Font Forum

It would be nice if there were an option to let Optical Metrics skip a glyph if one of the glyphs making up a composite glyph has the 'use this glyphs metrics' flag set. This would also speed up the processing of Optical Metrics.

For instance, if all the glyphs which use capital 'A' as the base glyph (A plus various diacritics) had the 'use this glyphs metrics' flag set to use the metrics for 'A' then they could be skipped by Optical Metrics and they would just remain with the same bearings as the 'A' character.

In general this could work, but sometimes a diacritic requires more kerning.

zeta iota and zeta iotadieresis with the same kern value: icircumflex:

I try to resolve this dilemma by not putting glyphs with different shapes in the same kerning class.

For example, I have a class named @i_lc with i, dotless i, and iogonek, and another class @i_lc_top with ï, ĩ, î, ì, í, etc.

If the glyph had a diacritic which required extra width then you wouldn't have the 'use this glyphs metrics' flag set for the base glyph, perhaps it would use the width of the diaresis. But it would be nice to have that option, if it leads to problems with spacing then it would need some manual adjustment.

Optical Metrics is a starting point, not an end point.

PJMiller wrote:If the glyph had a diacritic which required extra width then you wouldn't have the 'use this glyphs metrics' flag set for the base glyph, perhaps it would use the width of the diaresis.

Take a look at Calibiri and other common fonts. idieresis uses metrics of dotlessi.

PJMiller wrote:But it would be nice to have that option, if it leads to problems with spacing then it would need some manual adjustment.

Expect to see it in the next major release.

Thank you very much!