction we first

created the nodes. The little arrows at the start

and end points of every contour, b, reveal their. direction. At c, both circles run counter-clock-

wise. At d, the inner circle was selected and

Ctrl-c1icked to pop up the menu so Reverse

Contour could be chosen to tum it clockwise.

The curving stem, e, was also fixed this way.

21. Moving on to lower case 5, Imade a

copy of the a bowl and deleted its left side by

Shift-clicking each path segment then hittingCut (Cmd- or Ctrl-X), which easily breaks the

contour regardless of whether Edit/Delete

command breaks contour is enabled in the

Preferences>Glyph window. Instead of usingthe a bowl, I could have started from scratch

with a single circle and again expanded it

with Make parallel path. There are usually

many approaches to any task and thoughone may be no more difficult than another, it

behooves us to strategize the simplest way.

22. Imarqueed then dragged down the top

of my shape until node a was on top of node b.

Overlapping nodes is not OK, but Optimize

(Cmd-ZCtrl-E) removed one of the nodes. With

the Edit tool I clicked node C, then drew node

d and so on until I'd closed the contour at e.

This letter needn't overshoot the baseline, so I

marqueed points e and f and dragged themboth up until e touched the baseline. If I had

only moved e up to the baseline, but not f, the

perfect quarter-circle corner would have

become elliptical, not circular, and I'd have

broken style.

:0 )I .. 0

de

(Double-clickth is node to

.. make ita f ..transitionpoint.)




23. I marqueed the four nodes shown, a. I

copied, pasted and dragged the result, b, to the

side. With the Rotate tool, I clicked and held on

an arbitrary center point and rotated both open

quarter-circle paths to position c (a s 1 rotated, 1a ls o h eld d ow n Sh ift to snap th e ro ta tin g sh ap e to

s tra ight hor izonta l) . Shape c was dragged up to

position d. Then I selected, copied and pasted

d, and rotated this new pasted copy to the e

position and merged the two quarter circles

into a half circle by dragging the lower two

nodes of 8onto the upper two of d. Then the

combined shape was merged at f.

24.Before merging a serif .with the body of s, the con-

tour must be closed. I click-selected node a,

then drew node b. If I'd drawn node b right on

top of node c , to close the path, the node's con-

nection type would have changed, as in d, and

the curve would have been ruined. Instead, I

dragged the outgoing BCP handle into the

point, 8, and dragged the new node b on top of

the top-most one, which closed the contour.

(Open con tours won 't be visib le in Preview m ode

u nle ss y ou go to preferences>Glyph Window and

uruheck Do Not Fill Open Contours).

25. Idragged my standard serif (first cre-

ated for the b) into position on the s. Notice thatI changed the design of s from my initial rough

sketch as reality intervened upon theory.

Selecting both s and serif, I tried to Merge but

could not, b, because the contour direction ofthe s was counter-clockwise, inset c, and the

serif's direction was clockwise, d. As in step20., I Reversed Contour direction of the serif

and then pressed Ctrl/Rt-click to open the .

pop-up menu. I chose Outline>Merge Con-

tours, 8, to join serif to letter and finalize this

character (until I start tweaking it, that is).

Note the crosshair thatshows up when any poin

r--"!I or bezier handle is draggeAlso note the path echo thshows the original curvedpath as the bezier handledmgged into the node.



70 Horizontal Mirror· Crosshair • Metrics layer· Meter bar· Adjust Sidebearings

26. Right, I copied letter sand pasted it into the Glyph

window for c. Holding the

Shift key, I click-selected fourpath segments (arrows) and

hit Cmd-/Ctrl-X to Cut them,

thereby breaking the contour

open. Iselected the bottom

half of s at a, hit Ctrl/Rt-clickto open the pop-up menu and

went to Outline>H Mirror toreflect it over backwards. To ._,--.-=

align the top and bot- ~~~~~.,..,"". __tom pieces along their ~;I.ai~~~lIIl.Ym~W~~r------------_...left edges, Iragged the select-ed bottom piece by the node,

b. When the vertical crosshair

snapped to node C , Inew the

two were aligned. (H you still

don't like the crosshair, go toPreferences>Glyph Window>

Don't Show Crosshair.) With

the Drawing tool, I then con-

nected the upper and lower

parts, as previously demon-strated insteps 12. and 24.

27. Below,here are the steps Iook to make let-ter c into e .Ipasted both the lower part of c , a , andthen the stem, b, and bowl, e , from the letter b into

the e Glyph window. Stem bwas rotated (and then

dragged narrower) to become the crossbar of e.

The lower right side of bowl c was Cut out, d, butI purposely didn't delete node e so I could drag it

atop node f to close the contour on that side. Next,

I dragged nodes f and g up so they wouldn't stick

out below the crossbar. At h the crossbar is inplacean? the a and e parts have been connected. Finally,at I,I Merged contours to complete letter e.

""'" 17 I Closing a contourb




Click on acheckbox tohide or show a, layer. Click on

the layer nameto go to work

inthat layer.

I

I

I

I

I

I

II

I

I

I

I

I

I

IIII

I,I,rI,I

. : : : : . - - - - _ _ _ . _ - - ~ - - -

. - - p - - •

Measur;ementline

28. Above, as I work, I like to roughly space characters in their Glyph windows. In the EditingLayers palette, click the word Met r i cs to go to that layer. Now you'll find that the vertical left and right

sidebearings, a and b, may be dragged to any position inrelation to the character. I dragged the redMeasurement line to cross at the letter's vertical left stem. As I dragged the left sidebearing, a digitalreadout, e, told me the distance from sidebearing to letter. I then dragged the red Measurement lineto the right edge of the top serif (Ican't measure thru the bowl) to measure the distance between it

and the right sidebearing. As you drag a sidebearing, the cursor becomes a double arrow (see detail).

-

Letter spacing 101 Let yonr eyes be the final judge of spacing.

Leave a wider space, a, betweentwo characters (like I-H) whosestraight sides will create a claus-trophobic effect. Make a narrow-er space, maybe fifty-percent lessthan at a, between protrudingbowls of curved characters like b -

d, v« 0-0 or D-G, b. Once estab-lished, use the same values forthe sidebearings of all similar-

sided letters. If SO-units looksright between two straight-sidedletters, assign 40-units per side.

a

At c below, a bit tighter spacingwas required than at a becausethe round-cornered left side ofletter c lets in some air. Tworound-comered sides at d meantstill tighter spacing. Where serifsmeet, e, the space must be nar-row to close up the gap above,between vertical stems, g.

The near impossibility of decenspacing the letters below incates to me, as the designer, thought to rethink some of thetershapes and reduce those wserifs to avoid huge gaps like fand h. Is it surprising that a "sondary" consideration like lespacing should impact upon ch

•acter design? Not when you re

ize that a font's functionalitybe impeded by poor legibility tmay result from bad spacing.



72

Check progress in the Metrics windowU p un iii n ou: in the " Drawin g G lyph s" sectio n th at

b eg an o n pa ge 58, I 've been w orkin g o n in divid ua l let-

te rs , u nable r ea lly , t o judge them as a group. In the

s pa cing e xe rc is e on th e p re vious page;Iiscovered that

I would have to tweak some of the letters. The whole

po in t o f a font is to make a ll th e c ha ra cte rs wo rk to ge th -

er as a ma tc he d set. In the Preview/Metrics Window

Open Preview/M,etrics

Just go to WINDOW>New Metrics

Window (Shift-Op-Cmd-M, Macor Shift-Alt-Ctrl-M, Win) and the

window above opens showingany selected glyphs in the Fontwindow or the currently opencharacter in the Glyph Window.

You can also type any string ofcharacters, as I have done. Most

agree that it's better to judge let-ters when composed into words,rather than as random letters.

I'll now check my existing glyphs so far. The decisions

and c Jumge s 1m ake at this early stage will lead to th e

a do ptio n o f a set o f s ta nd ard s th at w ill help me to avoid

h avin g to g o ba ck a nd red raw en tire ch ara cters o r make

majo r r ev isio ns o n. th e subsequen t c harac te rs I create

ba sed on these f irst on es. You can also use WINDOW>

Preview Panel to p re view s tr in gs o f c ha ra cte rs .

-

Note consistent space values:All serif letters ge t 10 units ofspace on their serif side(s), allround-side letters get 22 units.

Charact.er changes

Because of the spacing problemsI noted on page 71,I removed thebottom serif from b and decreased

all the other serifs by 20 units byselecting each of their right-

and/ or left-most points and hit-ting the Right (or Left) Arrowkey two times (10 units per.Arrow key.hit) toward the centerof each letter. Oops, I forgot todecrease letter a's right serif; it's

still wider than the other serifs.

I W ~ 6 ~ J""'-"'"

See Page 103for a more

complete explanation

of spacing Ikerning and

the FontLab Studio 5.0

Metrics Window, which

dif fers from the

version. 4.6 Metrics

Window shown above.

151 I




working SuggestionsHow you arrange the palettes and w indow s on your m onitor can affect effic iency. If you can afford tw o m on-

itors (one for palettes only), that's ideal. O pen the M etrics w indow on one side of your m onitor as you w ork to

c he ck p ro gr es s a nd s ee c on to ur c ha ng es u pd ate d in sta ntly H ere a re s ome o th er n avig atio n tip s to c on sid er .

Toolbars ca n

be stretched to

one column tooccupy less area.

drag them in or

out from the

bottom tab.

PressSpacebar forGrabberhand, thendrag theviewablearea whereyou want it.

HitCmd- orCtrl-S toView glyphat 100%or-efo r 200%.

