Is there way to define anchor point while defining class in FL5?

Joon Park

<pre class="CodeBlock"><code>markClass [gravecomb acutecomb circumflexcomb] <anchor 0 500> @MARK_TOP_CENTER;

The example is above which is part of this. I can't seem to put all those in a single opentype feature as FL5 automatically breaks them apart into ccmp and mark features, and naturally markClass code at the start is thrown into whatever feature is above in the list.

Igor Freiberger

Unhappily, FL5 does not support mark and mkmk features.

Joon Park

Well then

Igor Freiberger

Do you know about the preview of FontLab VI? It is still under development and presents a number of problems. But you can try several new resources – and it supports mark and mkmk.

Joon Park

How about... using kerning and negative value on left side-bearing with combining accents? To deal with glyphs that are different width. (dotlessj would have different width and different point where acute accent would go, in comparison to letter a with acute.)

Is that a method people use?

Thomas Phinney

Kerning is not a great solution for this, because some common environments (including Microsoft Word) default to having kerning off.

Joon Park

Thomas Phinney said:

Kerning is not a great solution for this, because some common environments (including Microsoft Word) default to having kerning off.

Right, that's why having negative left side-bearing is a fallback to get work for many glyphs. Just wondering using kerning on top of that to deal with glyphs such as dotlessi and dotlessj would be viable/accepted without cons.

Thomas Phinney

I understand, and that would help, yet...  I still don't think it's a reasonable option, unless you happen to have an otherwise monospaced font. Advance widths of glyphs are just too darned variable; even in the "good" cases the accents would often be slightly out of position.

Sure, it would be better than nothing. But precomposed glyphs and mark attachment are both better options.

Joon Park

Of course, precomposed glyphs are already made. As you mentioned if it's monospaced (well mostly), so it's not a messy workaround but it sounds like it's something people wouldn't appreciate. Perhaps I just leave it at where it is for now?

Michael Rafailyk

Joon Park said:

How about... using kerning and negative value on left side-bearing with combining accents? To deal with glyphs that are different width. (dotlessj would have different width and different point where acute accent would go, in comparison to letter a with acute.)

Is that a method people use?

I see the big problem in this approach because comb accents have a zero width. So when using a kerning between the character and combining accent, the kerning also will move everything after the combining accent. Visually it looks like a kerning the character before comb accent to something that is after comb accent, that is not expected.