I’m trying to make a symbol font but in the test window after I type certain ones, the next character bumps down to the next line all the time, even when not anywhere near the right edge of the window. Does that ring a bell of what may be wrong with those characters?
And by the way, am I making the right choice by setting it up as a symbol font? I am making a font of map symbols, and I read if I make it a symbol font then text editors won’t try to spell check the words and they will wrap after each character.
Finally (for now) in this ( http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/where-is-a-symbol-font-supposed-to-be-mapped-to/1788/1 ) helpful tread there is a nice character map for the symbols. But what should a user type if he wants to get a symbol that is not in the green shaded section of that chart? Does that depend on the word processor (or whatever program is taking the input)? Thanks again for answers to any of these.
Ok, what that thread is talking about is the standard Microsoft Symbol font processing. It actually allows you to access symbol characters that are mapped in the Private Use Area of Unicode with a standard keyboard. It maps them with a simple one-to-one correspondence between the Basic Latin characters - all of them available on a standard US keyboard - to the Private Use code points U+F020..U+F07F.
In the days before Unicode, these symbol fonts were actually mapped to the Basic Latin range, 'cause that’s all there was. When Unicode came around, Microsoft decided to keep the behavior - those characters would be typed with a normal keyboard layout - but they needed to place those symbols in the Private Use Area, because mapping them to U+0020..U+007F is explicitly forbidden by Unicode conformance standards. The way around this was to make the keyboard map a given keystroke to two different code points, depending on whether the font is a symbol font or not. For regular Unicode fonts, it was the standard U+0020..U+007F. For symbol fonts, it would be U+F020..U+F07F. Simple, easy, effective, and standard on all versions of Windows that support Unicode.
The plane zero Private Use Area goes from U+E000 through to U+F8FF, a total of 6400 code points. Microsoft Symbol fonts use only 224 of those code points, from U+F020 through to U+F0FF. U+F020 is used for a space. Thus Microsoft Symbol fonts use only part of the Private Use Area
Yet what happens if someone wants to use the font on an Apple Macintosh computer? Does using a Microsoft Symbol font platform block portability to an Apple Macintosh computer?
Well, I suppose that it depends what you are trying to do. For myself, I think that I would make the font as an ordinary TrueType font, so that the font could be used on any computer that can use an ordinary TrueType font.
However, if avoiding problems with a spelling checker is an issue then maybe a Symbol font is a better choice.
In relation to “text editors … will wrap after each character.”, I am wondering what is the problem. Could character wrapping be forced using a return character? I wonder if I am missing something here and wonder if I have not understood the issue about character wrapping.
I’m pretty sure Macintosh computers don’t use the Microsoft Symbol platform. They use the Macintosh Roman platform - the exact platform that is automatically created and mapped when you start a symbol font.
William, an FCP-made symbol font IS a True Type font. You cannot make non-True Type fonts with FCP. Period. You’ve been doing this for too long to be misinforming people on these kinds of issues.
Symbols and other PUA code points are usually implemented as a line-break opportunity - like a space. It could be that this particular program is having problems with calculating advance width, and is line breaking prematurely.
Well, I had no intention to misinform anyone about anything. I did not suggest that FontCreator can produce non-TrueType fonts.
When I wrote “as an ordinary TrueType font” the meaning that I was trying to express was that I would not make the font as a Microsoft Symbol font: I would make it as a TrueType font that does not contain nor use a Microsoft Symbol platform. As most TrueType fonts that I have used, that is, TrueType fonts for ordinary alphabetic text, do not use a Microsoft Symbol platform, I regard those fonts as being ordinary TrueType fonts.
Now, if I have got that wrong, I am open to correction. Yet it seems to me that a TrueType font that does not have a Microsoft Symbol platform is an ordinary TrueType font.
If there is a correct parlance of which I am unaware, then I would be pleased to know what is that parlance. It may be that there is a correct parlance, like the way that Microsoft has parlance expressions such as cascading menu and so on in other contexts.
All fonts should be created with the “best use” format. If a font is not to be used in alphabetic situations it should be called a Symbol. (There are recommendations that some foreign language fonts, such as certain Arabic fonts which don’t have roman letters, be encoded as symbols.) You know the purpose and limitations of the font by the Platform. You can search for Symbols and font names get displayed properly, etc. I have also found it convenient to set the Postscript names on Symbol fonts, which is based on the Mac maps, so you can see the key board assignments directly.