As you drawthe Glyph windokeep several oth

1r~:::::::==== !1!::::::==::::!::==:;;:-i characters visiblthe Metrics windto constantly asscontinuity of steweights and sty

Click to make theMetric window activeto add spacing/kern-ing as you go along.

If you positionthe Font windowto show from

behind, you ca n"':::mJ.~~ click on itwithout 1 : : : : = = - : : : : ; : ; ; : : ; : : ; ; ; ; ; ; = =

having to moveor close the GLyphwindow intheforeground.

>Status tobanish the

Status panel ifyou don'tneed it.

Click the arrowicon to show theGlyphs bar. If youclick the lock icon,any letter or glyphname you typebecomes the cur-rent Glyph. Thenyou may not needthe Glyphs bar.

Press the spacebar and drag the grabberhand to scroll the Glyphs bar. You can alsouse the Right and Left Arrow keys tomove it along. Hit Tab key to show or

hide the.Glyphs bar.

Put these wherever theyfit. Editing Layers (shown inits "simple" state) providesthe only access to the Metricslayer, so you may need thispalette. S ho w L ay ers (c an becompressed to one verticalcolumn and placed at farleft or itcan be docked withthe toolbars at the very top.



74

Optiona'i Drawing toolss Sketch Mode t§Som etim es" you. just can 't seem to m ake a bezier curve take the shape you. w a nt. In that ease, Sketch m ode m a

be th e so lutio n. W hile this fea ture is tem pora rily en abled , you ca n make m in ute sh ape .tw ea ks to ch ara cter co

tours. W1tel'l you're done, you m ust sw itch back to re gu la r d rawin g mod e: e ith er T yp e 1or TrueType curves.

Enter Sketch .mode: Click the pen icon ~r , Fontlab File Edi[ View Glyph Tointhe Tools palette, right If this palette is 1 1 - - _ . - ; - ; : 1 A I " A l = = ; r = = : : : ; ; r = = : : : ; : : : : : ; ~ . ; : : : ; . - = . =;:: : : :=;-- ; : : : : : : ; : : ;==:; : : ; :~=;: ;

no t open, go to VIEW>Toolbars>Too ls . . .,";/1 .# ~ I I ! ! IgJ I ! : : , [ : l I I ~ l b · . I ; [ · I - . . j

et3a G IV ph - [71] G from Casev-Bo ld In Sketch mode, left, regular nodes arreplaced by dozens of points, any owhich may be individually nudged tmake minor adjustments to a contourAgrayed-do"Wll reference copy of th

original contour appears also in thOutline layer under the Sketch-modeglyph. You can't see it until you mova few points, as shown below.

Sk.etchmodeContour

Transition

The Sketch palette

appears when youenter Sketch mode.

Sketch mode points come in threstyles. Use the Add Corner, AdTangent and Add Curve point tooto add more points. You can alsShift-click the contour to add a newnode then double-click it to changits type. Node styles survive the enconversion back. to regular mode.

Show Out l ine.' C l ic k h ere to, hide or show, th e u nd er ly in g

o rigina l con-tour.

Show MarksH ide or showthe S ke tc h modepoin t h Jp es . In-ste ad yo u'll se ed ots fo r p oin ts ..

N ew S ketchDele te th ep re sen t S ke tchmode contou r.U se th e po in tto ols to draw

a n ew sketch.

Impor tSketch

. L ets F on tL abm ake a newSketch if yo uregre t de le t ingth e first o ne.

Rep laceOutlineReplaces originalcontour with th ec ha ng ed o neyou've m ade inS ke tc h mode .

A d d toOutlineAdds youred it ed Ske tchto th e underl yin g o rig in acontour.




working in Sketch modeI n Type 1g lyph co nstructio n, th e few er n ode s yo u h ave, th e sm oo th er your c on to urs will be . In Sketc h m od e

h avin g m ore po in ts is th e po in t. G et f urth er d eta ils a bo ut Ske tch m od e in F on tL ab's free .pd f m an ua l.

Delete points

Use the Eraser tool or mar-

quee any points, a, to Delete

them. InSketch mode, you

can't drag the contour itself,

so you may just need all those

points. See, without the points

there's no way to get the

curve, b, to dip down again.

previewing

The Magic Wand and manyother functions work just as in

regular editing mode. Use

Preview mode (Shift-Cmd- or

Ctrl-P to see the original con-

tour as a grayed-out back-

ground image, or hit the -

tilde key for a sneak preview.

Move points

Drag points one by one or

marquee a bunch and drag all

at once. Single points may also

be dragged sideways along the

path. Because points are all en-

twined, to avoid a ripple

effect, a, you must move manypoints when tweaking a curve.

Leaving Sketch mode

Hit the Rep la ce Ou t lin e button,

a, to apply the changes you'vemade inSketch mode. H you

don't do this before hitting the

Arrow button, b,to go back to

regular mode, your Sketch

mode changes to the original

outline won't take effect.

a

Break/Open the contou

Option- or Alt-click a node to

break open the contour, a..Dr

an end point on top of another

to merge them and dose the

contour. Personally, I'd do all

my major surgery in regular

mode and use Sketch mode ju

to nudge the occasional curve

Optimize

The last step after using Sketc

mode is to Opt imize (Cmd- or

CtrI-E) the contour for output.

Notice that after switching to

Type 1 mode, a, some excess,

ill-positioned nodes have occu

red ..Opt imize will usually get

of them, b, or do it yourself.



76

Drawing with TrueType CurvesTrueType (IT) c ur ve s w ith t he ir " off- cu rv e po in ts " a re an a lie rna ti oe -io -b ez ie rs d raw ing me thod tha t fe els s ome -

w ha t sim ila r to Sketch m od e. If y ou d on 't lik e b ezie r h an dle s, try using ITcu rves. O f co urse, w hile w orkin g o n

a g lyp h, yo u ca n sw itch ba ck a nd fo rth b etw een , d rawin g m od es. li's n ot n ecessa ry to use ITcurves w hen m ak-

ing a ITo nt. F on tlA b w ill co nvert yo ur co nto urs w hen yo u g en era te a fo nt a s T ru eT ype. H ow ever, sin ce slig hta ltera tio ns to co nto urs ca n o ccur, y o u m ay w an t to co nvert T ype 1g lyp hs to IT you rs elf a nd c he ck fo r p roblem s.

_----------. Fonl.Lab File Edit View Gl y h Window

converting l"hlJ'lpl~mE:Pl J: h. .$ii.iiiii"~HMirro";~- ' ! I IHints & Guides "v Mirror

Naturally, there are several ways to "Convert" a Templales "Operations "

drawing from the default bezier, or Type 1 CurvesMulUple Maste r •

mode, to TrueType Curves: A ss g n M A 'lk ...

• Go to roois-ourune- To TrueType Curves, a, K ern ing A uIS ta nte ..

M e m cs A ss is ta nc e ...

• Hit Shift-Cmd-2 (Mac) or Shift-Ctrl-2 (Win).Transform... :lCT

• Control- or Rt-dick a path, scroll to Convert, b. Rellea: Transform'llonTransform Rilnge... 1l"XT

• Control- or Rt-click a node, scroll to Convert, c. e le n C l r o m s

• Option- or Alt-dick a node to convert only thecurve segment downstream from the node.

C~ed<.Connections

R ev er se A ll C o nto ur s

Nodes a t Exlremes

Snap to Gu[des XF9

Opliml'ze XE

Expa nd ~troke5

Ma ke f >a ra Jl el Pat!}.•.

1 01 " A ll C o nt U U r>

Selectl"" to LOmpO""n l

Merge ccnreers XFlO

Gel In ler5ect lon

D e le te In le r se alan

CU5Iomlz~ .•.

External Too ls "

B rea k c o n to u r

MJke corner

Help

•Make node first

Cur

Cop y

Delete

Delete node

Duplicate nodeR etra ct B CP s

Re ve rs e c o nt ou rransform •..

Retract BCPs

A lig n p oln ls

R ever se eon ro u rs

P r op e rt ie s . ..

Connection "

eGntour "onnection "

P r o p er tl es .. .

Many nodes to travel

Convert to True Type curves

and a few nodes become hun-

dreds. Drag a IT anchor node,

3, and look what happens.

Comparison: Type 1curves vs. TrueType curves Create a circle. With bezier curves you'll

have two handles bordering a curve segment, a. Drag the curve itself ("off-point editing"), b or edit

one handle, C , and the entire curve segment responds. Convert to TrueType curves, d. Drag one ofthe four off-curve points (arrows) and only that part of the curve moves, e. So you'll have to adjustfour points, rather than two, to get a smooth curve. Drag the anchor node, f, and things get worse.




The Grid and Off-curve pointsTurn on the G rid layer in the G lyph w indow and you'll see a faint netw ork of grid lines thai can help w ith th

a cc ura cy o f yo ur d ra win g, espe cia lly w he n makin g sim ple r, g eometric ally-c on structed fo nts. T he g rid 's cu s

tom izable in teroals ca n be set to your stem w id th. A nd w ith Snap to Guides enab led (as is it b y d efa ult), a nynode draw n or dragged near a grid line w ill snap to it.

Turn on the Grid:1.Click the expansion but-ton, a, on the Editing layers

palette then check Grid. Besure to check the center col-

umnalso, so objects willsnap to the grid.

2. Or hit the Grid icon, b, in

the Show Layers palette.

set Grid di,mensions in

Preferen ces-s lvph window>, Grid step, C(both dimen-

sions need not be the same).In FontLab Studio 5.0, Gridcolor is specified here, too.

