Pet peeve: empty .notdef character.

André G. Isaak
André G. Isaak Posts: 636
in Font Technology
I just spent some time browsing fonts on typekit and was surprised by the number of fonts I came across which had a blank .notdef character. What's worse, a few had blank, zero-width .notdef characters.

I just thought I’d use this forum to urge people to please include some sort of glyph in this slot. Be creative or just use a simple square. Just please don't leave it blank!
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Comments

  • AbrahamLee
    AbrahamLee Posts: 263
    This makes me wonder, what’s the most creative .notdef glyph you’ve seen?
  • Florian Hardwig
    Florian Hardwig Posts: 278
    Be creative or just use a simple square

    In any case, make sure that the glyph stands out, in terms of typographic color. A .notdef glyph that looks too much like a regular character is almost as bad as an empty one.

  • Theunis de Jong
    Theunis de Jong Posts: 112
    AbrahamLee: well, that'd be one of my own of course :neutral: 

    This is the default (and not changeable) .notdef for the quick-font InDesign utility IndyFont:


    It always gets inserted in any font you create with it, and you cannot change it to something else (at least, not from within IndyFont). Thus, it doubles as a unique signature.

    It's intentionally based on the logogram of IF itself, and with a background added to make it not look like any "standard" character.

    The danger of having a sufficiently creative glyph is indeed that people will use it. That even goes for the blank nondescript square; I've seen those used as checkboxes way too often.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    I don’t know if this is still the case, but the old type 1 fonts from Font Bureau all had a unique dingbat as a .notdef character (e.g. Aardvark had an aardvark). While this was certainly creative, I'd much rather the fonts have used a standard square and put the dingbat in the apple logo position where it could actually be used (assuming this wasn’t used for a FB logo of some sort).
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,006
    I always use the box-with-an-x-inside design. It sees to be the most common design, so I assume that it is what people expect to see when proofing.
  • Arthur Reinders Folmer
    Arthur Reinders Folmer Posts: 38
    This makes me wonder, what’s the most creative .notdef glyph you’ve seen?

    I think there is a lot of fun to be had in the .notdef's. As long as it is (slightly clear) that something is missing, or that they actually give you another usable character instead. 

    Not really to toot my own horn, but here are some of my solutions, looking for ways to merge the .notdef with the overall typeface concept.

    For Fabel, a typeface based on animals, the .notdef is the Conservation status extinct symbol (since hey, the animal for your character isn't there!) This character was made to make it quite clear something is missing.



    For my top-secret tinfoil hat dingbats the /notdef was a top secret stamp, since even if the typeface reveals crackpot theories, there will always be secrets! (this time, that's unsupported glyphs sadly) For this I chose to visualise the .notdef close to the rest of the icons. (since even if there is something wrong, it still is useful!)



    More examples are welcome!
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 974
    I don’t know if this is still the case, but the old type 1 fonts from Font Bureau all had a unique dingbat as a .notdef character (e.g. Aardvark had an aardvark).

    Hmm. As I recall, the old Font Bureau PS Type 1 fonts were generated with empty .notdefs. The unique dingbat glyph (known in-house as the “party” character) was drawn for the apple character slot (uniF8FF).

  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    @Kent Lew

    Turns out you are correct. I'd mistakenly thought this was the .notdef character because, while it may have been intended for the apple slot, they also copied it into every empty glyph slot in the codepage.
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    Typically, the foundry logo appears in what you call the Apple slot.  Apple put their own logo there in all the fonts they bundled with their system software.

  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    Apple put their logo there, but they also assigned it a position on their standard  keyboard layout. I think that's what lead to its use as a logo-position catching on. (this, of course, was pre-unicode so I'm not calling it uniF8FF — that came later).
  • Khaled Hosny
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 292
    edited May 2018
    Good thing is that many applications ignore the .notdef glyph in the font and just draw a hex box showing the hex number of the character.



  • Roel Nieskens
    Roel Nieskens Posts: 188
    And when used as a web font, it will never show up.
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 974
    while it may have been intended for the apple slot, they also copied it into every empty glyph slot in the codepage.
    André — True. I’d forgotten that when a designer hadn’t filled all slots, the party character was dumped in.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 388
    Roel Nieskens said:
    And when used as a web font, it will never show up.
    Interestingly enough, I recently had a situation where I explicitly wanted to show a webfont's .notdef character... is that a typoxymoron?
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 974
    Can you do it by using html entity to enter a non-existent code? Or maybe by entering the <NUL> code? For instance: �

    (I went into HTML mode and typed "&#0000" to get that display, which I assume is a .notdef. But I’m not sure if it’s the .notdef specific to the Typedrawers webfont or from a fallback.)
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    That character appears to be uniFFFD (replacement character to replace unrepresentable character) rather than .notdef
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    James Puckett said:
    I always use the box-with-an-x-inside design. It sees to be the most common design, so I assume that it is what people expect to see when proofing.
    I agree as it’s what I would expect most. I find a bit ambiguous the question mark solution, while doing a vertically proportioned rectangle with the cross inside makes it clear it’s not a checkbox mark or the similar and I find it’s the best solution.
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 678
    This is what Glyphs puts in the font if you don't have a .notdef glyph:


  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Georg Seifert said:
    This is what Glyphs puts in the font if you don't have a .notdef glyph:


    That is also nice, but it’s in english alone. The "crossed out" rectangle is more universally recognizable, IMO, despite the language and it has immediacy as well.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,746
    It just needs to have <locl> support. :smile:
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Mark Simonson said:
    It just needs to have <locl> support. :smile:
    But again, does the average user know what "glyph" means in typography?
    In italian, “glifo" has a quite different main meaning, you should write "manca il carattere", which is too long and causes confusion, as "carattere [tipografico]" also means "typeface".
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,746
    edited May 2021
    I agree that Glyphs' "NO GLYPH" solution is not great because it's in English (I always roll my own anyway), but it does have the virtue of being a character that no one would find useful.

    (The <locl> idea was meant as a joke.)
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Mark Simonson said:
    I agree that Glyphs' "NO GLYPH" solution is not great because it's in English (I always roll my own anyway), but it does have the virtue of being a character that no one would find useful.

    (The <locl> idea was meant as a joke.)
    Ah, I did not get it was meant as a joke… :D
    Well, the "no glyph" icon is nice, but looks almost like a logo.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    edited May 2021
    Glyph's .notdef glyph might not be ideal, but I do think the approach of automatically adding a .notdef glyph if the designer hasn't supplied one is an excellent idea which other font software really ought to adopt.

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