2 More Newbie How-to Questions

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1

Would a kind soul please tell me the “proper” or best or easiest way to do these two things:

Open a new font file, and name it in howsoever many ways so that it exists only as itself? (I need to develop the right habit, for I thought I named a file when I did not, thought I had Saved As and ended up with 2 different filenames for one and the same filename for two, etc.)

Join two or more contours; is there a correct order in selecting them, an optimal overlap between the shapes, etc?
(re the 2nd, I’ve posted a long thing in the “Bugs” forum, but my misadventures may result from my not doing the joining correctly.)

D_Spider

2

Open a new font file, and name it in howsoever many ways so that it exists only as itself?

Well, not wishing to be pedantic, just precise, one does not “open” a “new” font file, as opening a file is done on a file which already exists.

The following is what I do. Suppose that, for example, I wish to produce a font named Ginevra (incidentally, the name comes from a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, I needed to choose a name for the font in this example and that just sprang to mind.).

Use File | New…

Then in the dialogue panel type the name Ginevra then click OK.

Use File | Save As…

Choose a file name. Font Creator 5.0 offers a name with an extension of .ttf.

Now, I have no justification for the following, it is just something I feel happiest with, maybe with or without justification, but I remember the old DOS (disc operating system) days and that Windows sits on DOS, so I always use no more than eight characters for a file name and I use capitals and digits and the extension is .TTF in capitals.

Now, that is the basics.

The name of the font above was Ginevra. The name of a font can be up to about 28 characters including spaces though there may be some restrictions on which characters can be used. The 26 letters of English, both uppercase and lowercase, and digits are all suitable.

If I were trying to produce a font named, say, Buttercup Fields, I would start with a new font with a font name of Buttercup Fields 001 and I would save it in a file named BUTTE001.TTF.

I would add some glyphs and use File | Save as I proceeded. When starting the next session, maybe after lunch or the next day I would use File | Open and open BUTTE001.TTF. I would then use File | Save As… and use BUTTE002.TTF. I would then use Tools | AutoNaming… and use Buttercup Fields 002 as the name of the font.

The saving is all to an ordinary directory, not to the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory. Windows uses the term folder for directory. I install a font for testing by copying from the directory where the font has been developed to the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory. Actually, this PC has a file partition system on it and Font Creator 5.0 is in the J:\ drive, so copying from the development directory to the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory does not try to remove the file from the development directory.

When I had got to a stage where I felt that the font was ready to publish on the web I would do the following. Suppose for this example that that stage was reached with BUTTE005.TTF with a font name of Buttercup Fields 005.

I would then produce Buttercup Fields in a file with a name such as BUTTERFI.TTF using the fact that I have derived this from the 005 version to designate the Buttercup Fields font as version 0.05.

I would then delete the unused glyphs from BUTTERFI.TTF and then use Format | Settings | Ranges to calculate both ranges.

BUTTE005.TTF would still have ready-mapped spaces for adding other characters. So any future development would start by copying BUTTE005.TTF to a new file BUTTE006.TTF and using the font name Buttercup Fields 006 during development. This means that I would not alter existing finished work, just in case later additions need to be rethought or abandoned.

I could install Buttercup Fields 006 for testing without needing to remove Buttercup Fields from the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory. Such removal would only be necessary when I wanted to publish an updated version of Buttercup Fields. At that time I would delete BUTTERFI.TTF from the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory. I would rename the then present version of BUTTERFI.TTF in the working directory as BUTTERFI005.TTF. It would still have the font name Buttercup Fields within it, yet as it is not installed, that does not matter and indeed is good as it is an archived version of what has been published previously.

That is not the only way to organize file names and font names. It is just a way that I devised as I was starting to get into problems and muddle: since using this method I have found it to be very satisfactory.