F on lL ab P 'e f .... nce s

Clyph Window

§bB

::: I!) E! AJllayers

= ~OOutlil1e

G~~ Guidelines

cf!!~Hints

·0.··CMask

.I!! . ~ Grid

l.=:i - ~ Vertical mettles

o t s ! ! 0Template[),~ ~ Glyphmettles

.......C Components

,0~3Anchors and carets

o~~Alignment zones

i"itotJr dlf~ion

ode·s poSitIon

wh I t< ' node icon,

echo .,hlre editing

VI,u ..1ascender and de.cende" 100 "-40 1 !II of UPM

ek ing TraCkJ ng o ff, .. ~ 5 " " " " ' 1 1 1 . o f V PM

es Ir.lckr~.g _ Trac~ global ~".ld'lm.'

--'ijC-r-I-;.J__.......-T"""'----,___'___'----,_

You can plan

the grid toinclude a stan-

dard width of

sidebearingthat would

apply to many

(though not all)characters.

Perfect rounded co.rners with the Grid and TrueType curves The grid above was set sothree grid squares would be my vertical stem width and one square would be the height of horizon-

tal stems. Letter E was composed of three rectangles, a, which were then merged, b. The Add Cornertool (it resembles a knife) was used to add two nodes at the comer,C, positioned according to thegrid. The three nodes in that corner were selected and converted to TrueType curves, which createda rounded comer. Next we'd round the lower comer. (T hanks to R ay Larabie f O T t hi s t echn ique .)



78

Meter modeMeter mode is not a drawing mode, it's a measuring mode. Enter Meter mode by ,

clickin g th e ruler ico n in the Tools to olba r. T he cu rso r n ow becomes a m ea su rin g

to ol fo r a scerta in in g ch ara cter w id th , serif pro jectio n a nd w ha tever else. Y ou co n,

fo r example, u se it to check tha t a ll yo ur vertical stem s are the sam e w id th.

I I4U4~nU......1'.. . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. Y ' . .

I II II I

ba II II I

I\'11

I~ ,~t

I ~.

~I t_1) ,

I 1

J 162.0 I 162.2I It I

InMeter mode, click anywhere as a start

point, drag the cursor and note how the num-

ber increases the farther away you drag. For an

accurate reading, hold the Shift key to con-, strain the cursor to vertical or horizontal

Above, with Shift held and the cursor pulled

straight down, a, a more accurate reading was

obtained than at b, where Shift wasn't heldand the cursor was dragged crooked.

G lyp h - [981 b from unnamed font

II

-'---1---'''", .__....-._.__

II

IIIIII

~-,---I..I

IT-·-·---·----~IIII

"I-;a-t~.-.--1--------------

I

Click the l-bar at the bottom of a Glyph win-

dow to view the Meter panel at top. The num-

bers displayed relate to cursor position, dis-

tance and angle. Value a, will be the samenumber as the Meter mode tool shows.

ToMeter or not to MeterAside from the numerical va lues we assign to cap

heigh t and s id eb ea rin g«, it is usua lly un necessa nj to

m ea su re d rawin gs. If w e co nstru ct o ur ch ara cters in a

m eth od ica l a nd co nsisten t 'Way from the start, by

c op yin g a nd m irro rin g se rifs, b ow ls, a ng le d stems a nd

so o n, the com puter d oes th e m easuring for us.

In . letter design, there are no m athem atica l stan-

dards for th ings like widths of thick to th in stem s in a

la tin ~ sty le le tte r o r " pr op er" x -h eig ht c ompa re d to c ap

height. If there were, all alphabets would look the

s am e. P ro po rtio ns a re th e f on t d esig ne r's d ec isio n.

T herefore, in m y o pinio n, if you feel you have to

mea su re p arts o f yo ur g lyp h d raW in gs, it is . . .

1 . an in dica tio n thai you haven 't constructed your

d rawin gs lo gica lly a nd co rrectly in th e first pla ce;

2. a waste o f time, because you'll have to remember

th at th e serif yo u m ea sured w as 26.9 u nits w id e, or jo

down that a stem was 12.4 u nits h ig h;

3 . a n a ttem pt to su bstitute a ccu ra cy Jo t ctea tivitlj. A s

on e h igh ly-respected jo nt d esig ner recen tly told m e" li is c ha ra cter istic o f in ex pe rie nc ed d esig ne re to re l

o n n um bers ra th er th an th e eyeba ll."

H owe ve r, w he n I o back to tweak coniours+ as

invariably d~ I often find things to have gone awry

e.g a path m ay accid en ta lly g et m oo ed. In s uc h c as e

th e so lu tio n m ig ht b e to u se M ete r m od e to re ch ec k yo ur

measurements. Or not. The m eth od s sh ow n next pa g

a re m ore W YSIW YG an d d on 't in volve num bers.




The old way

What if the ruler says your stem is

9/ 16 of an inch or 39.69999 em or

"almost, but not quite" a pica wide?

It's annoying! To avoid rulers andmeasurement inthe pen and pencil

days, we would scribe the stem and

counter widths we wanted onto a

scrap of paper, then tick off each

measure onto tracing paper as we

moved the scrap along the baseline

of our letters. Accuracy depended

upon how carefully we copied off ]

the marks with our pencils.

Make a Gauge Ball Circles-or "gauge balls"-can be used to

ensure that all stems are of equal width. Circles, unlike squares, will

gauge diagonal stems as well as horizontal and vertical ones. I usually

make two or three per font, corresponding to my thick stem, thin stem

and counter widths. I "store" them in the Template layer or in the cap A

Glyph window, to be pasted into any glyph window where they're need-

ed. Right, with the Ellipse tool, click on one side of a stem, a, hold Shift to

constrain the ellipse to a perfect circle, and drag 45° down to the opposite

side of the stem, b. You'll know your ellipse is precisely the width of the

stem when its extreme edges seem to disappear at the overlap, c-d. The fin-

ished circle, e, can be dragged onto any horizontal, vertical, curved or

diagonal stem. (Gauge balls may be deleted after finishing the font.)

' I I [ E I ' . . . i": :++•• •• II,.

Template method Place your most favored

version of any letter part, like this italic terminal stroke,

a, into the Template layer (open its toolbar by going toVIEW>Toolbars>Templates). Hit the Copy to Template

icon, b. The letter or selected letter portion will appear

globally, in the template layer of every Glyph window,

until removed. Now you can adjust all applicable

stems according to the template model. Note: Its not

always practical or desirable that every similar part be

drawn exactly alike. Subtle differences, made conscious-

ly,for aesthetic reasons, are admirable in afont!



80

GENERATING, INS ALLING& PRIN ING a FONT

Page 81 Making a usable font; Com paring font form ats

83 G enera te a M ac Type 1font

84 G enera te a M ac Type 1ont and install it

in to M ac OS X.3

85 Genera te a Mac or PC TrueType fon t

87 Install T rueT ype, Open T ype o r T ype 1fontsfor M ac in to M acin tosh OS B.x or 9 .x

88 Install T rueT ype, Open T ype o r T ype 1fonts

for PC in to W in dows XP or 20 00

89 Printing test docum ents in FontLab

90 Test prin t-o uts from in sta lle d fo nts

91 FontLab Studio 5 's expan ded printin g



Learn FONTLABFast 8

Making a usable fontIf yo u've begun draw ing a fon t as described .in the previo us chapter, you still have the com pletion of th e ch ar

a cter set, spa cin g, kern in g, a nd perh aps h in tin g a hea d o f yo u ( se e page 92). But at any tim e- s- or numy times

e ven befo re complet ion -you m ay w ish to g en era te yo ur fo ntin -p ro gress. F an tL ab ca lls it "exporting]' whe

you generate a fO llt fo r in sta lla tio n in to a compute r fo nts fo ld er. T he cla ssic te rm is "generating a font. J/

Severa l f on t fo rm ats h ave been d evelo ped o ver th e pa st yea rs, but a t p rese nt, n o o ne te cJ nw lo gy h as o verta ke n

anothe r. Tha t is ch an gin g. O pen Type n ow h old s th e promise o f b ecomin g th e un iversa l fo rm at, o r it may b ec om

relegated to virtual ig nomin y lik e th e once-heralded MultipleM aster fo rm at. "N ot likely," sa ys A do be's T homa

Phinney. "Only abou t 30-40 MM fo nt families w ere ever relea sed . T here a re a lrea dy a bo ut 4500 OpenType

fo nts sh ip pin g, from a w id e ra ng e o f ve nd ors . II N on eth eless, w e w ho make fo nts fo r d istributio n, sh ould be a bl

to g en era te th em in a ll a va ila ble fo rm ats to sa tisfy o ur va rio us cu stome rs' req uirem en ts.

What are the differences in fon,t formats? Let.'s com.pare them:

PCTrueType I OpenType TT(Als o knoum as: Da ia -jor k:Tn .t eType , Windows

TrueType, T rueType- Jla vo red OpenType, TTF )

Pros: Works on Wrndows, Linux and Mac OS X.May contain up to 65,.535characters, supports

Unicode and can contain OpenType layout fea-tures, making the format suitable for multilingualfonts, non-latin fonts and advanced typographicfeatures (such as automatic ligatures, small caps).

TrueType hinting allows precise control insmall

screen sizes, can also contain bitmaps. Caninclude embedding rights information definingwhether or not the font may be attached to elec-

tronic documents.

Cons: Does not work on Mac as 8/9; not com-pletely cross-platform. May cause output prob-

lems on ten-year-old PostScript output and print-ing devices. The designer usually needs to con-vert the outlines from beziers which may intro-

duce slight changes in the shape. When convert-

ed back to beziers (e.g. in illustrator), the result-ing curves have superfluous points. ManualTrueType hinting is laborious to create. The mul-

tilingual and advanced typography features onlywork with new OpenType-savvy applications,

otherwise just the basic character set is available.For font families, requires two versions of thefamily name within each font: the first may con-

tain any number of styles; the second "mini-fam-ily" may contain only four styles.

