As some readers may know I am experimenting with trying to produce a font by using a photograph of part of the inscription from the Trajan column.
viewtopic.php?t=2183
The letters in the original inscription are of various sizes, so I am thinking of trying to scale the images within the background facility of FontCreator so that the letters in the font are all of a consistent size, and also to move the image around so that they have a baseline value of 0 and a consistent height. I thought that using the default CapHeight provided by FontCreator would be a good idea, particularly in case some other readers try producing some of the other letters and an attempt is made to merge the glyphs all into one font as a fun project within the forum.
I am wondering why is the default CapHeight of a new font 1434 font units please?
William Overington
31 March 2008
Why is the default CapHeight of a new font 1434 font units?
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Because the default template font has a CapsHeight of 1434. Why 1434? Because that is what my Garava font uses. If you look at a variety of commercial fonts you will find a range from around 1350 to 1550. There is no right or wrong value — the value you need to use depends on the font design. To leave more space for stacking diacritics, or long descenders use a lower value. For a display font like Trajan, which has short descenders, and does not need stacking diacritics, you could use a value of 1500 or more.
Updated with a more specific graphic
If you use the "Maximum" setting when calculating font metrics, the highest and lowest glyphs in the font will be used when calculating Ascender and Desender values.
Then if Ascender + Descender + Line Gap = 2458 the default leading of the font at single line spacing will be 120% of the pointsize (12 pt on 10pt) because 2048 x 1.2 = 2458.
Using the "Maximum" setting ensures that no glyphs are clipped, such as the highest accents à or lowest descenders on subscripts.
Updated with a more specific graphic
- FontMetricsAscentDescent.png (6.86 KiB) Viewed 4687 times
Then if Ascender + Descender + Line Gap = 2458 the default leading of the font at single line spacing will be 120% of the pointsize (12 pt on 10pt) because 2048 x 1.2 = 2458.
Using the "Maximum" setting ensures that no glyphs are clipped, such as the highest accents à or lowest descenders on subscripts.
Last edited by Bhikkhu Pesala on Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.