school font, coloured line

[reti]

I would like to color the horizontal lines in the attached font with one color, e.g. blue (#33ccff). What is the easiest way to do this?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

There is no easy way. Assuming that the word-processing application that you use supports coloured fonts, you can create a coloured font.

Each glyph will have two members: the coloured lines in one, and the letter contours in the other. You might be able to get away with duplicating each glyph, then cutting the copy with the knife to leave just the lines. Colourise the lines as blue and the original glyph as black. Add the blue lines glyph member to the original black glyph to get something like this:

Coloured Lines.png (14.76 KiB) Viewed 4981 times

You can copy all glyphs, insert one glyph after each selected glyph, then paste the glyph outlines and metrics with Paste Special, which will save some time, but cutting the glyphs and deleting nodes will take some time.

[hhwxyhh]

I would like to color the horizontal lines in the attached font with one color, e.g. blue (#33ccff). What is the easiest way to do this?

The way I asked before may help you
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8201

[reti]

Thanks a lot for your answers. I think it's solved.

[reti]

I found a simpler way. See attachement. There is a similar font available without lines. I created a colorful glyph with lines (glyph 105). I can now add it manually as a member to selected glyphs (e.g. A), but I understand there is a simpler way. Bhikkhu Pesala, you write:

You can copy all glyphs, insert one glyph after each selected glyph, then paste the glyph outlines and metrics with Paste Special, which will save some time

Sorry, my Englisch is not very good. What you mean exactly?
hhwxyhh, sorry but I have been using the program for three days and your solution is very difficult to me. Can you say me, what I have to do step by step?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

You can copy all glyphs, insert one glyph after each selected glyph, then paste the glyph outlines and metrics with Paste Special, which will save some time

Sorry, my English is not very good. What you mean exactly?

I have already done some of the work in SAS-Regular.otf attached to my previous post. Open that to see how it works, e.g.

1. Select A-Z
2. Copy
3. Insert one Glyph after each selected glyph from the Insert menu
4. Paste Special from the Edit menu
5. Paste the glyph outlines and metrics.
6. Edit the copies to leave only the horizontal lines
7. Colourise and add colour glyph members to the original A-Z.

[reti]

OK.

Colourise and add colour glyph members to the original A-Z.

But it's still manual way. Don't you know how to do that automatically? E.g. so:
1) colorize selected glyphs to black
2) paste one selected colorized glyph (blue lines) to selected black glyphs
3) all black members in the selected glyphs move to the top.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Most of the process has to be manual, but you can greatly reduce the workload by doing things in the right order.

1. Run Validate from the font menu
2. Select the validation issues category in the Overview side panel
3. Go through each glyph fixing the issues. The suspicious points issues are mostly fixed by deleting just one node. Use the Validation toolbar (F7) to find them by double-clicking on the error.
4. Run Validate again to clear the validation issues.
5. Select A-Z and a-z; copy
6. Colourise the selected glyphs to black
7. Insert one glyph after each selected glyph; paste special, paste just the metrics this time.
8. Edit the horizontal lines glyph to the width of the capital A; zero left and right side-bearings
9. Sort glyphs by glyph name from the Overview Toolbar. This will place all of the new glyphs together
10. Copy the horizontal lines glyph; paste the outlines only with Ctrl+V into each new glyph
11. Colourise the lines to blue
12. Sort the glyphs by glyph index
13. Edit each horizontal lines glyph to make the lines the same width as the Advance width using the Transform Toolbar, Size, Width
14. Now add each blue line to each Alphabet glyph and move the blue lines below the letter.

[reti]

I'm working now on the attached font.
1-4) Why have I to do this? I ran Validate and 302 glyphs have problems. Font looks good for me. Why is there so many errors?
6) I tried to colorize selected glyphs to black, but they colorize only to blue (attachement).
7) "Insert one glyph after each selected glyph" Why have I to do this? What have I paste special? Glyphs, which I have chosen before?
As glyph with lines I choose 725. What is "zero left and right side-bearings"?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

1-4. Because the glyphs have errors, and it is much less work to do it before proceeding.
6. If glyphs have already been colorized to blue, decolorize them first, then colorize to black
7. Because the glyphs are all different widths. Colour glyph members must all be the same width, so the line glyph members must be equal in width to the base glyphs. You could use a single blue line glyph as a member of all coloured glyphs, but it would have to be the maximum width of the widest glyph, and the blue lines on the W glyph would then overlap the black glyph of i, o, and other narrower glyphs. It is bad design, which is likely to produce lots of errors when using the font.
8. Zero side-bearings ensures that the line lengths match the glyph widths. They could be negative (i.e. the lines could overlap between adjacent letters, but if the side-bearings are positive there will be gaps between the lines when used in words. If the lines have negative side-bearings they might overlap the black glyphs, so some blue lines will be on top, not below the glyphs.

[reti]

Ok. Thank you!