OpenType PS

(A ls o k nown a s: OpenTyp e-CFF,

PostSc ri pt -fl avored OpenType, OTF)

Pros: Works on Wmdows, Linux, Mac OS 8.6, 9,

and OS X . Uses the bezier curve system preferredby designers and used in drawing apps such asillustrator and Freehand so letterforms can be

drawn precisely and outlines need not be con-verted. May contain up to 65,535 characters, sup-ports Unicode and can contain OpenType layoutfeatures, making the format suitable for multilin-gual fonts, non-Latin fonts and advanced typog-

raphy (automatic ligatures, small caps). Type 1hinting is comparatively easy to create. Caninclude embedding rights information.

Cons: Type 1 hinting does not allow precise con-

trol in small screen sizes. Can theoretically con-

tain bitmaps, but they are not displayed. Sincethis is a relatively new format, there are problems

with some applications (some styles are not dis-played inmenus, kerning for non-Western char-acters does not work.) The multilingual and

advanced typography features only work withnew OpenType-savvy applications, otherwisejust the basic character set is available. Two alter-



82 Comparing the font formats

native family namings within each font must bedevised: one where a family contains an arbitrarynumber of styles, and second where one family

does not contain more than four styles. Does not

work on Mac OS B.

Mac Type 1

(A ls o k nown a s; M ile Pos tS cr ip t)

Pros: Works in all PostScript commercial outputand printing devices. Uses the bezier curve sys-tem preferred by designers and used indrawingapplications such as illustrator and Freehand so

letterforms can be drawn precisely and outlinesneed not be converted. Type 1hinting is fairly

easy to create. May contain bitmaps for smallscreen sizes. One family can contain an unlimit-

ed number of styles.

Cons:Works on Mac OS only,not cross-platform.

Contains two parts, the screen font (the suitcase)and the printer font, both of which must beloaded into the Fonts folder. Sometimes one orthe other becomes corrupt or is misplaced.Difficult to move to other systems, or to send via

e-mail. Type 1hinting does not allow precise con-

trol in small screen sizes. Glyph set cannotinclude more than 256 encoded characters andlacks advanced layout features such as ligatures,making the format unsuitable for multilingual or

non-latin fonts. Can't :include embedding rightsinformation. Type 1 may soon become obsolete.

PCType 1

(Al so knaum as: WhweruJsPostSc ri pt)

Pros: Works in all PostScript commercial outputand printing devices. Uses the same curve sys-

tem (bezier) as drawing applications such asillustrator and Corel DRAW!, so letterfonns areeasy to edit when converted to curves. Typelhinting is comparatively easy to create.

COns:Works on Wmdows and Linux, not cross-platform. Contains two parts, the outline file

(.pfb) and the metrics font (.pfm), both of which

must be in the same folder. Type 1 hinting does

not allow precise control for very small screensizes. Cannot include more than 256 encoded

characters and lacks advanced layout featuressuch as ligatures, making the format unsuitable

for multilingual or non-Latin fonts. Cannot con-tain bitmaps for small screen sizes. Does not con-tain embedding rights information. One familycannot contain more than four styles.

Mac TrueType(A ls o k nown as: Resou,.ce-fork TrueTypeJ

Pros: May contain up to 65,535 characters and

supports Unicode, making the format suitablefor multilingual or non-Latin fonts. True'Iypehinting allows precise control in small screensizes, can also contain bitmaps. Can contain

embedding rights information defining if thefont can attached to electronic documents. One

family can contain an arbitrary number of styles.

Cons:Works on Mac OS only, not cross-platform.Difficult to move to other systems or send via e-

mail. Older PostScript commercial output and

printing devices are occasionally intolerant ofTrueType fonts. Few designers like drawing in its

curve system so they usually need to convert theoutlines from bezier which may introduce slight

changes in the shape. When converted back tobeziers (e.g. in illustrator), the resulting curveshave superfluous points. Manual TrueType hint-ing is laborious to create. This format is now con-sidered somewhat obsolete.

Recommendation: Draw fonts with beziers asType 1. When complete, m ake a duplica te F on tlA b

maste r .v fb file and make 'IT c onve rs io ns to it. Gen-

erate either a PC-IT / OT- IT or an OT- P5fon t far the

newest systems (W indaws and M ac OS X ), and in

addition, perhaps a M ac Type 1ont for M ile cus-

tomers run nin g a pre-B.6 Mac OS .

-Adam Twardoch




Generate a Mac Type 1 fontView Glyph Tool

1.Go to FILE>Generate

Mac Suitcase. The Export

Macintosh Suitcase win-

dow, far right, will open.

(To be able to generate

Mac fo nts, W in dows u se rs

can u se T ra nsTy pe , avail-ablefrom fontlab.com.)

save

s av e A s .• .

s av e A ll

Rever t

G e n er at e F o n t . ..

Generate Mac Su it c a se . ..

Font Info .• .

Page S e ru p . ..Prlnt. •.

Te sterBo!. vfb

Export Options

Type 1 £lipan Oplion5

oMake PF'Mflle 0Make AFM and INF f iles

En~odlng options: (i:'\

IA1wavswril'e Standard E,ncodln,g IJ!J)----'Tffi~oOpen Type 1 Export Terminal

T,ueType Export Optlons

@ I I Export hinted TrueT'fpe fonb

! ! ! I Keep ulsllng TrueType Instructions

I i i ! Export visual TrueType hints

I i i !Aulohinl unhlnted glyphs

@ I I Use Unicode Indexes as a base for TrueType encoding

e Do nOI reeneode firn 256 characters

oUse following codepage for flru 256 characten---;"'1

MacOS Roman

Export Macintosh SuitcaseXN '

XO

XW

:leP

~ lener-80ld (linked to file; TerteBoll

I ' d ! 10, Terter-Bold

0 1 12, Tesler-Bolel

• mnc• BlIfd 1I.1ic

C Cancel)

2. Inthe window above, the Suitcase set-up is

shown. I'd previously checked Bold in the Font

Info window (see page 128-130), to tell FontLab

that this font was the Bold weight of the poten-

tially four allowable weights that may occupy

anyone FontLab Suitcase. Inthe Select destination

format menu, choose Macint~sh Type 1.

.:: Export only flrs( 256 charaaers of the sel~ct"d c.odepageo Pu t MSChar Set value Into fsSelection field ~L- _

51y1esIn FONDnamed ''THier- could be uporled Inunuj)Uled ... ay.

You 1 \ 0 . . . . . f tn.«I ' "' pQln uy!"YOI.iQtIi prucftd on VOUrown rl~.

3. Hit the Options button, a, to open the Export Options

window, above left. For now, we'll only work with the

top of the panel that relates to Type 1Export Options.

Don't Make PFM, AFM andlNF files because those are

for Windows fonts, which we are not generating at

this time. Do choose Always write Standard

Encoding, b, if you're making a Western font, oth-

erwise choose Write custom encoding. Click OK.

Warn in g me ss ag e:Iadn't defined the plain style in

what is assumed to be a family of four fonts, so thismessage, left, came up. I just clicked OK.



84

Generate a Mac Type 1 font and install itinto Mac OSX.3 4. As an experiment, I stopped generating

....--------~fo ...'... ' = " ' f o ~ - T ; = " '. . . . . . . . .- . 8 c I. .d--------I TesterBold to instead make a plain, or single-

style font, not to be part of a family. In FontInfo (Cmd- or Ctrl-P), left, Isimply typed

"Tester." When Iwent again to FILE>Gener-

ate Mac Suitcase, Tester showed up as I

intended, below, as the Plainweight.

lure.selof fDntnamH. ~. ... ... ... . oDYflg!lt

Qpenl'y",-sp«I"< " a m . .Addi l lo ro> ! Op . "lYI>O . om . .O>pyY1gh,d..",.U.n

£mb.Mlog

Du1V!'le.' lnro:mq:tioo

lk<m. Information. . . ,; " rJ10n · i I I nd Idmtlfh;I'Uon

~.. , Id .. Ullc:o~on .. l tl~

'PU'IO~tId'tnti"ution

, 1M a n d US l d.m Jf l" "o n

• M l !r rk .! i a I Jd O i .l ?Wm i o rl §

• & . co d In g a nd 1Jrii<Od.

• H n ti ng S<o " ;"g .Typ: l-.".dllc " , t I . g .

• r ", .T y pe -, !M< i1 lc n u ;l "~ .( 'Onl n(lott

WolOh<

WkIIh'r-""mod--::I--u"'------,

~=====?~~==~JFont families

Go to page 128 to learnhow to properly setthem up for output.

Add. --~ I l f r ' I

~VJZl"'~~ ~~ ~1

I~O Plain

'&:I tester (linked \0 file len.)

~ 10, tester

~ 12,lHtu

IT• Bold

~ • I'alle

~ (D ~=M~b=fK~ _

5. Hit OK in the Export Macintosh Suitcase win-dow above and the Save window, left, comes up

asking Where you want your generated font to be

Saved. Ihose Desktop (it has the check mark).

6.Here are the two icons, print-

er font (teste) and suitcase

(tester.suit) that I've just created,

as seen on my OSX desktop.

ABCDEFGHUKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuywxyz l,&~I.iJ~!J-NIt-Sii~_

7.Double-click the .suit icon to open the window

above. Clicking the Install Font button installs the

font and opens the Panther Font Book window.

