Typophile

Help with spacing glitch

beroe

I'm not a typographer, so bear with me. I posted in general discussion about a variation that I made on a the characters zero, one, and tilde in a typeface. I tried to leave everything else alone. The characters themselves appear fine, but there seems to be a glitch (stray point? reversed curve?) in one of the fonts because the line spacing gets expanded, even during a FontBook preview.

I am using FontForge, and it doesn't seem to indicate any particular problem.

Could someone take a look at these and see if the error jumps out at them? Even narrowing it down to which variant is the troublemaker would be helpful.

[Link removed by me]

Thanks!

Jens Kutílek

FontLab Studio doesn't seem to like your files, it hangs when trying to import them :(

Why did you choose .dfont as file format? .dfont is only supported on Mac OS, do all biologists use a Mac? ;) I'd generate the fonts as TTF, these are more widely supported.

Re. your line spacing problem, have you set the vertical metrics to identical values in all four fonts?

beroe

Thanks Jens --

I chose .dfont out of ignorance -- was the only option I saw in FontForge that would bundle them together like that.

I uploaded a TTF set here:
http://www.computingforbiologists.org/files/CourierPCfB.ttf.zip

I didn't set the vertical metrics myself because I started with the full set and just made a few edits. (I only see horizontal in the menu?) That could have been automatically set somehow? At one point I tried connecting an open path with an arc during edits, and it created a big loop out into the netherworld. I think I successfully undid that change, but maybe it altered that vertical setting in the process.

I also did save them once with a stray point, and maybe that altered things?

Really appreciate it!

-Steve

Jens Kutílek

I ran your fonts through a test tool, FontQA, and these are the errors that were found:

Some contours have less than three nodes.

CourierPCfB: zero: (x=388, y=392)
CourierPCfB Bold Oblique: mhook: (x=1163, y=16), rhookturnedsuperior: (x=688, y=529)
CourierPCfB Bold: mhook: (x=1149, y=16), rhookturnedsuperior: (x=565, y=529)

Some composite glyphs have empty components.
CourierPCfB: zerowidthspace->(uni0000), zerowidthnonjoiner->(uni0000), zerowidthjoiner->(uni0000)

I believe the last error, the empty components, are responsible for the wrong linespacing calculation. When you delete the empty components from these three glyphs, it should probably work okay.

Jens Kutílek

Oh, and if you want all four fonts in one file, you could generate a TTC (TrueType Collection) format. But I'm not sure if FontForge supports it yet.

beroe

I truly appreciate your time on this. I will check those elements. It is a little weird that of those, I only knowingly edited the zero, but may have inadvertently put a dot after selecting a space... Glad to see it is not an issue of a reversed path or something else over my head.

I ordered typeTool (= fontLab junior) and maybe it will export TTC.

I'm really impressed by the quality of discourse on this board. When we have a more final cover design for the book, I'll definitely post it here for critique.

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