I start this thread in Technique and Theory, though it addresses more issues. Please tell if this belongs elsewhere.
For years, I was drawing full-set Type-1 Western MacOS Roman fonts. Today in FL5, generating OT fonts to use on my Mac (OS 10.10.5). I focused on design, neglected technology (coding, encoding, scripting) and hinting (auto-hints).
To cover more languages, it is necessary to add glyphs to my fonts. FL5 offers a selection of code pages - i switched on OpenType LatinPro and went on filling the empty spaces. Where as glyphs like for example Rcaron, ohungarumlaut in terms of name and design make sense to me (those even compile with existing source glyphs to start with), i feel clueless with Unicode named cells. The only hint i have here are low-res bitmaps, difficult to interprete. And what might be the difference from Omega and uni03A9 for instance (its bitmap image seems the same) ?
Regarding my low technical level, is it advisable to approach this with FL at all (since there are much more diacritical glyphs to do, not covered by OpenType LatPro yet?) Should I switch and learn Glyphs.app (open my OT-fonts there and then stay with .ufo ? Rather later than sooner kerning these additional characters may be a topic, also potential OT-features I am interested in). Other font editors on Mac?
What is a good reference when it comes to design glpyhs you haven’t encountered before? I am looking at the system font MinionPro, but this seems custom built and only helps for few glyphs.
Which tasks should I be able to provide and control myself (interested in design)? What steps and bits are better done by specialists and should be commisioned (sample-codepages or fonts, containing a reference design to start with for instance) ?
I question the workflow to achieve my goal, based on my existing character set: cover all european latin languages, having numbers sets (lining, OsF, both proportional and tabular), maybe even fractions and superscript. Producing print and web fonts.
Your thoughts and insights would be much aprrechiated.
White and cyan cells come from my existing set. Red cells are pretty clear. Blue and magenta cells i am not sure wether done correctly. Empty cells: i have no refernce design:
Comments
<http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/ogonek.html>
André
This might help getting up and running:
https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/porting-to-glyphs
https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/diacritics
(disclaimer: I’m the developer of Glyphs)
"Omega" is actually the Ohm Sign whereas uni03A9 is the uppercase greek letter. They will normally look the same, but one is a symbol and the other a greek letter.
You should get a copy of the unicode standard and the unicode code charts for more info on all of this. The current version (12.1.0) can be downloaded here:
CodeCharts.pdf
Full Text pdf for Viewing
André
Glyphs includes list filters of characters required for different regions of Europe, Pinyin, Vietnamese, IPA, and Pan African Latin. One of my favorite Glyphs features is that it automatically builds support for combining diacritical marks into fonts based on your anchors, which will allow users to cook up letters that you didn’t include in your fonts.
As reference fonts for lots of common and uncommon glyphs, I can recommend the Brill typeface.
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