Alternate install: drag and drop fonts into the Fonts

folder" in the Library folder of the OSXhard drive.

font Book

ABCDEFG

HIJKLMNOPQRSTUV

abcdefghijkImnopqrstu

123456

·E ag er to capture college c us tom er s, A pp le se t u p OSX so everybody in y our d orm call share th e Powe rb oo k a ri d y et y ou ca n denyother IIsers access to y ou r p er so na l f o nt c oll ec tio n ( th er eb y J or cin g p as sw o rd s a n d r ed un d an t Fo nt s f o ld er s u po n p ro fe ss io lU l ./u se rs

w h o d o n' t s ha re t he ir M I le s) . 50 w he n in sta llin g a f on t in to 0 5 X, c he ck w hic l! o f th e h alf- do ze n F on ts fo ld ers it's go ing in to !

"''Tll'l'llt!l,,"ew~

~ Tftbudllt .. s...V.tlla,.... - n g .• _gdltlg.

."""OIngbolS

..lop ...

.. fCUI"I.;sto

" f I t . . . U••A. . ' I 'CMV"QjO

",fjltJ




Generate a Mac or PCTrueType font

...N""" • ."d C."",lgb!

Osi<"T'ypo-<pt<lfk ..,.,os

. .. .dhl . .. . Ooo"TfPO ~

Col'yrfliltJf Itlf'Orrru.llan

£m_dl.~

OI~gne' 'r'I'formatlo"U c 1 . n s 1 ! " i .nJcnnOlUon

.V-tu.1on and Idtntifitiltion €Irdeotincooon lfol" 'i l a

hnon IdHlt.lfiudon

1 8 " '4 ~ M S identification

• M e tr iC fi a nd D i me "j lo n5 ;

1C.yd1ml l l~,JOI\ !

r " " ' T y o . .. . podfjc tria

5."'_ &nd Supo , 1 , > ,

1. In Font Info, go to Key Identifi-

cation, a. Click the magic emerald,

b, to fill the TrueType Unique 10

record with info from earlier sec-

tions ofthis window. You can applyfor an official Type Vendor code, c,

ormake an unofficial one: type four

letters inlowercase only. TrueType

specific metrics, d, can.be the same

as Type 1 metrics unless you alter

them here or as you work in the

Metrics layer of the Glyph window.

Ther e ar e afew other sect ions ofth e Font Info w indow dea lin g

w ith T ru eT yp e issu es su ch a s h in t-

in g. F in d o ut m ore a bo ut them int he f re e, Fon tLab .pd f manua l

avai lablefrom fontlnb.com

Edit View Glyph Tools

XN

XO

New

Open .. .

C loseClose All

Save

Save As ...

S a ve A ll

Rever t

Before you generate the font, go into t

Font Info window (Cm d- or C trl-F) an

correc tly f il l in som e of the param ete

s pe cific ally re la tin g to T ru eT yp e (Ma c

W in) fon ts. Presum ably you've alread

filled out basic in fo such as Names an

Copyright a s d esc rib ed o n p ag es 19-23

0u••1Idt,,~

Un.Go~'~

Typi ! 1 : l l: U lD t I ' I o I rn'b-cJ3:

·" 'u .T~" . . ."",codt, ~m DU.. I,ud"'.~

...Nil.... and CoWlQht

Optn'l'yp.·.po<Inc n.",,,,

Addlt1.n" Op . ... T~ """' ..

CoP'i"i~'" i n l'<>rm •.~

£mbti!dln~

DH lgn cr I nfO ll Ji il u. io n

u ce " . . l pr o nn ,d o n"il'

' IIe:r\km .nd ' Ide_nificationKf lV i d 'o f I tU f ta t l O i l . s t !; t ln , , ,

!';mo .. Id.. UnCllU""

111M". liS Id."dfi",_"IiI' Me ul C J A lJ d D lm cm io n $

~

'VdlmeMion:st V e - " f pe-iPKikm aSubsalp, o n . SupOtKllp,

~ Encodi"" .,.jUokod.

~Hi",jn~ So,,)t>g.

Type l-.p«111< , . n ; n o .• T""ITyp."5pedfk $tujng:~

Font ROll.

Sttlk""'t p.. I,lon, ~ S~~.O"' thlck ..... ' so---

"""_ ..tdt'" -0-_ I ., Ite<.kulat.

LuW )DO'" u.Ij nfid ~oarcublt! 'nlw- ; a , j ~ "

(OSI2) TypoAJu.d.r : J DO " " ' " ' " (hh .. 1 A$undor, 100

T \'J >O Du .. n d.r . ~

' l'ypoLI.. C.p: ~

W1nAKtnt~

-----,Wlnl )e.un,c -325 Recalculat

2. For a Macintosh TrueType font, open the FILE

menu and choose Generate Mac suitcase, asshownon page 83 and 84. Then, in the Export Macintosh

Suitcasewindow click Macintosh TrueType.

To make a Windows Tn.f.eType font, choose

Generate Font and the window below will open.

You'll usually leave the name of the font (with the

.ttf suffix) alone, but open the Where menu to scroll

to the location where you want the font to be saved.

Cenerate Font

Font Fonnat: PCTru"Type

( Options ... ) T)IIl'IIl f01J tion . : SUtndor ll encocI" 'I l :

n/OTF o p t l c < ) o o : I :Wnted(l<eeflj a u to N nt , v is u al ): • • . , . , 1 ' 1 : U I>code :

Generl1te 11 True'JYpefont co ntin ues on next pa



86 Generate a Mac or PC TrueType font

Cenerate Font

]. L eft, in the Generate Font window (for

making PC fonts) you can select from sev-

eral font formats, such as PC Type 1, a, or

PC TrueType. The suffix (.pjb, . o t J or .ttf) inthe Save As field will change automatical-

ly, according to the font format you

choose, b. Notice that a summary of the

current Export Options settings is shown to

the right of the Options button, c ..Click it i f

you want to change your current options.

( Options ... ) Type 1 epbano:.-.; oneodolg;

TT IOTF " " t i o n a , I-iIUd (t_••t........ \Ii..... ); uport lbaxIe;- ~____:=-==~~-I

CenerateFont

OpenType-CFf ~

PCType 1

U NI)( T )'p e 1 (Raw ASCII )

U NIX T yp e 42 (Raw ASCn )

Fon tLab

F om : F o n na t:

4. When you want to generate a Macintosh

font (P C users can get TransType for making

Mac fonts), instead of opening the Generate

Font window, you must go to FILE>Generate

Mac suitcase to open the Export Macintosh

Suitcase window, right. In the pull-down

menu, choose TrueType (or Type 1) for Mac,

d. The Options button will show you the cur-

rent settings, some of which you may alreadyhave specified ineither the Font Info window

or in preferences> TrueType> TrueType Export.

5. If you created your glyphs using the

Names mode in the Glyph window-in a

latin font it makes sense: you can see each

character name-- you may get the error mes-

sage at right. Since TrueType Fonts are

arranged inUnicode, it is best to click No inthis window. The font will still be generated.

If generated as a Wmdows TrueType font, it

will have the .ttf suffix (icon shown as it

appears in OSX), a, and OS 9 menu listing, b.

TrueType fonts for Mac are generated as a

suitcase and the name contains no suffix, c.

See page 88 for how to load Windows fonts.

'&:I Frizzum -Medium (lInked \0 fII~: Fr1zrMdl

C 1 l 10,Frluum-lrolullum

r d l 12, Frt~zUl"-lroIedlijm

4) IIoId

o (J~Jlc

• 8ofdblfr. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SI!lE!ctdestination format: .f Macintosh TypE! 1 @

. = Ad"beCl) ypeReu nrc

( O p tions • .• ) ( Cancel)

00 you want to export (his font in Names mode?

Thl. Foo'.slo Nam" .n<:o<Il~ ...., .; . ""'". bo, cum", Truel'ypetxPOrTopdonl , e , UI\I~ •• pot't' mode. R,J;u_hlng dYncll'r

ma t) Pl n!Q m a y "O t .,,1.((" c~ tren t. t1~ ce or the Fonr Winl10rRs

( No ) E~~·

Truastsr; ttf

Truastari.II'

For more specific Info about generating openType fonts, see pages 129 and 130



Learn FONTLABFast 8

Install TrueType, OpenType or Type 1 fonts

for Mac into Macintosh OS S.x or 9.x1.Close FontLab and any other open programs.Double-click your hard drive to open it (type

