Diacritics size on capital vs Lowercase in Vietnamese

hanoitype

Hi all, I am making a Vietnamese typeface which has fat and wide Capital letters, and I am struggling with the size of the diacritics. I have read Vietnamese Typography guidelines by Donny Truong but it does not have a reference that I can apply in my case. The diacritics I made looks great on a lowercase letter (e.g: ô ), however when put on the capital (Ô) it looks way too small. Making the diacritics bigger to accommodate the fat wide capital letters will lead to leading issue.

Do you guy have any suggestion or if you can let me know of any typeface that is similar to my design (with diacritics), that would be really appreciated! Thank you in advance!

John Hudson

I would experiment with a set of .cap variant diacritic marks that are wider but not necessarily taller than those use on the lowercase letters (indeed, they could be squat: wider but shorter).

Nick Shinn

It’s OK to make capital diacritics wider/shallower, in general, not just for Vietnamese.
When you create a separate set of diacritics for capitals, name them .case

Igor Freiberger

I adopt this approach.

Erwin Denissen

Given that your typeface features fat and wide capital letters, it’s crucial to design separate marks for uppercase and lowercase letters.

Ensure that your diacritics follow the correct glyph naming conventions. For instance, if you've created a composite glyph using circumflexcomb and gravecomb, name it circumflexcomb_gravecomb. Create mark variants with a .case suffix (e.g., gravecomb.case) specifically for uppercase usage. These .case diacritics should have their top anchor vertically positioned at the CapHeight or slightly above, depending on the visual balance required for your capitals. This ensures that the diacritics are sized and positioned appropriately for uppercase letters while avoiding leading issues.

By using this approach, you maintain clarity and functionality across both uppercase and lowercase letters in your Vietnamese typeface.

hanoitype

Thank you guys very much for your advice!

John Hudson

When you create a separate set of diacritics for capitals, name them .case

I wouldn’t do that. The .case suffix may be used to automatically add these mark glyphs to the <case> OpenType Layout feature code, but that feature is for all-caps text setting variants such as raised parentheses, etc.

If you want the cap marks to be applied in dynamic mark layout—as distinct from just using them in pre-built composites—, you want them to be contextually substituted for the regular marks, usually in the <ccmp> feature, when they occur after capital letters (I tend to use them also above ascenders, to conserve height). I use a .cap suffix, but really any identifier is possible so long as it enables you to quickly identify the whole set and doesn’t automatically map the glyphs to some inappropriate layout feature.

Nick Shinn

I recommended .case because FontLab uses it to make accented caps when those character cells are activated—a time-saver.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

Alternatively, shorter caps can be used as well for accented letters with accents that need a lot of space.

It's not that popular, mostly because it's extra work, but does work well sometimes.

John Hudson

FontLab uses it to make accented caps when those character cells are activated

Also seems to work with .cap

John Hudson

Using shorter caps, as Denis notes, is an option, but it is one that I would probably only use if I had to work within restricted vertical metrics for some technical reason. They tend to look a bit odd in text and draw attention to themselves.