Quick answer here.
If you drew the characters proportional to each other then Font Creator will end up with those same relative sizes. It does not make them a single size.
Your problem will be to make the letters fit with one another (proportionally sized) and in the proper position relative to the baseline. (The g,p,q, below the line for instance.)
If the entire font is incorrectly sized it can be adjusted in one Transform via the Scale option.
So, put all your characters into the font in the correct letter/mapping position (a to a, m to m, A to A, etc.)
Move the letters into the proper position.
Make the letters the right size.
Repeat until you get it right.
In More detail:
–Align all characters to same point: (Some don’t make it to position 0).
- Tools/Glyph Transformer/Outlines select Position. Map to Corner. Coverage Full, Horizontal 0 and Vertical 0. This moves them to a common point and gets rid of white space below a letter. (Of course the letter j or p ends up above where they probably should be located.)
–Calculating initial sizes (I do this several times to see progress and problems).
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Adjust Vertical Metrics. Format/Settings/Metrics/ Calculate, Calculate, Calculate. These check the glyphs for size and set Ascender, Descender, x-height walues. You don’t have to set any of these manually.
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Setting Horizontal Metrics. Advance Width and Bearings. Tools/AutoMetrics. >> to move all characters. Next to set white space on left and right of character (Conveniently, I use 50 at the beginning). Finish.
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Since this changes the default measurements redo Step 2.
–Test the current font (Font/Test or F5) to see what has happened. You should see some organization, but also misaligned letters, such as Q, or j, p, q, etc.
While editing glyphs I open 3 View/Toolbars and arrange them off to the side of the letter: Transform, Validation, Comparison.
Transform lets you change everything about the letter easily and accurately. This is a very valuable toolbar.
Validation shows drawing errors and Comparison lets you see This Glyph relative to others.
–Get to Proper Font Size. This is also a series of successive approximations.
- The capital letter A, for me, is a good indicator of the size of the font (assuming the A has typical design). I set it someplace between 1200-1500 funits tall, for instance. This can be accomplished one of two ways:
– Select the entire letter and resize it using a corner handle.
– Transform toolbar /Size lets you key in height and/or width. If you Lock the Aspect Ratio keying height will recalculate the width.
- When you get the letter the size right, move it into proper alignment left/right, above/below the baseline. Transform Tool bar /Position will show exact location. Transform Tool bar /Bearings will let you correct the left and right margins.
Use the Comparison toolbar to make sure the upper case and lower case are “right sized” to one another.
Repeat these adjustments for every glyph in your font… rerepeat.
It would be easier to learn font making with a simple Roman sans serif font with maybe upper and lower case (A-Z) only. Scripts or Italics are complicated and should be done later. Numbers are special case as are Punctuation. Accented letters are derivative of the base letters and FC can help significantly with automatically generating these. There is an Autokern feature also to help.
HTH.
Dick Pape
