Font Forum

Dear all,
I have FontCreator Professional Edition and I would like to creAte a font library that has a fixed size of the glyph with these properties:

• Size of a glyph <= 127 x 127 pixels
• Top to the baseline = Max 127
• Width = Max 127

Could you help me to setup these properties?

Thank in advance

Regards

TrueType fonts are scalable vectors, not bitmaps so it is difficult to design glyphs in that way. I design my fonts to have a default line-spacing of 12 points (1/6") for 10 point text. In theory, a glyph using exactly half of the design space would be 6 points, 1/12", or 6 pixels @ 96 pixels per inch.

Design the font how you want, then choose the font size in the application to generate a bitmap of 127 pixels. You can test your font in the target application without installing it by opening the Font Test Window, then selecting the Font shown in that Window, in your application. Trial and error is likely to be quicker and more accurate than doing the calculations.

See this thread for a discussion on a similar issue — how to get Caps Height = 1"

A quick test indicates that you would have to use a point size of about 140 points in the application, but it depends on how big the glyph is compared to the overall height of the font between WinAscent and WinDescent.

Black Circle ● is usually bigger than a Bullet • and both are bigger than Period .

Thanks for fast response.
I am new in the FontCreator.
Could you give me more details about how to configure the line-spacing and bounding box?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Did you read the linked thread?

Yes, I did.
But they are using an old version of FontCreator and also there is no more details about the configuration.

An important thing to know is that in Windows based systems (I don't know one way or the other about other systems) when one chooses a particular point size in an application program, the point size is only from the baseline upwards. So in a font where the lower part of g j p q y goes below the baseline that is extra and not included in the point size. The parts below the baseline are called descenders. So if there are two fonts that are the same except that one font has longer descenders than the other font, then the one font will have a larger displayed height per line of text than the other font, even when displayed at the same point size. This is entirely different from with metal type where the point size is the height of the piece of metal.

I am not sure where it stops above the baseline, maybe it is at WinAscent but I am not sure.

Another point to know is that Windows systems have 96 pixels for 72 points. That is, four pixels for every point.

I have found that setting WinAscent at 2048 and WinDescent at -768 or -1024 works for me.

Then I set the grid spacing at 256 font units and I have the grid lines orange and the line such as Baseline and so on in blue, with solid (ie not dotted) lines.

Having that set up means that I can design such that the orange squares are 256 font units by 256 font units and that they will each be 2 pixels by 2 pixels at 12 point. That is because there are 8 squares vertically from the baseline to WinAscent and they will be 16 pixels at 12 point size.

I find this helpful because I can draw lines in the font so as to coincide with the orange lines and that helps in rendering the font crisply on the screen.

These are personal choices and other people may well have different views.

William