Volt and FontCreator

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Fred Goldman
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Volt and FontCreator

Post by Fred Goldman »

This is extremely exciting that FontCreator has implemented fully OT features. I use currently FontCreator 5.6 Professional. I downloaded the trial of version 8 and it looks like it was implemented incredibly well! Thank you!
But this leads me to my problem. I have a ton of fonts I created with Volt tables, and while I do see FontCreator can read them, the names of the lookups are generic and sometimes if they are large they are split up. Also the names of groups and glyphs seem to have been renamed with generic names. It would be very very tedious to have to rename all of these lookups, groups, and glyphs.
Question: Is there any way to import all these names from Volt to FontCreator?
Fred
Mike Thompson
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Mike Thompson »

Fred,
I fully understand your problem. I have only eleven fonts all of which used the same .VTP file
so I bit the bullet and renamed the lookups and groups by hand.
I can only suggest that you choose your most important or maybe your latest font project
and convert by hand from VOLT to FC8.
You may find that FC8 does not implement the full functionality of VOLT. (That's what I found)
Then you might add your voice to mine as to what needs to be done next... :wink:
Mike
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Having renamed groups and lookups for one type style, export the script, and import it into the other three type styles.

Glyphnames.dat can be edited. Tools, Options, Advanced, Copy Data Files to User Data Folder, Open User Data Folder.

The glyph names in this file are used on opening a font. If a glyph has no name defined in glyphnames.dat, a generic name is assigned such as uni0213 based on its codepoint.

I use glyphnames.dat to assign a lot of names for my PUA OpenType GSUB glyphs:

E2C9;nine.onum
E2CF;question.pcap
E2D1;A.init

etc.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
León Fridsma
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by León Fridsma »

Fred Goldman wrote:This is extremely exciting that FontCreator has implemented fully OT features. I use currently FontCreator 5.6 Professional. I downloaded the trial of version 8 and it looks like it was implemented incredibly well! Thank you!
Good to hear!
Fred Goldman wrote:But this leads me to my problem. I have a ton of fonts I created with Volt tables, and while I do see FontCreator can read them, the names of the lookups are generic and sometimes if they are large they are split up. Also the names of groups and glyphs seem to have been renamed with generic names. It would be very very tedious to have to rename all of these lookups, groups, and glyphs.
FontCreator does not actually process the VOLT tables, but uses the "compiled" binary version of the OpenType Layout Features and interprets them which is why the original naming is lost.
Fred Goldman wrote:Question: Is there any way to import all these names from Volt to FontCreator?
Not yet, but we might be able to get FontCreator to interpret the original VOLT tables. I have just looked into this and it seems pretty straightforward, however there are a few technical differences between VOLT and FontCreator that prevent us from "translating" the VOLT definitions 1:1. The most important one is the support for subgroups in VOLT, you can define a group, and reference that group from another group and FontCreator currently does not support this. I am curious as to whether or not you are using this and if it would be an issue if we "flatten" these groups (make 1 big group from all the subgroups).

Could you send me a few of your VOLT project files (*.vtp) (in volt Export->Export Project) so I can take a look as to what features you are using?
Fred Goldman
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Fred Goldman »

Hi León,

I do in fact use nested groups, but it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me because currently I am only making minor edits to the fonts so I don't change the grouping at all. It would to be able to bypass the step of using VOLT for these minor edits and just keep everything in FontCreator. I've attached a vlt file it is complicated, I hope you can decipher it.
Attachments
Sample.zip
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Fred
Fred Goldman
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Fred Goldman »

Mike,

Besides not allowing sub-groups what other limitations have you noticed in comparison to VOLT?
Fred
Mike Thompson
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Mike Thompson »

Fred,
I see your VOLT file describes a font for religious texts as it has 'trope' or 'cantilation' marks.
That makes things very much more complicated! There can be more than one mark below
a Hebrew letter and layout can be tight.

I don't have a list of FC8 v. VOLT differences and will probably collect my notes together
on this subject (sometime ...)

The nesting of groups is not essential but does conform to good programming practice.
Say I modify a small group - it is unfortunately very likely that I would forget to apply
this change to one or more supersets - if the structures were all flat.

Mike
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Fred Goldman
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Fred Goldman »

Mike,

Yes it does, but instead of positioning multiple marks to a character I created new glyphs with both below marks together as one and then used substitutions to (i.e. kamatz tevir would get substituted with the single kamarz-tevir glyph). I did this because I could not find a way with VOLT to visually position marks to marks. So technically I only used the ccmp (gsub feature) and the mark (gpos feature) not the mkmk mark to mark feature.

There is no question subgroups is a must when designing a font, but I am thinking for small edits I can live with them getting flattened.
Fred
León Fridsma
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by León Fridsma »

Ok, I'm gonna attempt to add volt project support to FontCreator before the next maintenance release, however we had to make a few decisions to ensure there's enough time to implement it:

- No subgroup support in FontCreator
- Volt data in a font has priority over OpenType Layout Feature Tables
- You can overwrite existing features in a project by importing a Volt Project (.vtp)
- This works only one-way, you can only import VOLT data into FontCreator, not the other way around
Mike Thompson
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Mike Thompson »

[Please note: The editor stripped out or ignored my use of TAB so I replace
the with UNDERSCORE]

Here is a suggestion which will make it easier to move from VOLT to FC8.
__________First position Second position
Layout-VOLT
__________Group-11 Group-12
__________Group-21 Group-22
__________… …
__________Group-n1 Group-n2

Currently when this is imported all the Group-i1 are combined. This is a big loss
of information but worse than that the font designer can not set distinct values
for just the pair (Group-i1, Group-j2).
This is what I did by hand. I essentially restored the flattened first position
by creating a new layout for each of the groups that had been flattened.

Layout-FC8-1
__________Group-11_____Group-12
_______________________Group-22
_______________________…
_______________________Group-n2

Layout-FC8-2
__________Group-21_____Group-12
_______________________Group-22
_______________________…
_______________________Group-n2

...
___________…__________...

Layout-FC8-n
__________Group-n1_____Group-12
_______________________Group-22
_______________________…
_______________________Group-n2


In Layout-FC8-i, the pairs (Group-i1, Group-j2) should now have the same position values
that they had in VOLT. This might be applied to Kerning as well as MarkPositioning.
Mike Thompson
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http://hebrew-font-shuneet.com
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Can you all please attach one or more fonts with VOLT information inside, so we can test this with the upcoming enhancements?

If you don't want to share this information, then please send it directly to me or Leon. No know how to contact us by now :wink:
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Mike, thank you for sending the requested information.
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Re: Volt and FontCreator

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Fred, thank you too for sending a font with VOLT data. We intend to upload a maintenance release later today which processes the VOLT data from "unshipped" fonts which were made feature rich with VOLT.
Erwin Denissen
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