Flexibility

[stormag]

Just a few suggestions about the things that become very clear after a few weeks of testing FCP.
I hope that the following pictures are self-explainatory, but I look forward to your comment.
There's one thing not shown: exporting/Importing guidelines to a file (that would be brilliant too, so please think about it!;).

cgp.png (5.65 KiB) Viewed 418 times

Composite glyph properties- just a little touch of flexibility...

k.png (14.66 KiB) Viewed 420 times

Krening- after kerning densely a pretty geometrical font (~1600 pairs) I think there's a great space for improvements, like linking base letter with its diacritic derivatives to automatize the painstainking sessions of clicking whole night long (seriously, i believe that it would be a really powerful tool!), however in the meantime please take a look at what was my smaller dream when inputting tons of ciphers in my last font...

glyph.png (47.21 KiB) Viewed 418 times

Glyph editor- please note FCP text menu and icons in the same line. The ribbon-like docks allow instant access and save plenty of clicking, eliminating the need of opening most of the "proprerties" or "mappings" (see http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2753) especially when parsing through the letters.

[Dave Crosby]

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[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Not everyone is going to have a wide screen monitor. The transform tab may be better floating than docked, but the basic idea of adding composite glyph properties to the transform tab is good enough.

I don't see the need for add/remove buttons on the composite glyph dialogue. It could lead to errors, and what is its purpose?
A umlaut always has two composite glyph members.

Manual kerning should be avoided as far as possible — it is very tedious — though using shortcuts Shift Left, Ctrl Left, and Left cursor to adjust values saves a lot of clicking around. Importing kern values from a text file saves a lot of time, but you still need to create at least one source file by exporting kerning values, and values for bold and italic are not often the same as for the regular typeface.

I would like to see improvements to Autokerning so that less manual kerning is required. However, the idea of kerning pair groups so that only one value needs to be entered for VA, VÄ, VÀ etc., would be a big improvement.

[stormag]

Not everyone is going to have a wide screen monitor.

That's why I shown all docks as separate menus ("Properties", "Mapping", "Transform") that everyone can arrange to suit their needs ans the screen size.
Sorry for the size of my screenshot (I admit, I wanted to emphasize the ribbon effect;), however I seriously believe that now, when big screns became so ubiquitious (many of my average-home-e-mail+mp3-only-user-friends (in Poland!) have them) what should restrain the designers from using it? Masochism? My impression is, however, that some parts of the FCP's interface seem to ignore priceless advantages of the big screens...

The transform tab may be better floating than docked

Personally, I strongly disagree (for me it only continuously changes its state from distracting obstacle to a curtain floating in front of something), however please note that in my version you can always undock it.

the basic idea of adding composite glyph properties to the transform tab is good enough.

I think that the main idea for me is the direct access- basically less clicking switching tabs and opening the windows (especially those like "Properties", where theres' actually only few things!)

I don't see the need for add/remove buttons on the composite glyph dialogue. It could lead to errors, and what is its purpose?
A umlaut always has two composite glyph members.

Well, but not always everything runs so smooth, like W+umlaut that needs more space between dots, so you can easily make it from two periods etc. More powerful the feature, more mess can it accidentaly quickly produce, but should we give it all up? It's just to make everything more flexible, that's it.

Manual kerning should be avoided as far as possible — it is very tedious — though using shortcuts Shift Left, Ctrl Left, and Left cursor to adjust values saves a lot of clicking around. Importing kern values from a text file saves a lot of time, but you still need to create at least one source file by exporting kerning values, and values for bold and italic are not often the same as for the regular typeface.

Very true (thanks for the priceless shortcuts!)

the idea of kerning pair groups so that only one value needs to be entered for VA, VÄ, VÀ etc., would be a big improvement.

I'm very glad you like it- I really think it would be an absolutely powerful tool connecting advantages of the manual control with digital automation. Simply the best of both worlds!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Well, but not always everything runs so smooth, like W+umlaut that needs more space between dots, so you can easily make it from two periods etc.

The right way to do this is to use different accents for lowercase and uppercase. You may notice some fonts that do this — Gentium is one example.

Gentium Accents.png (5.83 KiB) Viewed 407 times

Two periods don't always work either. The umlaut and dot accent should often be smaller than the period.

The Complete Composites data file is designed to facilitate using different accents for lowercase and uppercase. The low profile accents are defined in the Private Use Area at decimal code-points 57365-57376 with umlaut at 57376. If you define these in the same vertical position as you would normally for lowercase, Complete Composites will use them for uppercase composites instead of the normal profile accents, and position them appropriately. See the Complete Composites Tutorial thread.

[stormag]

Manual kerning (...) using shortcuts Shift Left, Ctrl Left, and Left cursor to adjust values saves a lot of clicking around.

I was trying to use this combinations, but I seem not to be shrewd enough to figure out where to Shift/Control/Left+click (or mabe I expect a wrong effect:/. Could you please clarify where/when to input these combinations and what should be the result (tremendous thanks for your patience in advance!;)?

Importing kern values from a text file saves a lot of time, but you still need to create at least one source file by exporting kerning values, and values for bold and italic are not often the same as for the regular typeface.

That's exactly the way I was trying to do it, having my italics slightly wider than regulars. In exported file I had "Find and replace (All)" in the Notepad
(ie. " -285 " to " -270 " (note the spaces in front and behind the number, so it doesn't affect anything in the column with unicode values)).
Unfortunately, after I had imported the file to the regular version of the font, I noticed that the number of kerning pairs had decreased (from nearly 16000 to ca. 12500) and many pairs were clearly wrong- some had been replaced with other, that I had never kerned (like "I"/'i" etc.).

I'm just wondering if any of you have ever experienced such behaviour? Any ideas how to deal with that?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I seem not to be shrewd enough to figure out where to Shift/Control/Left+click (or mabe I expect a wrong effect:/. Could you please clarify where/when to input these combinations and what should be the result (tremendous thanks for your patience in advance!;)?

No need to click anywhere. Select the kerning pair in the list and use the keyboard shortcuts with the left/right cursor keys.

I'm just wondering if any of you have ever experienced such behaviour? Any ideas how to deal with that?

I tried that method and it seemed to work OK.

1. I exported a text file from Pali Regular (1613 pairs).
2. I replaced "-163" with "200"
3. I saved the text file with a new name
4. I deleted all kerning pairs from Pali Italic
5. I imported the kerning pairs
6. Pali Italic then contained 1613 kerning pairs, and all those that were -163 before were now +200.

[stormag]

Thanks once again:).

I suspect my problem with editing exported kernig list might be connected with some wrong encoding of the .txt file. Well... I guess.
I'll give everybody a shout if I find a solution for my problem... Unless it's only me who experienced that .