Class based contextual positioning - how to?

Andreas Larsen

I've tried using calt but it's not really working - i.e. it works fine in FontForge but generated fonts seem to ignore it. 

feature calt {
  pos @wide @narrow' <128 0 0 0> @narrow;
} calt; 

You can see the feature file here: https://github.com/larsenwork/monoid/blob/master/Utilities/RegularKerning.fea

I can't use standard kerning as the font is monospaced. 

Any suggestions? (I'm a bit new to all this - just playing around with the possibilities. 

George Thomas

What application are you testing the font with after generation?

Andreas Larsen

@George Thomas firefox, chrome, atom, xcode, textedit etc...not really working in any of them
 

Georg Seifert

I just tried it and your code works fine in Indesign and TextEdit (Mac). The font was compiled with a very recent version of makeOTF.

Andreas Larsen

@Georg Seifert so you created it from source? Did you try the version on larsenwork.com/monoid first? 

How does one compile using makeOTF?
 

Andreas Larsen

@Georg Seifert I just had quick go with makeOTF (never used it before) but ran into this issue: 

makeotfexe [FATAL] Glyph renaming is requested, but the Glyph Alias And Order DB file was not specified.

This is the terminal command I used: 

makeOTF -f /Users/andreaslarsen/Downloads/Monoid-2/Monoid-Regular.ttf -ff /Users/andreaslarsen/Git/Monoid/Utilities/All.fea -mf /Users/andreaslarsen/Git/Monoid/Utilities/FontMenuNameDB

Any help is much appreciated.

Andreas Larsen

Ah...is the DB file needed for the "sub" functions to work?

https://github.com/larsenwork/monoid/blob/master/Utilities/All.fea

Is there an automated way to generate that DB file...?

Paul van der Laan

There should be a folder called “Technical Documentation” included with the FDK. Inside there is MakeOTFUserGuide.pdf that explains many details.

In short – makeotf requires a number of files:

• a font file (pfa, ttf, otf, ufo)
• features

• fontinfo

• FontMenuNameDB

• GlyphOrderAndAliasDB

If you put them all in one directory then the following command should be sufficient:

makeotf -r -f Monoid-Regular.ttf

Andreas Larsen

@Paul van der Laan Cheers - I've been reading through some of it already. It's terribly written. Not beginner friendly:) Says there is an example GlyphOrderAndAliasDB in a folder where there is none etc.

Is there an automated way to generate GlyphOrderAndAliasDB ? 

Andreas Larsen

Or alternatively: is there any way I can get this working using "just" FontForge?

Paul van der Laan

GlyphOrderAndAliasDB should list all the glyphs in your font, and every line can contain two or three columns that are separated by a tab:

[finalGlyphname]\t[currentGlyphname]\t[unicode]

If you don’t want to rename any glyphs during compilation, then finalGlyphname will be the same as currentGlyphname. The third column with unicodes is optional. For example:

bracketleft\tbracketleft\tuni005B

The FDK is typically aimed at developers and tech-savvy people. You should be able to use it with any font editor, but having a decent code editor is recommended too.

Andreas Larsen

Hmm...slightly stuck here  

@Georg Seifert do you mind explaining me (beginner friendly) how you got it working?

Paul van der Laan

Also have a look at Adobe Source Sans on GitHub. It includes all the source files for the FDK.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Hi Andreas,

FontForge is a bit more tolerant than the AFDKO. If I compile your features with OTM, I get the following error message: ‘HOT [ERROR] The languagesystem DFLT dlft; statement must precede all other language system statements.’ After fixing this everything seems to work fine from a technical point of view (although the result using DTL Argo is probably not what you had in mind ;-).

Andreas Larsen

LeMo cheers, I think that fixed it!
@Paul thanks for links, will have to get into using FKO at some point:)

https://twitter.com/larsenwork/status/624668748612521985