"sys" to jump right to the System folder), a

2. Locate your Fon t s folderwithin the Sys tem fo lde r* and

drag the font(s) you want to

~~~~~~~~l!!~~ load either on to the SystemI~ folder or Fon t s folder icon, b,

or into the open folder as at c.

3.1£ you still have applicationsrunning, you'll get this error

message, d. You must quit allopen applications first, load

the font then reopen the apps.Otherwise, the new font won't

show inyour apps' font lists.

Or.••Choose your Fon t s folderas the Save destination whengenerating a font, but it won't

become available until you've

quit all apps, as said above.

*Bycrea ti ng Sys tem fold e r and/ or

F on ts fo ld er a lia se s (Cmd -M ) , e.

!!!!!~~~!!I and placing them on the D esktopo r in an aliases folder, you cl!n

quickly get to and open them .

• iii Preferences

iJSystem~ @~Fonts

~ i1Ext!nslons

• G 1 . Internet PlUG-Ins

33 3 Items, s.sa GB ava il ab le

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

truastar ..,I!il Testor. tt~ >••• ••••••••••

• I11III.Truester1.2. tif

1! 3 TruE!shr2.ttf

oTruE!ster1 .tif

GI TruBstl lr in 9.t lf

1- - - - · , , - - - ~

" -

AdobE! Sans MM

~ Adobe SE!rifMM

~ AdobeSanMM

§lACCbeSerMMIa American Typewriter 10

j ID AmerlTyp801

~ AmplitudeWlde-Bold.bmap

~~

Thefont "Tester .ttf"will nat be available to

currently running appliCiltions until they

havequit.

! I OK , Fonts aliasL- ~~

Some font-loading pointers: It's o ften best to o pen th e Fon t s fold er a nd ch eck fo r a nd d elete old ver-

s io ns o f a font that m ig ht h ave a s lig htly d iffe re nt s uffix ( an d th er efo re would n't b e a u tomatic ally r ep la ce d b y

th e n ew er ve rsio n y ou 'r e in sta llin g). D o n't h ave b oth a T ru eT yp e a nd T yp e 1version o f the sam e font in tire

Fon t s fo ld er a t o nc e. U nle ss yo u a re u sin g a fo nt-m an ag em en t pr og ram th at c ate go rize s fo nts, (in to wha t a re

some times confu sing ly ca lled "Su it ca ses ") , Mac as 8and 9can handle a m axim um num ber of128 and 512,

respectively. If yo ur n ew ly-lo ade d fon ts sta rt n ot a ppea rin g in yo ur a pps, yo u m ay ha ve to rem ove less-used

fonts. If yo u a re us in g P ostS crip t T yp e 1on ts, yo u sho uld h ave A do be T ype M an age r in sta lled . A TM D eluxe

may b e p ur c1U lS ed ,b ut th e L ite v er sio n (wh ic h is q uite s uffic ie nt) r l1 .a yb e d ownlo ad ed fr ee fr om Adobe .c om .



88

Install TrueType, OpenType or Type 1 fonts

for PC into windows 98, XP or 2000

1. Choose Start>Sertings>ControlPanel (InWindows XP, choose Start>Control Panel), a.

2.Double-click the Fonts folder, b.

3. At C1choose File>lnstall New Font

4. Locate the fonts you want to lEI e:install. If they're in the Drives list, L..._~ ..... ....I

select the drive and the folder containing

the fonts you want to install, d.

If the fonts to install are in the Folders list,

select a folder that contains the fonts youwant to install. If the fonts were compressed

(e.g. for emailj. un.Zip them first. The fonts

in the folder appear under List of Fonts, e.

5. Select the font(s) you want to install. To

select more than one font, hold down the

Ctrl key and click each font.

6. To copy fonts to the Fonts folder, make

sure the Copy fonts to Fonts folder check box

is selected, f. If you are installing fonts froma floppy disk or a CD-ROM, this rr=====================i'Icheck box should also be selected. PC font installation pointers: Don 'r instal l two differel1 ,lontsOtherwise, to use the fonts inyour w ith th e same m en u n am e o r P ostScript F on tN am e, reg ard less o f

applications, you'd have to keep format. To use Type 1fonts, you'll need Adobe Type M anagerthe disk in the disk drive. (ATM ) unless you are running W indows XP or 2000 in which

7. Click OK to install the fonts. ArM is in clu de d in th e o pe ra tin g s ys tem. A fte r in sta llin g fo nts,you m ay need to restart an application or r es ele ct th e p rin te r in

--------------~ the application to m ake the fonts appear in the font list.

C on tro l P <ln eI

Help

Run . ..

Shut D o w n . . .

: Add Fonts-

~® . L i s t oi fontr

AG8famol 'l dP ro ·Bokf tt a li c (OpenT~JAG&!amon!F ' ro · lt a flC (OpenType)

AG!I!1IITIl lrnPro-Reguiar [OpenTypeiAGar5I !Cncf 'r o- Ser ni bo ld it af lC (Open Type )

~c'J F8 (T rueType)A geng yF 8 Bol d( Tr ueT~ J

Folder;;

c: \wiMI\ lonts Drives;

lOe;\ U...iiiI-c:----E]-.eW1NNT

O K

~---~

SeIecI;AI

L:J ATMFo1der C D~ ~ Copy 1 0 0 0 0I s 1 0 F a n l a falde!




printing test documents in FontLabMakin g prin t-outs of our fon ts is a vital w ay o f c heck-

ing on their progress. It is surprising how a "hard

c ap y" c an p ro vid e o bje ctive in sig hts fa r d iffe ren t th an

v iew in g th e fo nt o n sc re en o nly . T he re a re th re e w ay s to

crea te print-o uts of your fonts: T he first tw o involve

Fo ntLab's ow n prin tin g o ptions. T he th ird w ay is to

g en era te a nd in sta ll th e fo nt o nio yo ur computer, th en

set som e hJPean d prin t it out in a text d ocum ent using

a p ro gram like Q u ark , I nD e sig n, o r MSWo rd .® C Cancel)

You eM print a . font table or a list of glyph

propert.ie.s.What do you prefer to print?

D J I Print the glyph table

l e ; 1 0Print the properties list

When you hit F J LE>Print (Cmd- or

Ctrl-P), the first dialogue box you'llill b b . ht kin

FONTLAB FONT PRINTOUT mAngleUltra

see w e a, a ove ng , as gyou whether to print a glyph table, IfDQO E _ O Q I E 1 1 O ; ~ 1 " " " ' - ~ ~ I R I O ' > " 0 0 I I IFOilB

• I . . t I. . . j

,

. . .uch as b, or a properties list, such • "shown below in Preview_ . ~ 10as C

I'PIg !fO'1 IF1II~ Ifru_!_ LFIll' ,EO~ ~ IF1I17 I fO, " ~ If!1A ~IB IFOIC

mode, not actually printed). Hit OK V a Y. I~

I 2 • -o get the Print window, d. Select a _ , ._1! _1! _ _ _ 1 2 _ , .

_"! 2Q

printer and go to print. II'IIiI:O IfWl IFen ~ [F~' 1 f J ! ? ! _ Im!_ I F1I~7 IFD2$ lfm. IFD2A IFo.tI I."",

f " ." • 7• II • « ) • + ,' "

2 < _ " ' . . . _!' _ _ . . ~ ~ _ . , ~ :II

18_08 (c..l J~ , 9r.~of~(l_IUb~"!.

IFO~ If 031 IF~_ Lrn.l_ 1 1 ' 0 3 < lfm_ ~ IF.". IFQ3Q 1 F D 3 . IFa 1 " " " , -

fU Page) _Q I I 4 I • ,• • • • C,r '4 I to - ' + ~ a , _ I+K~ElI

40"

42 . . ~ _ . , ~ ~ _. . '1

0........ " ' " / f O < W J « ! . . . . 101 11 .. g;v . ....-0.. .. Z.... In 2 A o o m It... ToOl ModtIfl>U I"" IFOOIo IF04S ~ ~ I I . !M L ~ ~ IRMB IF04C

~

• C D • ,i H I J • LI:r.ll •• "!1:1 ;(011.... ~mUOII~ S !1 . , M

"_ . . _ . , ~ ~ _. . .5

IF1IS2 IfO'~_ IFD. If.~ L~ LfM!_ L!llM ~ ~ I...., IFOSC

R I T a v au II! 1 1 • ( \FrizQuadrata n 2' " -" - - " -" _'! -" "-11

IF002 ~ IfQ&l IFOB! l!'!!!!!!_ ~ Im!_ If!!H_ ~ l_ IFO«:

It II f _I h I I . . II I: •A

#

. . _ .. w !'- -"! ~ ~ ~ ~ 01

In dex: 1 , U n ic od e: 0 0411 . . , 1 > lmt_ lm.!.. lrn!_ Im!_ ~ IF018 I• • " "

No des: 21, C onto urs : 2 -@!tillt

BBox: (5 , 0 ) - (718 . 6 58)Printer' : No Prinl~r Selected I:,

LS B: 5 , RSS : 2, W id th : 720

Isb : 16 4, rsb : 16 3, w id th : 39 3 Presets; : Stlndard

1 = 1!Copies & Pages m

If you chose to print a proper-Dpies: 1 I! ! i f Collated

ties list, you can hit the Preview . _Pages! ~Al l

1\- button, as I did, above, to look at oFrom: 1 10: 1 I- such information as "Nodes: 21" gJ{

-nd "width: 393" on-screen before r-- _ _ i -

you print, or in lieu of printing. 0~ ( S ave As PDF .) ( F a~ ••• ) ( Cannl ) , Print;



90

Test print-outs from installed 'fonts

Here is a list o f just some of th e ty pic al k in ds o f te sts

fan t desig ners w ill prin t-a ut-n ot d irectly fro m F on t-

Lab, b ut in a w ord -p ro ce ssin g a pp , a fte r h av in g g en er -

ated an d loa ded th e fon t-in o rd er to ch eck our w ork:

1.All characters (or perhaps just upper and lower

c as e a lp habe ts , to s ta rt) in large pt.-sizes for scruti-

nizing letterforms and comparing one to another.

2.All characters set between Hs to check spacing.

3. AA-AB-AC-AD-AE , etc.; BA-BB-BC-BD, etc.

4. Waterfalls showing letters in successively

graduated point sizes to check out what happens

to curves and counters at different sizes.

S. "Zwei boxkampfer jagen Eva quer durch Sylt"

and other pangrams (sentences that contain everyletter in the alphabet) because letterforms and

spacing are best judged as words set in sentences,

rather than as random letter strings. Visit my

website www.logofontandlettering.com and

click "Kern King" to copy a paragraph of words

containing every (English alphabet) kerning pair

Below, early test prints b y Christian Schwartz o

the medium-weight [oni: in his Popular family.

HAHBHCHDHEHFHGHHHIHJHKHLHMHHNHOHPHQHRHSHTHUHVH .

VWXy. J '/1 V

, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ ~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ,

b d(~·r· . I ' 1 > f · W e font designers all seem to develop our own

a? c .:· e l . • shorthand notational systems for marking up print-;; '\ ~ 'ed proofs. Above, Schwartz reconsiders: his "too

~ • I. ~ . boxy" B;the shape of G;the lower leg angle of I,the; •'It inner right serif ofK; the top, right-side curves of the

. . _ . l _ . ~ _ . -1 counters in a and c, and many, many other aspects 1as he works on fine-tuning all his letterfonns.





Learn FONTLABFast 9

FontLab studio 5'5 expanded printing

It's all about choices in this modem world.

Where FontLab 4.6 offered but two printing

options, left, Studio 5 offers a veritable smor-gasbord of printing choices. As Iaid on theprevious page, you can always generate afont and then type any arrangement of glyphs

into a drawing or word processing programand go to print. But there IS one thing youcan't do that way, which has always present-

ed a problem for typographers (and also forauthors like me) who sometimes need high-

,-----------1. resolution renderings of glyph contours withI - - F _ o _ n I _ T _ o ! _ b _ l c -I nodes showing and who, having lacked such

an option as Studio 5 now offers at a, would~ = = = = = - - - - l have to fake the effectmanually in Illustrator.

BeforeYou can print a font table or a list of g lyph

properties, What do you prefer to print?

E J 8rint the glyph table

1 5 ; 1 0Print the properties lis1:

( Cancel)

Printing

~

Iili.;jF o nt T ab le

G l yp h lis t

\The!ui<k~rown

~ P rint g lyp h inde)l in every cel l

S elec t g ly ph to p rint

C ho os e g ly ph ... IS64,1491

Sr in ti ng op t ion s

Nodes 0ode coo rd in a te s

oGlyph maries

oHints

o Fil l outline

® F i t g ly ph to p ag e

U s e c u rr en t Glyph W in dow z oom

(In cid en ta lly, th e best w ay to preview

high -end text fon ts is to get a lino tronic O K i I Cal lce l"---------i print-out from a service bureau (or at 1- _

le ast to u se a 24 00 -d pi la se r p rin ie r.)

Font Table

-.G ly ph u st

no~.i,~6'rown

Font Sample

-

F o n t Wa t er fa U

[ A ]G l yp h S amp le

I ; ~ · A IG ly ph wa te rf al l



92

SPAC ING , KRNING ,

and HINTING a FONTPage 93 T he M etrics w in dow

96 S pa cin g a nd K ern in g co ncepts

97 U sing th e M e trics w indo w

98 A uto M e trics99 Kerning

100 K ern ing and the K ern ing In fo pan el

101 R emo ve ex is tin g K e rn in g

102 Transfo rm M e tr ic s

103 The M etrics w indow in Stud io 5

104 T ime - sav ing c la s s- ba sed ke rn ing

106 Hint ing

108 Auto -h in t a Type 1on t

109 Fon t A ud it

110 Type 1h in ting ; A lig nm en t Zones

112 Type 1h in tin g; T he P rev iew pa nel

114 L in ks, R epla cem en t h in ts, A uto stem s

116 Beg in nin g T ru eT yp e h in tin g



-

L ea rn a bo ut th e la te st Metrics window on page 103

The Metrics window


The white spaces that separate letters are as integral a part of a font as the charac ters themse lves. The goal is

to c re ate e ve n s pa cin g b etw ee n le tte rs fo r visu al b ala nc e a nd le gib ility. Goo d Metr ic s, o r l.e tte rsp ac in g, d oe sn 't

just happen. W e designers m ust decide how m uch spacing i s a pp ro pria te g ive n th e p ar tic ula r s tyle o f a fo nt.

Glyph-window spacing As you draw a glyph,

you can do preliminary spacing while working in

the Glyph window. Click on the word Metrics inthe Editing Layers palette, a, to go into the Metricslayer. While in this layer, contours can't bechanged; nodes can't be selected or edited. How-

ever, you are now able to drag the left and rightsidebearings, b and c, nearer or farther to define

how much space there will be on either side of theletter. Notice that when you drag a sidebearing,the red Measunnent line (which can be dragged

up or down, as you need it) gains a red arrow andshows you how far the sidebearing is from anypart of the letter's edge. This allows you to visual-ly ascertain that both sides have the same value.

The Metrics window is where spacing/kerningis mostly done. Go to WINDOW>NewMetrics Win-dow, below, or click the Metrics Window icon, d.

Editlng Layer, fanel

Trnnsformat'M Panel

edit Mac ro PJIlel

OpenTYpe Panel

Output Panel

P re vi ew P an el

Co lle cti on /C la ss es P an el

Fonts Panel

Font Map Panel

AxbPllnel

M.!st~n l'a,lPlPr mlrlve~ P:\nel

I

II

I

-======TI,,,,II

I,,,,,

---,-~5-0'

nditing uvers ~~

I,I,,,iI,

f-----=il-.:...,II,

See page 71 for somebasic spacing concepts.

cascade

Tile Horizontally

Tile Vertically

Prevlewl Metrics - Ba.skervllll!

Font - Ba.sk l! rv ll le [Baskerv ll ll ! .d f on t



94 Spacing and kerning

M is enabled for Metrics modePreview/Metrlc5

HIHATANMIF aA T A 'M M

1409 1450 1409 1556 1985

10 55 10 43 53

18 55 18 32 50

16&5 I UOli I

HA MIFSet up for spacing Type a string of characters

into the Metrics window, a. Or click the button,

b, for a choice of ready-to-go strings. Below this,-each letter, its width, its left sidebearing (hence-

forth: LSB)value and its RSBvalue is displayed.

Haphazard spacing The font above wasn't

spaced well. Letters like Iiand I, whose serifs

are exactly alike, and whose right and left sides

mirror one another, should therefore have iden-

"ical RSB and LSB values. N, M, and the left

side of F , should also have the same SB value as

H and 1. Instead, each value for each side of eachletter is different. That issonot right.

The LSB of letter A measures 10 units, yet the

RSB of this symmetrically-shaped letter is 18

units. Both values should be the same. The rule

is: Use the same sidebearing value for every

alike side of every alike character.

Better spacing The LSBs and RSBsfor all sim-

ilar; straight-sided letters above are the same, asthey should be. Both SBs of T are identical and

the same is true of A, which has negative SBs of

-12 units to nestle it closer to straight-sided let-

ters. Taking into account its right-side openings,

E got a narrower RSBso if would set tighter.

Kerning Above, clicking the K button, a, places

us inKerning mode and adds a fifth row with

existing kerning pairs highlighted inblue and

yellow, b. Assigning a -113 kern value to T willallow it to snuggle up past A's RSBand dose the

spacing gap that otherwise occurs. But notice

that the second A was only kemed -82 to the T so

itappears slightly farther away from T than the

first A. Without kerning, combinations of letters

like A and T will look strangely spaced-out, as

they do in the screenshot at the top of this page.




How much spacing or how little?

When you edit Metrics in the Pre-

view/Metrics window you are usual-

ly working at a large scale and the

spacing you assign may tum out tooopen or too tight when the font is set

at smaller text sizes. On this page are

some approaches to consider, but it is

always wise to open some existing

fonts and study how the Metrics were

handled, just as we are doing here.

Another boldface

The spacing betweencharacters in my font

Kobalt Bold generally

match

Spaces may need

kerning, too. Tocompensate for L's

wide-open right

side, Ikerned the

Space character-68 to the L. (You

alw ays kern from the

glyph on th e right toth e o ne o n th e le ft.)

counter

widths.

A-V-A were

kerned -276,

to match the

space between

letters like 1-1.

Spacing matches counters This is one rule of

thumb, although it may not always be applicable to

every letter style. Below, here are lower-case letters

from the bold-style font shown on the previous page.

The first thing to notice is that the standard spacing of

straight-sided letters such as I, u, m, n and is only 70units, less than the 85 units used for upper case. The

total space width between most letters, 140 units, is

about the same width as the counters in letters like u,

m, a and n. Because of the open break ina's left side, its

LSBwas decreased from the standard-same with t.

straight-si

lower case letterssuch as I have

sidebearings 3

units less than the

uppercase, such as

H . The humpedright sides of h

and n necessitatedstill less spacing.

same since both letters' lefsides are the same shape.

There's no rule regarding

spacing of odd letter shapes.

Just move a 's LSB in closeruntil it looks evenly spaced

with the rest.



96 Spacing and kerning concepts

