just a plain ttf

[Palendrome]

Hello,
Very fresh to this stuff so hope someone will point me towards a basic understanding.
I just want to meddle with a standard true type font. After a bunch of tutorials pointing me to the Format Menu I realised
that version 8 does not have one...mmmm. Then saw a post that explained the replacement of the kerning options in version 8 with The Opentype Designer. - Does that work on plain ttf fonts as well - does not appear so as it requires a bunch of Opentype scripts to get going....confused

Would like to fiddle with manual kerning in a ttf but keep getting led to the Group Manager - which is hidden away in Open type Designer...WRON
Dont want to play with Opentype only ttf. Opentype seems complex - want to walk before running.

How can I make groups without ending up in the Opentype Designer ?
There are no open type fonts on my system - they are all ttf.
What am I not understanding?
Thanks for any guidance Paul

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

What does WRON mean? Please write in plain English to make sure that you're understood.

The old kern tables are legacy, and don't have the same power as the GPOS (glyph positioning) OpenType kerning, so it is useful to update fonts to make use of the new technology. On Export, you can include the old kern table to support legacy applications that don't know how to use OpenType kerning tables.

Font Export Settings.png (42.68 KiB) Viewed 6189 times

If you open a plain TrueType font with no OpenType features, FontCreator will create a kerning feature, with a pair adjustment lookup as in the screen shot attached. If all you want to do is to adjust a few kerning pairs, or add a few more, you don't need to create any groups. With a few hundred pairs, it's not a big job to add a few dozen more, or to edit existing pairs.

However, if you wish to make extensive additions and changes, it would save time to use the command to create groups automatically. Then, there will far fewer pairs to adjust. The Aldine Bitstream font illustrated has 360 kerning adjustment pairs, or 202 after Autogroup. By manually creating the groups I could reduce that to less than 100 pairs to adjust.

Pair Adjustment.png (105.72 KiB) Viewed 6189 times

[Palendrome]

Thanks very much for your response and apologies for the miss-spelling - yesterday was not an intelligent day for me!

This is good information and I will study further. I think my stumbling block currently is that if I look at the installed Windows 7 fonts
they all have a ttf not otf extension

This leads me to believe that export as ttf will preclude all additional capabilities of otf type fonts
Is that an accurate assumption or will Windows7 pay attention to OpenType capabilities within a ttf extension font?

So its the file extension that has me foxed currently

Thanks again

Paul

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The extension is irrelevant, but you can use *.otf to identify your exported fonts that have OpenType kerning tables as well as legacy kern tables.

See What is the Difference between TrueType and OpenType?

[Palendrome]

Hello again and thanks fro the reply and the reference which I have read through that and will be doing so again!
Practically I need to tidy up the character spacing in a font and make sure its compatible with mac and pc.
In broad strokes from a to z what are the steps to do this?
e.g.
start a project called Paul
load the font create glyphs and save it as paulsfont.ttf
fix the character spacing ( how - I have used auto and that does work but need to understand how that is achieved)
save it as what? to ensure that Mac and PC with inDesign will be happy with the font.
Thank you

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

1. Load the font and save the project as Paul.fcp project
2. Edit the Export Settings to name the exported font as Pauls Font.otf
3. Create glyphs
4. In Font Properties, Ranges, Calculate Ranges and Character Sets to make sure the new glyphs are supported.
5. In Font Properties, Metrics, Calculate (maximum) to make sure that no glyphs are clipped due to too high ascenders or too low descenders.
6. Run Optical metrics (is that what you did? It's only available in the Pro Edition) to let FontCreator calculate the best spacing.
7. Open the OpenType Designer and check the kerning adjustment pairs. Adjust those that look too tight or too loose. If they all look bad to you, run the Autokern feature and let FontCreator decide. Then check the pairs again. Modify the autokern settings and repeat until it looks right — it takes only a few seconds. Some pairs may not be right, while most will be.
8. Export your font, including GPOS kerning, which InDesign can use.

[Palendrome]

Thank you so much Bhikkhu this is really getting me feeling more positive about understanding this stuff. Yes I did run the optical metrics and it certainly seems to do an amazing job. I do have the professional version.

Things go gray when we get to "OpenType Designer". At this point I am presented with a blank window that seems to need at least three
resources before it will provide me with anything. For me these requests are pretty Greek - I do understand it needs a script
but then the sub menu: "default / known / custom" is Greek Then there is yet another set of questions that are Greek.
Then we move on to features and I guess I want kerning..this says <-not used! in a surprised voice. Then move on to Lookups and figure that should be pairs...Which also says not used!

That gets me nothing so I move on to Group Manager. This seems to want me to make groups but figure the optical metrics did that already? Or do I have to make pairs by hand... Then search for the Autokern feature which I assume is not the optical metrics run previously...but can find no such tool or function...So realising that I have now lost the plot I give up and ask for help!

Sorry Bhikku, I understand that I have to put in some basic learning effort and happy to do so but it helps to have a sort of parrot process to follow while you are learning. You then begin to get feedback from those actions and understanding follows.

Skipping down to your ending, I would end up only exporting Pauls Font.otf and dont need a Pauls Font.ttf?

Once I get it (hopefully) I also wanted to understand regular bold italic creation and guessing that Opentype can put these variants in a single file rather than having Pauls Font regular.otf Pauls Font bold.otf etc...

Thanks again for your kindness with this help it is appreciated. Paul

[Alfred]

Once I get it (hopefully) I also wanted to understand regular bold italic creation and guessing that Opentype can put these variants in a single file rather than having Pauls Font regular.otf Pauls Font bold.otf etc...

The Professional Edition of FontCreator (and the Standard Edition, but not the Home Edition) has a Glyph Transformer feature. The Transform wizard comes with scripts which enable you to change a font into an italic or bold version.

You can create a font collection if you wish, but each font in the collection (e.g. Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) is a separate file.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Things go gray when we get to "OpenType Designer". At this point I am presented with a blank window that seems to need at least three resources before it will provide me with anything. For me these requests are pretty Greek - I do understand it needs a script but then the sub menu: "default / known / custom" is Greek Then there is yet another set of questions that are Greek.

Then we move on to features and I guess I want kerning..this says <-not used! in a surprised voice. Then move on to Lookups and figure that should be pairs...Which also says not used!

In my screen shot above, the script is Latin, not Greek, and it's not grey but black

However, I know what you mean. It does require some learning.

Have a look at my Review Page and see if that helps you get started.

The screen shot above also shows you where the Autokern feature is found in the OpenType Designer.

[Palendrome]

Thanks Alfred and Bhikkhu for your feedback.
I am just imagining those text functions where, within a sub field of the main font, you sometimes have the option to select weight and style, instead of loading a specific main font. Is that just because those variants exist as separate installed font files? Yes I did find that automatic font variant tool Alfred - Font Creator definitely has this stuff covered really well.

Bhikkhu - I think I have to do some homework now because I missed the autokern in your screen shot (I was also useless at Latin and have already gone grey learning software tools so there is no hope)!

Now I have GOT IT - now I see that the sub options become available with a right click context menu. Will play around with those and read your review

Thanks again folks
Best
Paul