William Overington

3

Hello D_Spider

Some things:

  1. Font names can apparently be “very long” :

37 “Garamond ITC Book Condensed Italic BT”
38 “Times New Roman Special G1 Bold Italic”
39 “Fairfield LH 56 Swash Medium Italic OSF”
41 “Poppl-Pontifex BE Regular with Small Caps”
44 “N.O.- Technique (ChoqueDisplaySSIBoldItalic)”
47 “Geometric Slabserif 703 Extra Bold Condensed BT”

  1. I have File Names including the following characters: ©!#$.-&_,'() and space.

  2. I would recommend you stay out of Windows/Fonts directory. I don’t play in it or hand-delete fonts from it. Font Creator does a very complete job of installing and deinstalling fonts. You can test fonts through FC as it temporarily installs fonts for you. As a result, my fonts directory doesn’t get messed up on my account.

There are Registry entries that are made when the font is installed. I’m not sure these are made when you simply copy a font into the Font directory.

  1. Totally a personal preference, I like file names that are very close to the font name. It is more understandable to me that the font is called “Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf” rather than “timesbi.ttf”. I prefer “Swiss 721 Light BT.ttf” rather than “tt0001m_.ttf” as I’m sure you would too!

You also immediately know you have duplicates if the file names are the same as the font name.

  1. Another personal preference, I add a suffix to each font I’m changing -1, -2, etc. In that way, I don’t stray far from the original name, yet distinquish one version from another. This is a convenient way to control new font versions while you’re testing changes. It would become “Times New Roman Bold Italic-1.ttf”, “Times New Roman Bold Italic-2.ttf”.

You can do the same thing when you build a font of your own. That is, the original version SaveAs “MyName-1” then later, “MyName-2”, etc. There is no limit on these during testing. When you “publish” these would be removed.

You’re right to define a consistent approach that works for you as it’s too easy to get confused when testing gets complicated and you have to revert back to a prior version and all.

Dick Pape

4

Also, something I do when fontmaking is to make a diary as I go along.

I do this in a text document file with a .htm suffix using WordPad. I started doing this with the idea that each such file could be a web page, though I have not yet published any of them.

For example, here is the entry for one session when I was designing the Galileo Lettering font.

quote

Wednesday 16 February 2005

Use GALI0007.TTF as the working font.

Try an S by adapting a copy of s. The design of the Galileo ornamentation panel shows that this needs to be changed on both S and s. This has now been done later on the same day.

Try a W by adapting a copy of w.

Try a Y by adapting a copy of y.

Try a Z by adapting a copy of z. This showed that some points on z needed correcting by moving one font unit to the left.

Try an X by adapting a copy of x.

Try an R by adapting a copy of r.

Return to the s and the S. The rightside vertical line of the ornament needs to be on the 256 font unit vertical line so as to help raster display at 24 point.
The points in the c are as follows.
224, 944 on the counterclockwise curve
256, 976 on the clockwise curve
272, 992 on the clockwise curve
Use those in the s.
Produce an S by adapting a copy of s.

The uppercase and lowercase alphabets for English are now complete.

Try an ae by adapting copies of a and e.

Try an oe by adapting copies of o and e.

Try an AE by adapting copies of A and E.

Try an OE by adapting copies of O and E.

end quote

This extract will hopefully be of interest: it shows two special uses of the diary.

Near the start of the extract is “This has now been done later on the same day.”
This note was added after the s and S were altered later that day. So the diary is not entirely a direct transcript of what is done as it is done, though mostly it is.

In my way of writing the diary, a “try” sentence means that I have keyed that before producing the glyph. The diary is used as I proceed, it shows what I am doing if I get interrupted. The entry of “Try a Z by adapting a copy of z. This showed that some points on z needed correcting by moving one font unit to the left.” indicates that the actual drawing of the Z in the font was done after writing the first sentence and before writing the second sentence.

I have one such file for each font, that is one file for the Galileo Lettering font, which also includes the diary for the Galileo Lettering Enamelled font, not one file for each of the development stages.

William

5

Okay, I shall distill your suggestions and form a protocol. I use the number-suffixes for sequential variations when I use Paint Shop Pro and my icon editor, and I’ll use them with my fonts.

Thanks for helping me be less confused!

D_Spider