~~~I]J I l I f U O O H u l i O .

. " A H I 0 ,H u I I I 0

"763 e~o 53!;; 164 I 7e4 I :6'30 1)03 I 292 29.2 S46

:,. 21 Z I 21 2 1 I 21 t 21 I e I 21 : 1 1 . 32. . . 2 1 2 1 2 1 : 21 I 21 I 21 22 I 2 1 2 1 32

AH~~OIO'-. . . . . .

" " "•

•. . .- - J . ~ _Ul .IO. . . -serif spaci.ng Sidebearings are measured at sidebearings of 21 units, though the LSB of u is

the outermost edges of the letter. In serif fonts, only 10 units to compensate for its receding,I the serifs stick out farthest and in the font rounded bottom.above, 21 units was used as the standard side- How to edit spacing With the M button active,

bearing distance between serifs, even for the let- just click a character and two sidebearing lines, ter A, so its serifs would space consistently with appear, above, that you can drag. You can also

most of the other serif letters. Rounded letters, select a field and type ina new SBvalue arcopysuch as 0, are always spaced closer to straight- and paste a value from another field. And, saystem Letters (but here, I think 0 looks too tight). you want H to have the same RSB as N, typeThe lower case letters I and i, above, also have """Nfl into H'e RSB field, instead of a number.

scripts Successful script

spacing requires a systemof connecting Iigaturessthat is fairly consistentso every letter can joinup with the next one.Properly spaced, ascript font willdonIy mini-

_al kerning....and to automatically create equal spacing between letters ..The crossbar offhad to be long enough to reach 0, yet not stick out past the left stem of u..




