Typophile

Nodes at Extremes Problems

Robby Woodard

How necessary is it to always have nodes at extremes of all glyphs?

I have always put nodes at extremes and made the right extreme node the startpoint.

But when I try to put a node at the extreme of this shape (right leg of “V” & “W”), I end up with a really short curved segment. When I paste it into FontLab from Illustrator, it looses its fidelity and the curve gets wobbly.

I can’t seem to fix the tiny bcp even at FontLab’s highest magnification.

So what happens if I get rid of that extreme node and make a node close to the extreme the startpoint instead?

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Artur Schmal

If the line segment from which the curve is coming from is straight, doubleclicking the node should turn it into a tangentpoint and set the bcp straight again.

Robby Woodard

It’s not straight though.

It is a very small curve - In sync with the rest of the curve it is a part of.

Typography.Guru

If you use Illustrator to design your glyphs you should force Illustrator to use a grid which corresponds to the UPM settings in FontLab. Otherwise your curves will always look different when you paste them into FontLab.

William Berkson

According to the specifications for Type One fonts, and I believe for CFF fonts, you do not need to have extrema on such things as the tip of a rounded e and c. This looks like a similar thing. I think you can do with only a node at the top with horizontal handles and a node lower down, not at an x extremum, with handles not vertical. The need for points at the extrema is because of hinting, as I understand it, and you are not going to have hints here anyway, I believe. But those with more knowledge of Type One hinting will hopefully chime in.

I believe that most type designers (not all) draw directly in Font Lab or Fontographer for the reasons Ralf mentions.

Nick Curtis

Select the bottom node (in your screenshot), right-click (or shift-click), then select CONNECTION - SMOOTH. That should fix the problem...

Captured from web.archive.org on 15 Nov 2007. view this capture