I’m developing a symbolic font in which all symbols are placed within a square. The square is white with a black outline.
I need a character that is all white with the same height and width as the symbol’s square which essenitally acts as the space bar in giving the user a space that is the same height and width as the other symbols within their squares.
I’m using the semi-colon for this character. I set the descent/ascent/baseline, etc the same as the other symbols’ squares, then deleted everything within the cell, so essentially I have a blank glyph.
The problem I’m having is that when I’m typing the symbols and then the white space, the white space extends too far down and interupts the black outline of the square of the symbol on the next line down. The top and sides are ok, but the bottom of the white space extends too far and cuts off the top of the symbol’s square black outline.
I tried importing a totally white square the same size as the symbols square, but can’t get white to import.
It is not possible to set the descent/ascent/baseline for individual characters. The setting applies to the entire font.
I tried importing a totally white square the same size as the symbols square, but can’t get white to import.
It is not possible to create a glyph that is a white square. All you can do is create a black square with a white square inside it, just slightly smaller to create a thin black outline. A blank glyph is just a space character, and is transparent — it has no fill so it cannot overwrite anything on the line below. Maybe that is all you need to use — a fixed width space the same width as your symbol square.
You might learn something by looking at the chess board symbols in my font Talapanna. It has a white blank square, and black and white chess pieces. To make a black square I type a character that overstrikes the previous symbol with a black fill. The result is not ideal, but it means that fewer symbols are needed.
Chessboard.png