Pattern Font Problem

Ori Ben-Dor
Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
in Technique and Theory
I'm designing an ornamental font for creating patterns. Every glyph is a tile that when repeated creates a pattern.

I've set the UPM at 1000 and generated a CFF-flavored OTF file.
When I use it in MS Word (haven't tried other applications), every few tiles (letters) there's a little overlap between two adjacent tiles, as if Word places the next tile a little closer to the previous one instead of at the exact position, and the pattern goes out of synchronization.

Is it because of some rounding mechanism?
Is there anything I can do about it?

Comments

  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    Does the same font work properly in Indesign?
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 792
    Perhaps a screen rendering issue? A printout may help to evaluate this.
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    Thank you for you comments, Georg and Andreas.

    I didn't try it in Indesign (I don't have Indesign).

    It's not a screen rendering issue. I didn't try to print, but I did export to PDF and inspect the border closely. The glyph isn't placed at the exact position, no doubt about that (see the attached file).

    .

    On further inspection, the problem seems to appear only in certain sizes. At 24 points I see no problem; at 22.5 I do.

    Also, it turns out that the same problem appears in the vertical axis as well (not surprising, I guess).
    .

    See the attached file.
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    Well, on a second thought, if the problem appears only at specific sizes, then it's almost definitely due to rounding and there's nothing anyone can do about it. :(

    (Does anyone have another pattern font that we can check?)
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    Does the font contain hinting? You would like to disable it.
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    No hinting.
  • AbrahamLee
    AbrahamLee Posts: 262
    I printed it out and inspected every intersection of each pattern. I couldn't see anything out of place with any of them. Could be that the offsets are so small that the ink covers it up, but it looks good to me on paper (at 600 dpi).
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    But on screen, if you zoom in and inspect it closely (at the spots indicated by the red circles, for example), you do see the problem, right?
  • AbrahamLee
    AbrahamLee Posts: 262
    Ori Ben-Dor said:
    But on screen, if you zoom in and inspect it closely (at the spots indicated by the red circles, for example), you do see the problem, right?
    Yep. I just wanted you to know that in print you'd probably not notice anything because the ink might blur the problem out.

    Do you see the same issue at other pt sizes?
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    At most point sizes I do, but there are some specific point sizes, more "round" ones such as 24, where I don't.

    Thanks for your print experiment!

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