I wonder on the original problem if the left/right bearings had been set? If a value is extremely large (~32k) the next character would always appear on the following line.
You can check Font/Properties to see what values are currently used. Tools/Autometrics will set them. For symbol fonts I always use 0 white space before and 0 white space afterwards believing the symbol can then be manually adjusted in the presentation based on the context.
Thanks for the responses so far. A few updates/follow-ups:
-It is important to make this available on macs as well, so does that mean I need to make it a regular/non-symbol font even if a symbol font would be more proper? It seems there are mappings for the mac as well (choosing “edit” on a character and looking at the mappings tab)… do I need to make two versions?
-I tried the autometrics, and after I did that and went to “font” “test” all the character were normal letters. (Not using my font.) I have no idea what went wrong. But my glyph information (on the edit pop-up) shows the whitespace before and after to be 0. My left side bearing is 0 and advance width is 3000 and the glyph boundings are 3000, 3000, 0, 0 (clockwise, starting at 12:00.)
-The 3000 values for the boundings are the result of the size of the source images. I simply used FC’s import feature to take my existing graphics and make them into the individual characters.
-Maybe I should explain a bit more about my font: it allows people to make maps for games by placing map fragments (each character (glyph?) of the font next to eachother. The desire is to have no whitespace between characters. The map fragments all have openings/corridors at the same points on each side so they are connectable.
-Is it acceptable for me to post the font file to get better feedback from you all? This is going to be a sample that lets people get a feel for how the real font(s) I create will work so it is ok to me to post it freely.
Absolutely not. The most proper layout is to make it a symbol font. A symbol font is absotutely identical in its Mac platform as an alphabetic font - Macintosh Roman. The only difference is the Microsoft platforms - Microsoft Symbol vs. Microsoft Unicode.
It seems there are mappings for the mac as well (choosing “edit” on a character and looking at the mappings tab)… do I need to make two versions?
No. Each glyph gets assigned to an alphabetic character on the Mac platform, and a basic keyboard accessible PUA character on the Microsoft. There is nothing else to do, although I do believe that you do need to convert it to a mac ttf, and I don’t actually know how to do that. Anyone have any experience with porting TrueType fonts cross platform?
-I tried the autometrics, and after I did that and went to “font” “test” all the character were normal letters. (Not using my font.) I have no idea what went wrong. But my glyph information (on the edit pop-up) shows the whitespace before and after to be 0. My left side bearing is 0 and advance width is 3000 and the glyph boundings are 3000, 3000, 0, 0 (clockwise, starting at 12:00.)
-The 3000 values for the boundings are the result of the size of the source images. I simply used FC’s import feature to take my existing graphics and make them into the individual characters.
-Maybe I should explain a bit more about my font: it allows people to make maps for games by placing map fragments (each character (glyph?) of the font next to eachother. The desire is to have no whitespace between characters. The map fragments all have openings/corridors at the same points on each side so they are connectable.
-Is it acceptable for me to post the font file to get better feedback from you all? This is going to be a sample that lets people get a feel for how the real font(s) I create will work so it is ok to me to post it freely.
Thanks again!
Please, post the file. And definitely tells us information like what program you were getting the premature line breaks in and what OS you have.
Here’s what I’m trying to work with. I’m using Windows XP, and I see the premature linebreaks in both FC’s “Test” area and in wordpad.
Also, to follow up on a question in my other thread, there’s no way for me to now edit the “Typeface @ (your company)” that appears when I double-click the ttf file and see the font in Micrsoft’s font preview? DungeonMorphTest.ttf (185 KB)
I’m using Vista, and it works great in the test pane and OpenOffice for me. (see screen shot) Pretty cool idea for making game maps - I would have loved it for my AD&D games in college. Maybe someone using XP will get a different result.
To edit the copyright, go to Format:Naming, chose your language, and then put in your own copyright text in the top field on the right. You can click on the … in order to get a whole dialogue for your copyright text.
I’m on XP and also had no problem… Installed and tried it in MS Word without problem. Created 10 filled lines at 18pt.
One trick I’ve used on other fonts like this is to reduce the side bearings by -5 units or so (2995). This then closes the gaps between characters