Using the Metrics window

Click M to work onspacing (Metrics).

Click K to work on --+---t---,

kerning. Or letneither button beenabled to view thewindow in noneditingPreview mode. But I-;f=;t=~

why do that? It's bet-

ter to have editability

at the ready.

Click the arrows tospecify a point size in

which to display your

font, or Auto will allowcharacters to resize whenthe window is resized.

RTL is for fonts like

Hebrew and Arabic

that need to be dis-played right-to-left, as

shown below.

PJaywith, these but

tons andsee what

happens.

\ 0635 \0637\ 0641\ 0642\ 0663 ~

B ay an P la in

J

Ascn characters, sucas ABC , can be typed

into the string directl

Enter Unicode codepreceded by a back-slash: \0635\0637 . F

characters that can't

typed on your key-board, use glyph nampreceded by a slash

/ Aogon ek . /C ced il la .Mixed characters can

entered separated byspace: /Aogonek\0634.

(s ee a ls o p ag e 6 1.)

How to get character strings into the window

Any highlighted glyphs in the Font Wmdow or open

glyph in the Glyph window will be displayed whenthe Metrics window is opened. You can also type orpaste characters, glyph names or Unicodes into the

string field, above ai drag a glyph to the Metrics win-dow from the font window, b; or open some samplestrings here, c. Click d to open Preview Options,

right, and then edit and/or add to the samplestrings, e . If you want a non-editable lower, secondstring for comparison, f,Type or paste one in at g.

F 'o n1 10 U I- ! In till!! P fM@W'CDm ' b a bOA : A ! Bryanl 'P'jljn ( S elec

~,cnd p"",i.w ,trifl9'

Usin g th e M etric s w in dow co ntin ues o n n ext



98 Using the Metrics window • Automatic Metrics Generation

working in the fields A glyph string may be

much longer than is visible in the field, above aand b. Use the Right and Left Arrow keys to movethe string along. Scroll the editing field with thegrabber hand (hold down the Spacebar while drag-ging mouse), c. Enlarge glyphs in the editing field'

with the magnifying glass (hold Cmd- or Ctrl-• Spacebar; add Option or Alt keys to reduce), d.

Changesto the string Click a glyph to

select it, e. Holding the Shift key allows youto drag the character vertically up or down.Hitting Cmd-] or [inMac (Ctrl-] or [inWm)will change the selected glyph to the next orprevious character,. alphabetic ally. Typingany character, f, will replace the currently

selected one with the new one you typed.

Auto MetricsClick the magic emerald and let FontLab do your Metrics!

on-- tal

You want to generate meUics < I Current chir.{aer only

How much white space do you All characters in current string

:@Custom Custom metrics: ,.. 0 nlj0

When do you want to keep existing mettles?

: Never ... "

How much must the shape of glyphl Inflate to generate metrics?

Medium

( Cancel) t!~~

First, choose to generate new metrics

for, a, only the currently selected char-acter, for the character string in theMetrics window, or for the whole darn

font (the latter two choices are notundoable; save a copy of your font).Then try this: Choose Custom and set

RSBand LSBat 0 to cancel out existing

metrics. Click OK. Open this panelagain. Now in the pulldown, b, choosea degree of spacing. Medium might bea good choice, but experiment on thestring, before doing the entire font. HitOK. You will probably find that AutoMetrics, as with any auto-operation,

always requires manual tweaking.



Learn FONTLABFast 9

Kerning W 11ere spacing leaves oft kerning picks up. First you space each character as carefully a

possible to avoid excess kerning . .After checking spacing (generating and installing th

font a nd usin g it to set a few paragraphs of type is one way to do it), make n oie s a s to w here kern in g is need ed t

fill u p visual holes between letters. As an aid to locating spacing/kerning problems, I've produced a list of word

comprising every po ssible (latin -ba sed ) letter co mbina tio n. You ca n co py "Kern King" from my web site, unuui»

logofon tandle tte ring .c om , pas te it into a w ord pro cess ing or layout program document, look at the words in lowercase, then as all caps, see how they set, then go back into FontLab and adjust spacing/kerning accordingly.

(® :\ ~ ( ®.

H IGH Macfav'Arthur 1]'( @. \(® "

X F.K -P}T ,V :W ;Y - rtfhgjky( C D . ® . "

(R8ro?tea~ ~~~®~~thu~ ~~Kerning considerations H spaced well, certain character shapes, such as a,may never need kern-ing. There are many unexpected kern pairs, like cT,b. Don't forget that quotes and punctuation, c, and

d, need to be kemed, too. Some kern pairs, such as rt,Jh (as in sulfhydryl), gj (logjam or gjellen,lp), and

l e y are almost always difficult to deal with, e. Eccentric fonts, such as Delorita from bvfonts.com, f

may contain virtually no common sidebearing standards and will therefore require that every letter

be individually spaced and kerned by eye. Some characters in an oddball font like this author'sCymbal, g, may present typical kerning issues, but other characters require a unique treatment.

Common letter pairs needing kerning

As demonstrated above, the number of kerning

pairs a font requires is based on its style. Some of

the following commonly called-for kerning pairs

may not pertain at all to our fonts. And other

pairs, not included in this brief listing, may pres-

ent themselves as eyesores to be corrected.

The market for fonts is aninternational one, and

many kerning pairs, representing non-Englishaccent characters, and character combinations,

such as Hr, Nd, Mg, and Qa, may also need to be

included in our kemed fonts.

AC AG AO AQ AS AT AU AV AW AY A : A" Ac

Ad Ae Ag A o Aq A s A t A u A v Aw Ay BV BW BY

CT CV CW CY DA D r DV DW DY FA FG P I FaFT FV FW FY Fa Fc Fb Fe Fo Fr Fs Ff Fu Fy GYH r K O Ka K o K u Ky LO LT LV LW LY l'L" Lo

Lv Lw Ly OA OT OV OW OX OY PA PT PV PW

PY Pa Pc Pd Pe Po Ps P. p , Qa Qu RA RT RV RW

RY Ra Rc Rd Re Ro Rs Ry 55 ST SY 5V SW Sy s-

Sw TA TO IT Ta Te Ti To Tr Ts Tu Tw Ty T. T, T

T i T- VA vaVa Ve Vi Vm Vn Vo Vp VrVs Vu VyV.V,V: V;V-WAWOWa WeW iW oW rW u Wy

W. W, W: W; W- YA YC YG YO Y a Y e Y i Y o Y p Y r

Y u Y v y . y . Y : Y ; y- X O xo ew ey ev ff fg f' f ij ,s '

of at ov ow oy ox qu qa ra rc rd re rf rh ro rq IT

rt ru rv rw rx ry rz r. I,r- ve va v. v, w. w, y . y ,

(This list has been reprinted from the author's book

Logo, Font and L etterin g B ib le .)



100

Kerning and the Kerning Info panelOpen an existing font to exam ine its kern ing . G o to WINDOW>New Metrics Window to open the Metrics

W indow . M ake sure the K button, a, is enabled , click on any letter, and m ove the kern bar, b, to see how i

wor ks . A fo nt c an , o f co urse , b e ke rn ed ju st by in divid ua lly tw ea kin g th e kern b ar s o n e ve ry n ec es sa ry k er nin g

p air , b ut fo r th is e xe rc is e, le t's g et s cie ntific : H it th e b utto n, C, to o pen th e Kerning Information window.

_~QO ~review/Metrics - Rocket

I;r r ~ : ' "l~f~~I':.il A t e ! lnomacr~ : ~~e I tr ; = ~ if[Auto iffi . - - , Kerning Information

N' T u

~ 647 I 591 I 624 IIL~ft91Vph Right g lVph Kerni.•. ~~ 5 I -18 I -18 E T -40 II I.. : 16 I - 11 I -11 - ~

I 83 I I] I£ Y 20

" "[ ~~1 ][!.91 I E:2" I~39 E ampersand 68

E f 7

_ T L ~ - ~ E h 10

E . I -122E Ij 78

I

_I

@\~. I E k ~I E I to

~E ~

- ,.-..m ,._~ . . - ,.. . 'f G

~ffi

I· I ". . . . . . . . . . . . J . . d '~

Glyph buttons Click ~ I I> -~22 +I.:J

the first double-arrow Right count: 35 Total pairs: 2042. button to scroll to any

glyph in your font andget it up in the Left Glyph

~

Kerning Info panel This panel gives acolumn, ditto for the read-out of all existing kerning pairs, and

Right Glyph. also lets you add and subtract pairs. The

1best part, though, is that it allows quick

E Ih 10 comparisons. Above, for ex-

E i 10 ample, you can see that h k 1m

E j 7B I 'and n are all kemed 10 units

E k 10 from E, but not i, whose basi-E I 10 ~ cally similar, straight left sideE m 10 ~ indicates that it should also be

TP!"

- kemed 10 units from E. ClickE ~~ • Ii _j • l q _ - I r . l to select the E-i row and type~Left count: 31 Right count: 3!i Total pairs: 2042 10 to replace -122 in the field at

d. Now the if which was jut-

~

ting way too far toward E, atI

e, will automatically updateits position, as demonstratedin the preview window at f.

Learn FontLab Fast

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