New to Font Creator; some questions

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Heian-794
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:12 pm

New to Font Creator; some questions

Post by Heian-794 »

Hi everybody, first post.

I'm trying to make a font that will type baseball scoring and am looking to make a spiffy modern TrueType font to replace the bitmap font that I made on the Mac a few years ago using ResEdit and Font Master '88.

I have a few questions, and non-flame answers are much appreciated!

First off, the glyphs in this font will be mainly squares with information in one of the four corners. Many will have no width, and others will have width equal to the height.

:arrow: In some of the Open Type fonts I see nowadays, rather than make new glyphs for, say, the "1/2" character, or the A-umlaut, the font seems to have instructions to call up the 1, slash, and 2 and resize them and put them in certain positions to make a "1/2". Same for the A-umlaut; it pastes an umlaut over an A. Can creators of new fonts set these instructions up any way they like? I'm going to put all my glyphs in the Unicode Private Use area and would like to not have to copy and paste the same items over and over.

:arrow: How many zero-width characters can be superimposed at once? On System 7 Macs, I had trouble putting more than two characters on top of one another. When scoring a baseball game, usually you'll indicate how the batter got to each base in turn. So if someone walked, stole second, went to third on a wild pitch, and was brought home by batter #4, the user would paste a "lower right corner 'BB'", then a "upper right corner 'SB'", then a "top left corner 'WP'", and finally (and this is the one that would have the full width) a "lower right corner '4'". Is this possible?

:arrow: If I am stuck copying and pasting glyphs, and then resizing them myself, can you type in the desired sizes and coordinates? Softy makes you drag them with the mouse, and precision dragging can make your arm hurt after a while!

Thanks and best regards from a fellow font fanatic!
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

1. Yes. No problem creating composite glyphs. In an empty glyph edit window, use insert glyph for each glyph member you want to include. e.g. ¼ could be composed from 1 / and 4. memebers can be scaled and flipped as well as moved)

2. Don't know what the limit is. Burmese can have more than two characters in the same position.

3. Glyph metrics are best entered by typing in the properties dialogue (Alter Enter). You can also copy metrics from one glyph to another in the overview with Paste Special (Control E), metrics (uncheck glyph outlines). This way you can copy the metrics from ten glyphs to ten more.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Heian-794
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:12 pm

Post by Heian-794 »

Bhikku, thanks for the timely advice! I actually aven't downloaded the software yet, and want to know if it can do what I need before I start the clock running on the trial version :) .

I'll try to make a JPG showing what I'm planning to do.

Thanks again!
Heian-794
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:12 pm

Post by Heian-794 »

Here's an example of having four glyphs on top of one another to create a full glyph:

Image
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

You might like to try creating a Symbol Font

I would suggest creating only some glyphs having an advance width, of the full baseball court ᖳ character containing different first base symbols, then others with just the right overstrike placement, iie. offset to the left, and of zero width.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Heian-794
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:12 pm

Post by Heian-794 »

Bhikku, that's just what I was thinking! (Well, I would have had the first three bases having zero width, and then the "home" base with a fill width, but it's just about the same.)

A symbol font only gives you 224 characters, correct? One of the reasons I want to make this font again from scratch is that there are thousands of glyphs available now. Including all the possible combinations of ways to get from the batter's box and back to home without exceeding this number is quite a challenge!
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