Typophile

Fontlab 4.6 how to create a random font ?

andreia.comunica

Hello,

I'm a graphic designer and I'm trying to create a font where, while writing, each character will be randomly substituted by some other versions of the same character. So that for the "a" I'll have 3 different "a", for the "b" I'll have 3 different "b" and so on.

I found some scripts in Typophile where it seems this would work (http://typophile.com/node/19625), but i actually don't know how to make it work in Fontlab... :/

I supose I have to create one class per character (in the "collection/classes" panel) where I put all the glyphs I want to use for the substitution and then (in the "opentype" panel) assign the script to each class. Is that it?

Based on another .otf font, I tried to roughly repeat the proceadure just to see if anything happens (just tried to assign some script to the first class I created - please see image attached), but when I try to generate the opentype font it gives me an error "ERROR: There was a problem while compiling OpenType font. Final .otf font is not saved. Please, check OpenType features definition for errors".
I've checked, but apart from the UPM number, that I think has to be 1000, I have no clue of what I should be aware of...

Could you please give me some hints on how to make it work?
I would really apreciate some help since I'm complete "new" on Fontlab and font design as well.

Thank you so much in advance!

Andreia

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sanij

Hi,
A very simple way to make alternates visible is to put a lookup with something like this into the liga feature:

sub [a c m s] a' by a.alt1;
sub [e i o t] a' by a.alt2;

(means: after a c m s glyph a is substituted by glyph a.alt1
after e i o t glyph a is substituted by glyph a.alt2 )

js

andreia.comunica

Thanks for your quick answer :D!

I'll try it out and tell you how it worked!

a.

kentlew

The {liga} ligature feature is not a good place for this kind of substitution. Better to use {calt} contextual alternates feature instead, since that's the effect you're creating.

Thomas Levine

It's not Fontlab, but I think Metafont can do this.

Karsten Luecke

Connecting you with http://typophile.com/node/42950

Everybody making script typefaces now?  ;-)

Chris Lozos

"Everybody making script typefaces now?"

Some of us are still struggling with non-script faces, Karsten :-)

ChrisL

Karsten Luecke

"Everybody" except me, I mean.  ;-)
Hm, but why not? Something with nice connectors, without need for kerning. I'm weary of even thinking about kerning, best practices, economic kerning, kerning features, limited kerning interfaces and all that ...

Chris Lozos

Karsten, There is no escape except for monowidth fonts :-)

I am finding that glyph drawing is the easiest and quickest part of type design. I have torn apart metrics and redone kerning a thousand times. With each redo, I learn something new and start again! The increments of change keep getting smaller as my vision gets more acute and my critical judgement becomes more unyielding--I feel I am getting closer to the carrot on the string but it is still not quite in my grasp :-/

ChrisL

Gala

Hi! I'm trying to do the same as Andreia but I'm working with TypeTool. Can I make variable glyphs with this software?

Thank you!

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