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