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!
10
Comments
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.
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.
A rectangle with a cross could be mistaken for U+2612 BALLOT BOX WITH X
I suggest always using a rectangle with a question mark inside it.
Even this, though, could be mistaken for some sort of ‘help’ character. I don’t know that it’s possible to prevent all users from mistaking the .notdef glyph for an actual character. (I mean unless you do something like the following)
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!
lives here has died and I don't know who it is"
My .notdef is named ‘Venus de Typo’. How helpless she is: she can’t even raise her arms to express that she does not have clue about the required character, nor can she point in any direction.
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).
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.
(I went into HTML mode and typed "�" 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.)
U+0000 is the ASCII control character NULL, which was recommended to be GID 1 in older TTFs and normally represented by a zero-width, empty glyph. [Out of habit and having made fonts for Microsoft for so many years, I still build all my sources with the first three glyphs as .notdef, NULL (U+0000), and CR (U+000D), even though the latter two are not required anymore).
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".
(The <locl> idea was meant as a joke.)
Well, the "no glyph" icon is nice, but looks almost like a logo.