Arcana

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Lesley Prince
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Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Hello all again. I am posting the current version of a symbol font I am working on. I opened it as a symbol font in FontCreator, and just started to import the glyphs. There is still a lot of work to be done on it, especially spacings and so on, although I try to keep on top of that as I go along, and if a glyph has something wrong with it I validate as I go along as well. The font seems to work OK; I have no problems with 'insert symbol' from WordPerfect, Word and PagePlusX5. There are some puzzles, however. I am concerned about the mappings - an area I haven't really paid much attention to as I am loading glyphs - because some of the glyphs appear to have no windows mappings, and one or two other mappings. Also when I validate the font I get indications of intersecting co-ordinates but when I investigate I find that I am in empty space on the glyph. Also the validation reports glyphs with uncertain or unknown direction. Apart from that the font seems OK, but I remain puzzled. A lot of the glyphs are very complex, but like most of my work I am producing it for specific purposes and uses.
Best to all
Lesley
Attachments
Arcana.ttf
Interim draft of a symbol font
(267.21 KiB) Downloaded 603 times
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Arcana

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Lesley Prince wrote:Also when I validate the font I get indications of intersecting co-ordinates but when I investigate I find that I am in empty space on the glyph. Also the validation reports glyphs with uncertain or unknown direction.
The unknown direction error is due to the intersecting co-ordinates error. Fix that and both errors will disappear.

After validating the font, glyph index 75, postscript name ssrm was the first with an error. Select one small contour, and zoom to selected. Then double-click on the reported error in the Validation Toolbar to locate the error.

Here, at 1000% maximum zoom, you can see that two on-curve nodes share the same location, i.e. the contour intersects itself.
Intersecting Coordinates.png
Intersecting Coordinates.png (30.8 KiB) Viewed 14119 times
Delete the superfluous nodes to correct the error.
Validation Options.png
Validation Options.png (42.28 KiB) Viewed 14119 times
Open the Tools, Options dialogue to see the Validation options. Note that there are more nodes in the current glyph than the maximum set in the dialogue. That means that validation is disabled for this glyph. Click on the Refresh Icon (2nd on the Validation toolbar) to check for errors.

Complex glyphs like this can be very slow to edit if automatic validation is enabled, and the options are too high.

Note also that I have enabled "local validation." This will find some more off-curve extreme errors that won't be caught with the default "global validation."

This is pretty refined stuff. Your fonts will still probably work OK if there are validation errors, but I have come across cheap fonts that needed fixing before they were usable.

I will leave someone else to answer the mapping question as I don't create symbol fonts at all.
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Dick Pape
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Re: Arcana Remapped

Post by Dick Pape »

I am concerned about the mappings - an area I haven't really paid much attention to as I am loading glyphs - because some of the glyphs appear to have no windows mappings, and one or two other mappings.
The glyphs with raised boxes in the upper left corner have not been mapped.

Looking back at the Mappings for Windows Symbol the assignment for glyph 44 (ceres) is blank. (It is also blank for the Mac Roman map of course). Since glyph 43 (Pluto) is 61512 and the next mapped glyph, Ascendingmode, is 61513, it would appear you have inserted empty glyphs into the series. There are also some blank, mapped glyphs which you haven't used.

The easiest way to correct this is to regenerate the maps for the entire font.

The only way I know how to do it, (Erwin) is to generate a new dummy symbol font and select all glyphs then Copy to your Arcana. Edit/Paste Special, selecting only Glyph Mappings. Select Overrule same mappings, then OK. Both the Mac and Windows glyphs get remapped in sequence.

The ISSUE is you have more than 235 glyphs in the font at this point and new symbol fonts have only 225 glyphs. The extra characters would have to be hand mapped but that would be straightforward as they are all together at the end of the font.

When I delete all your empty glyphs this brings the number down to 225. The remapping from a new font directly corrects both Mac and Windows maps.

You can build symbol fonts with more than 225 glyphs but I don't know of an automated way to map those higher glyphs.
Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Dear Dick
Thank you for this. I tried it out on a copy of the font and it worked very well. I explored further and discovered the way to map the extra glyphs. I'm not sure I'm doing it right, but it seemed to work OK. I opened the mappings dialogue and selected 'choose'. This seemed to do the trick nicely. I still have a lot to do on the font, including the exclusion of some glyphs I am not happy with and a lot of housekeeping, but when I have made more progress I will repost Arcana in its latest form.
Lesley
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Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Dear Bikkhu
Thank you for your advice. I went into the troublesome glyphs and found the problems lay in some very tiny aspects. In the end I deleted several of the glyphs and reworked them, which turned out much better.
Best wishes
Lesley
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Everything that ever has meant anything has just as truly meant something else (Charles Fort)
Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

