Postscript names with a twice-mapped glyph

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Some readers may be familiar with my experimental fonts about localizable sentences.

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/localizable-sentences-experiment-font-support/2475/1

In one post in that thread, the file LOCSE009.TTF is available for download.

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/localizable-sentences-experiment-font-support/2475/35

That font has basic Latin alphabets, uppercase and lowercase, together with some punctuation and, in addition, some experimental glyphs of my own design mapped to plane 15 of Unicode: plane 15 is one of the Unicode Private Use Areas. The reason for mapping to plane 15 was that if the characters become at some future time included in regular Unicode, then they would not be in plane 0, so it seemed a good idea to gain experience of using them in a plane beyond plane 0.

I used Format Post… from within FontCreator. Accordingly, within FontCreator, the cells show the PostScript name for the glyph mapped to U+F9001 as uF9001 as I habitually use FontCreator with the Tools Options… Overview Caption setting of Postscript name.

I have now found that I would like to have a font that also allows access to the glyphs from the plane 0 Private Use Area. This is partly so that I can produce a pdf document using Serif PagePlus X3, (which is not the latest version of PagePlus) that does not access glyphs from plane 15 and partly because it may have been a step too far all at once to start with using plane 15 for experiments.

So, I decided to try to produce a font Localizable Sentences 709 in LOCSE709.TTF by starting with a copy of LOCSE009.TTF and adding a plane 0 mapping to the experimental glyphs, by right clicking, then Properties… Mappings Microsoft Unicode BMP only and adding the mapping.

For the glyph mapped to U+F9001 a mapping to U+E001 was added,
for the glyph mapped to U+F900E a mapping to U+E00E was added,
for the glyph mapped to U+F900F a mapping to U+E00F was added.

Then I tried Format Post… Generate Names yet a name based on E001 does not appear.

I have tried the font and produced a pdf using it, which appears to be good.

At present, having only “double-mapped” three of the glyphs so far, I am wondering whether I should continue with that, or whether I need to start again from a new copy of LOCSE009.TTF and add some new cells and copy the glyph designs and map them separately to plane 0, so that the cells can all have a postscript name that goes with the Unicode mapping.

Does anyone have any ideas on this please?

William Overington

30 May 2011

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If I remember correctly, I think if you included a Unicode BMP only platform, it would probably generate a postscript name from that platform if available. If you just have the Unicode full repertoire platform, I bet it could generate a name based on any of its mappings. You’re never going to get it to generate a name based on multiple mappings, though. Of course, the easy way is to just right click on the character, select properties, then type in whatever PS name you want. Your imagination’s the only limit.

-Van

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Thank you for your reply.

William Overington

31 May 2011

4

I thought about this for quite a while.

In the end I decided that I would start with a fresh copy of LOCSE009.TTF and add new cells to the font, mapped into plane 0, and copy the glyphs. So the font now has two copies of the glyph for each of the symbols for the 65 localizable sentences thus defined.

My reason was that I was unsure as to whether my original approach might lead to problems, so I thought that it was safer to copy the glyphs to new cells, just in case, even though this makes the font larger and might not, in fact, have been necessary.

The font is available from the following post.

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/localizable-sentences-experiment-font-support/2475/40

William Overington

2 June 2011