First of all - sorry for my question, I’m a programmer, not a designer. My customer wants to see words in the program, where there are more than standard intervals between letters. OK, I have decided to modify any standard font of Windows (“Arial”, for example), in order to make its letters wider. In FontCreator I chose the menu item “Tools | Glyph Transformer”, chose “Bearings” and increased it by 128 for both sides. The very simple operation, as I thought at this moment.
The bearings have been increased, but now it’s something wrong with the letters, they look not so “pretty”, as it was before.
What did I wrong? I just need the font where the intervals between letters will be wider. How can I realize it (and it mustn’t affect on the drawing of letters, as on my picture). Please, help!
The font looks like it has lost hinting which may cause problems at low point sizes. (Editing a glyph, using Glyph Transformer for instance, removes the hints.) It also looks squashed rather than wider as you wanted.
I’m not sure Glyph Transformer does “addition” to side bearings. Looks like you simply reduced vertical size.
One solution is rather complex, but seem to work:
– Take copy of font to change, rename it so don’t you mess up your fonts. Be careful of getting into copyright problems so contact the vendor for permissions.
– Use Glyph Transformer to reduce the size of the glyphs. (Scale < 100% to your factor). This will keep the original character widths the same.
– Get another copy of your font, Copy and Past Special all the glyphs from the changed font to this new copy. Check Glyphs Outline Data only.
– Increase the Size of this final font by reversing the Scale formula used above. This will keep the distance between the glyph and the side bearings.
I would make certain the answer to your customer’s need should be satisfied by changing fonts rather than by changing letter spacing in your program. These special fonts would have to be distributed with your application to every use and could not be changed without this manual intervention.
There are some fonts like Bitstream Vera, which are released under GNU license, and so can be modified and distributed under the terms of the license agreement.
The Font Software may be modified, altered, or added to, and in particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may be modified and additional glyphs or characters may be added to the Fonts, only if the fonts are renamed to names not containing either the words “Bitstream” or the word “Vera”.
This License becomes null and void to the extent applicable to Fonts or Font Software that has been modified and is distributed under the “Bitstream Vera” names.
The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself.
My own fonts (see my sig) are distributed under similar terms. If you modify them, then rename them, and don’t remove the license agreement from the fonts.
It is possible to increase the width of all glyphs in a font, without losing the hinting, but only if you add space to the right only. The glyph transformer can add space to both sides or either side, but to preserve the hinting you must do this, which retains the same left-side bearings.
Select all of the simple glyphs in the font by doing Select Composites, then Invert Selection (on the Edit menu)
Copy them to the clipboard
Run the Glyph Transformer from the tools menu
From the available features on the left, add “Width” to the script on the right
Change the width by the amount you desire using the “Increase by” option
Adjust the right side, left side, or both sides, and OK to apply the script
Paste Special from the Edit menu (Ctrl E), clear the “Glyph Metrics” check box, and OK
Whatever you chose in 6 above, the glyphs will be pasted back in their original positions, and the left side-bearings will be the same as originally. Only the right side-bearings will be increased. However, hinting will be preserved.
Check the composite glyphs like á å etc., to see if the accents have moved.
