Use of [Calculate] button

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Mike Thompson
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Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Mike Thompson »

I'm releasing fifteen fonts in OTF and WOFF versions and I must say the current version of Font Creator
makes this activity so much less tedious than it used to be a couple of years ago. Thanks!

My question is: Should I press on all the [Calculate] button on the General and the Metrics tabs of the Font Properties dialog
as a routine part of the release process. This is a major release so I don't mind small changes in the functioning of the font
(I assume they will be for the better).

Mike
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Erwin Denissen
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Mike Thompson wrote:I'm releasing fifteen fonts in OTF and WOFF versions and I must say the current version of Font Creator
makes this activity so much less tedious than it used to be a couple of years ago. Thanks!
I'm glad you like the improvements we made over the years!
Mike Thompson wrote:My question is: Should I press on all the [Calculate] button on the General and the Metrics tabs of the Font Properties dialog as a routine part of the release process. This is a major release so I don't mind small changes in the functioning of the font
(I assume they will be for the better).

Mike
We recommend to use global typeface metrics for all your fonts in the same font family. So use the same metrics to ensure the fonts behave/align consistently in your documents.
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Mike Thompson
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Mike Thompson »

Erwin,

Yes, all my fonts have the same metrics. When I pressed [Calculate] the main change was that Line Gap was approximately doubled.

The effect in a word processor was that a page that was much easier to read. Am I right in supposing that this change doesn't effect the glyphs at all but is to be thought of as a 'recommendation' to a word processor? The line gap is added outside the WinAscent/WinDescent space.

People can always change the spacing in a word processor, but probably most don't do or know about that. The crowded appearance of a page would then be blamed on the font. I may double the line gap for all my fonts.

Mike

ps Did you enjoy the spring break? Today it is snowing here.
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Not Erwin,

Mike, I try to manually adjust the line gap after calculating metrics so that single line-spacing for my fonts is 12 points for 10 point body text.
Line-spacing.png
Line-spacing.png (52.78 KiB) Viewed 6810 times
I wonder if relying on automatic calculation could go wrong on some fonts. I recall that in Book Antiqua (the Monotype version of Palatino) that the italic style was differently spaced to the regular, bold, and bold italic styles. This caused havoc in applications when applying italics to text in some lines, but not in others.

After setting the metrics for Regular, i check that the other styles all have the same totals for Ascender + Descender + Line Gap.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Mike Thompson wrote: Am I right in supposing that this change doesn't effect the glyphs at all but is to be thought of as a 'recommendation' to a word processor?
It doesn't change the glyph outline, it is meant to provide a typographically correct default line spacing.
Mike Thompson wrote:ps Did you enjoy the spring break? Today it is snowing here.
A little rain but mostly sunshine over here :wink:
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Mike Thompson
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Mike Thompson »

Bhikkhu,

How did you get the dialog box shown in your post?

Mike
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by MikeW »

The dialog Pesala is showing is from PagePlus, a layout application.
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by algrass »

As a marginal aside but still on the subject of metrics, because I mainly design calligraphic metrics and use metrics based on nib-width to define the height of Cap Height, ascenders and descenders, with x-height at 958 equivalent to x-nib-widths, I always do my composites manually. It is quick enough, anyway, by paste and copy and then adjust the diacritic position. In any event, even with auto composites you still have to adjust the position of the diacritic for optimum placing.
The problem that I have is that the metrics are saved as standard on FC per machine, not per font file, therefore if I change font, say from Chancery to Uncial, the metrics have to be changed but FC remembers the last settings of metrics, say those for the Chancery. Manually resetting them is not a big issue, the problem is that sometimes finding the note file where I wrote the metrics for that specific font is getting harder every time. Some years back I found a way of writing another xml file dedicated to each font metric. But I cannot find its location anymore in FC. Either I am getting too old now (70) or maybe I dreamed that I had an xml file set for each font. I am sure Pesala knows. Can you please refresh my mind? We discussed this point some 6 years ago.
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Re: Use of [Calculate] button

Post by Erwin Denissen »

You can store such information into the font project info pane:
fontinfo.png
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