Color font best practices

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MikeW
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Color font best practices

Post by MikeW »

I have a color font being made and have an issue I cannot resolve via the help system.

There are 240 main glyphs thus far. Two more sets of the colored parts for a total of 720 glyphs.

My question is, how does one effectively produce another color variation so I can use stylistic sets for the user to change out to another color set?

I know I can duplicate the parts. But it is slow going now just changing to see only one tagged set, coming back after editing, etc. I cannot imagine having two more complete sets of "parts" to color differently for two SS. And I know I could do separate fonts for the additional colored glyphs. Which then results in two more fonts, and I would prefer to use the SS feature.

Is there a better means of accomplishing this other than go buy a bigger, faster computer?

Thanks, Mike
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Color font best practices

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

I am surprised that you're running into performance issues with just 720 glyphs.

You can use tags to organise the Stylistic Sets into different groups.

Unless some Stylistic Sets share parts of the same colour, you will need to make copies of them all.

If the copies are all composites rather then independent copies, that will reduce file size and speed up editing.
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MikeW
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Re: Color font best practices

Post by MikeW »

Sorry I wasn't clear. I have little issues with non-colored fonts. The largest family of 6 styles I recently finished have 5289 glyphs each and even with all of them open, there is little hesitation in opening/closing, choosing to view only a given tag, etc. The hesitation is there and is greater than either a smaller glyph-count family being open or just one of the large-count fonts being open.

I am using tags, both for the parts and for sets. That part of working is just fine. Tags are great.

The performance issue is only with a colored font I am working on. And the glyph count isn't great at 240 glyphs*3. It's just once I add color to the 520 components that the performance is degraded.

Looks like I'll either just do the 3 separate fonts or slog on with duplicating. Tis a pity those are my choices.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Color font best practices

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

I tested with my Odana font, which has a set of four-colour glyphs, by copying 104 glyphs.

I did not notice any performance issues, so maybe a bug report is the way to go with this?
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Erwin Denissen
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Re: Color font best practices

Post by Erwin Denissen »

We've not experienced the slow behavior you describe.

Do send us the project file along with some instruction so we can try to reproduce the issue.
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MikeW
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Re: Color font best practices

Post by MikeW »

Will do, Erwin.

It'll be later today. Many thanks, Mike
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