Help with ligatures, etc.
Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2016 11:03 am
Hey, folks!
I feel like such a moron! On the one hand, I know WAY more about type design than the average non-typophile, and yet compared to most type designers out there I feel like I know next to nothing at all.
About 15 years ago, I started designing a blackletter font in Fontographer -- which, of course, eventually went caput. I put it aside, and then about a decade or so ago, I started working on it again in FontCreator (v. 5)... but then eventually backburnered it once again. It's only just in the last couple of weeks that I thought I'd take another stab at it and see if I could finally get it finished, and upgraded to the latest version of FC (v. 10).
I'm so confused about where, and how, to insert several ligatures that I have -- never mind doing the lookups for them (which I used to do in FontForge), I'm not even at that point yet, all I want to do is insert a few extra characters.
I don't understand the "insert character" dialog box. Like, it asks you to choose another font to grab a character from -- huh? I don't get that. Is there no standardized list of characters that can be inserted into a font? Why is it based on a pre-existing font?
I did find the slots for certain ligatures -- for example, fi, ffi, ij -- but with this being an old blackletter-style font, the use of the long-s is VERY important, and I have a bunch of additional ligatures for that.
How do I go about adding them in? I also have one (perhaps more to come) ligature that doesn't exist in any other font that I have -- rr (where one r looks different) -- and I'm clueless where/how to insert that one.
I feel so stupid, that I can't seem to figure this out on my own (let alone searching the forums here -- not to mention google -- seems to be of no avail). I'm amazed that there's no tutorial -- for dummies, no less -- on how to do this.
Can anyone please help? Thanks so much, in advance!
I feel like such a moron! On the one hand, I know WAY more about type design than the average non-typophile, and yet compared to most type designers out there I feel like I know next to nothing at all.
About 15 years ago, I started designing a blackletter font in Fontographer -- which, of course, eventually went caput. I put it aside, and then about a decade or so ago, I started working on it again in FontCreator (v. 5)... but then eventually backburnered it once again. It's only just in the last couple of weeks that I thought I'd take another stab at it and see if I could finally get it finished, and upgraded to the latest version of FC (v. 10).
I'm so confused about where, and how, to insert several ligatures that I have -- never mind doing the lookups for them (which I used to do in FontForge), I'm not even at that point yet, all I want to do is insert a few extra characters.
I don't understand the "insert character" dialog box. Like, it asks you to choose another font to grab a character from -- huh? I don't get that. Is there no standardized list of characters that can be inserted into a font? Why is it based on a pre-existing font?
I did find the slots for certain ligatures -- for example, fi, ffi, ij -- but with this being an old blackletter-style font, the use of the long-s is VERY important, and I have a bunch of additional ligatures for that.
How do I go about adding them in? I also have one (perhaps more to come) ligature that doesn't exist in any other font that I have -- rr (where one r looks different) -- and I'm clueless where/how to insert that one.
I feel so stupid, that I can't seem to figure this out on my own (let alone searching the forums here -- not to mention google -- seems to be of no avail). I'm amazed that there's no tutorial -- for dummies, no less -- on how to do this.
Can anyone please help? Thanks so much, in advance!