Add Units per em conversion
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:02 pm
Currently, if a user has two fonts with different "units per em" settings, when they copy and paste an entire glyph between the two fonts, FontCreator does the right thing and re-scales the units per em on the paste so the outlines are the right size. The re-scaling does not happen if you copy just a single contour and paste it into the glyph editor window. This makes sense, as it's essentially just a collection of points with no reference to the original scale. The only workaround to this is to paste an entire glyph, then copy the contour you want, but this requires an empty glyph as a temporary workspace.
One workaround is to create an entirely new font with the "target" units per em and paste every glyph from the source font into the target, using "Paste Special" to get all the information (mappings, etc.). Then, the font can be saved and worked with using the new units per em. Unfortunately, this doesn't preserve any OpenType features, and copy/paste of those will cause errors in the font display, as the positioning values are tied to the units per em.
The feature I want is to be able to choose a menu item (probably in the "Font" menu) named something like "Rescale units per em", pick a new units per em, and have every glyph scaled like the copy/paste does when there are different units per em in the source and destination fonts. This feature should also scale any glyph positioning values in the OpenType features. And, please don't suggest that I use a spreadsheet to fix these values...FontCreator is a font editor and being able to fix these values automatically is something it should be able to do.
One workaround is to create an entirely new font with the "target" units per em and paste every glyph from the source font into the target, using "Paste Special" to get all the information (mappings, etc.). Then, the font can be saved and worked with using the new units per em. Unfortunately, this doesn't preserve any OpenType features, and copy/paste of those will cause errors in the font display, as the positioning values are tied to the units per em.
The feature I want is to be able to choose a menu item (probably in the "Font" menu) named something like "Rescale units per em", pick a new units per em, and have every glyph scaled like the copy/paste does when there are different units per em in the source and destination fonts. This feature should also scale any glyph positioning values in the OpenType features. And, please don't suggest that I use a spreadsheet to fix these values...FontCreator is a font editor and being able to fix these values automatically is something it should be able to do.