External tool for stem weight measurement of font families?

Adam Ladd
Adam Ladd Posts: 280
edited August 8 in Type Design Software
I might be overlooking something obvious here (and know there are internal font editor tools for this)...

Are there any external tools—web-based or other—that can measure and report stem weights in a font family?

Example scenario would be to upload the .otf files from a family all together and then get a reporting or display of the unit width of stems for each font?

Ideally it could be displayed with some sample specimen text as a visual, not just data.

Comments

  • Adam Ladd
    Adam Ladd Posts: 280
    Is there perhaps nothing really like this currently?
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,467
    edited August 8
    I’m not aware of anything, but it seems like something that could usefully be added to Wakamai Fondue or another font examiner.

    It’s a bit of a puzzle, because it presumes a set of architectural features in a known character set that can be measured and presented. So maybe the way to begin is for you to suggest which features you want measured? Which stem weights, on which characters?

    [Ideally, the set of features is extensible to multiple writing systems, meaning compilation of meaningful measurement sets for different scripts.]
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 336
    IIRC something in the DTL Fontmaster ecosystem does something like this and has done so forever.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,053
    IIRC, either Simon Cozens or Yanone has done some open source and probably command-line tool for this. Just busy with TypeCon at the moment or I would hunt it down....
  • mitradranirban
    mitradranirban Posts: 85
    https://github.com/googlefonts/fontquant does something like that, though I have not tested it.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,053
    edited August 10
    Ah, yes, that was at least one of the tools I had in mind.

    XOPQ is the stroke thickness of thick stems (in a western font, that would normally be vertical stems, which are measured in the X direction), normalized to a 1000-unit em. The documentation does not say what character(s) are being used for this analysis, so you might need to experiment a bit to sort that out (or ask for documentation improvements, but Simon is more than a little busy right now).
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 762
    edited August 11
    Stem thickness in DTL OTMaster

    Hi Adam, not exactly the batch functionality you are looking for, but in OTMaster, you can inspect stem and curve thicknesses via the Properties widget of the Glyph Editor: just hold Shift and double-click on a character. Do note that in the case of very flat stem curves (as in the example above) and depending on contour-point placement, the thickness may not always show up in all glyphs. Still, browsing through the font should reveal all relevant values.

    DTL CompareMaster

    A tool that is a bit closer to your use case is CompareMaster. It is designed to compare two OTF fonts side-by-side (digitizations, metrics, etc.). The log file it generates includes hinting information such as stem and curve thicknesses, which might be useful for what you are after.

    Log file from DTL CompareMaster
  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 798
    In fontquant, XOPQ is measured using the H character; that's what Berlow's schema requires, I think.

    Frank's answer suggests to me that there might be a clever way to do things by applying an autohinter and reading its output.
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 762
    edited August 11
    Pattern recognition in the URWDTL font tools

    Ah, pattern recognition –that goes, of course, a long way back: see also the pages 11–16 of this PDF from a talk Peter Rosenfeld gave at the DTL FontMaster Conference in The Hague in 2009. The Passe Program uses in principle the same pattern-recognition techniques for type measurements as it does for hinting.

    Font Statistics Tool in DTL FoundryMaster

    FYI, FoundryMaster includes a more sophisticated Font Statistic Tool, enabling direct editing of the relevant characters selected via the graph.
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 762
    We have already compiled the new OTM 10.x version for macOS (both Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows, and Linux in preparation for this fall’s release. However, Jürgen will be discussing the implementation of the Font Statistics Tool in OTM with Axel and Hartmut. Depending on the outcome, this feature will be included in the upcoming version or in the one that follows. I will keep you updated.

    Font Statistics Tool in DTL FoundryMaster
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,053
    Aha! I found another tool I was trying to remember. AFDKO has a tool called “StemHist” that does this. In fact, I wrote about it 10 years ago on this very forum: “AFDKO tells you how many stems have what values, and you can then decide what to do (tweak some stems, use certain values, whatever).”

    In thread: https://typedrawers.com/discussion/914/fls-auto-standard-stems-vs-afdkos-stemhist
  • Adam Ladd
    Adam Ladd Posts: 280
    Hi Frank, thanks for calling these features out. Yes, not quite what I'm picturing in this case, but close and is interesting.
  • Adam Ladd
    Adam Ladd Posts: 280
    Thomas, good recall! Going to look into it, but at first hearing, does sound like it might be a tool that in essence does it.

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