I have been working on Arcana, and have completed the glyph set. I remapped the font, and then mapped the extra glyphs to Latin Supplement A. However, when I did this it no longer worked, and all of the glyphs were shown with the plain rectangle showing they were unmapped. Luckily I had made a copy before modifying it. The strange thing is that the unmodified font, as regards mapping, works very well, and all 268 glyphs are accessible. But it is untidy because of the irregular mappings. I am puzzled about what happened when I remapped. I am uploading both versions here. The remapped one is labelled as such and the unremapped one simply called Arcana. One other puzzle is that Arcana does not appear in the fonts list when I access fonts via control panel, but it does appear in the software that I have used to test its accessibility.
Best wishes to all
Lesley
Attachments
Arcana.ttf
This is the unremapped version.
(323.66 KiB) Downloaded 548 times
Arcana REMAPPED.ttf
This is the remapped version
(323.43 KiB) Downloaded 558 times
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Dick Pape
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Re: Arcana Unicode

Post by Dick Pape »

Yeabut, Arcana has unmapped glyphs that would not be accessed in your software? Once you added more than 255 mapped glyphs your troubles began. I could install your Arcana and see it in Fonts directory so I don't know what happened there...

In my notes, it says Symbol fonts are limited to 255 entries in Unicode.

The workaround is to create a regular Unicode font which enables the extra Ranges you need for more than 255 glyphs.

I created a new font. Added 30 new characters at the end which setup Unicode maps. I then copied/pasted special Glyph, Metric Data, Postscript names. It kept your postscript names intact.

Installing it for MS Word shows the font with your glyphs as the name (Not like symbol fonts which compose a name in roman). It can be treated either as a text font which is peculiar, or as an Insert Symbols for individual letters.
Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Thank you that, Dick. I reworked the font as you suggested, and added the extra characters from the Private Use area. It seems to work(ish), but the extra characters are not unicode mapped. I admit that I find mapping more complex than I expected, and so I am puzzled by what happens with it. I am still completely unsure what happened to the version I called REMAPPED. I am uploading the latest version.
Best wishes
Lesley
Attachments
Arcana.ttf
latest version
(330.19 KiB) Downloaded 545 times
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Dick Pape
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Re: Arcana Unicode2

Post by Dick Pape »

Probably when you copied them from the Private Use Area you brought the mappings with them.

I created new Unicode font. Added 40 glyphs at the end. Sorted on code points. Copied from your Arcana. Pasted Special overlaying Outline, Metrics and Postscript. Selected and deleted Incompletes. Attached.
Arcana Unicode.ttf
(329.48 KiB) Downloaded 588 times
Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Hi Dick
When you added the 40 glyphs was this using the insert command? How are they mapped? Sorry if I'm being dense here, but I don't quite understand what happens when new glyphs are added.
Best wishes
Lesley
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Dick Pape
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Re: Arcana

Post by Dick Pape »

Insert Characters and then looked for "open" letters (not used, white) and added a range (roughly 256-446). I sorted the result to get the new ones adjacent to the other mapped characters. (Those math symbols, Euro etc. are shoved to the end and were deleted).
Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Thank you. Now I will go and play and see what happens. :)
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Arcana

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

If you use Insert Characters instead of adding Glyphs, you can choose the mappings as you do it. The Private Use Area is the most appropriate for symbols, unless their designs match those of Miscellaneous Symbols or Dingbats.

See the tutorial on the Insert Character Feature
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Lesley Prince
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Re: Arcana

Post by Lesley Prince »

Dear Dick and Bikkhu, thank you once again for your help. I have spent some time investigating your suggestions and have produced the font version ArcanaI. This seems to work OK, although there are some weird effects, such as some glyphs appearing more than once in the glyph index of different software. However, I think I have probably taken it as far as I can for now; it was my own fault for pushing past the limits of a standard symbol font, although I believe that only by pushing the limits can one learn. I think I may reorder the font later when I have time to get back to it, and break it down into two fonts: ArcanaI and ArcanaII which I will post later when I have done them.

Thank you again for your help. May I also say that I am amazed at how quickly you respond to these posts. I imagine there are many hundreds of posts coming up, and yet you respond very quickly always. Thank you so much.
Best wishes
Lesley
Attachments
ArcanaI.ttf
Latest version of Arcana
(330.02 KiB) Downloaded 533 times
Dr. Lesley Prince

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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Arcana

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Glyph Index 57 (sextile) has a stray contour that should be deleted. I have already done this in the attached version.

Several of the glyphs such as Astrological signs already have Unicode code-points assigned to them in the Miscellaneous Symbols character set, as do the Trigrams.

The Trigrams could be improved using composites to keep them all a uniform design and width. I have done this, adding the same glyphs in the correct Unicode mappings, and copying your postscript names to the appropriate glyphs (hopefully).
Attachments
Arcana2.ttf
(329.51 KiB) Downloaded 541 times
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