Typophile

separated and blocked

joachim

i'm working on a large typeface family for a client of similar size, and they want the character set to include the windows glyph list WGL 4.0. there's a few characters whose design rules i cannot seem to find anywhere:

a) line separator u2028 and paragraph separator 2029.
i've read everything i could find online about these two comrades and know now what they're good for, but how do you design them? -- in other superlarge fonts like everson or code2000, they're just empty with zero width. is that correctly done?

b) block elements u2580-2593.
they all appear to be parts of one master 'block', or screen patterns of the same. but i can't figure out what the dimensions of this block should be; it varies considerably across fonts. is the width defined in relation to the emsquare or any other existing glyph? should the height be beyond ascenders / descenders / max. diacrit height? or is it related to the size of the "box drawing" elements?

thanks much! -- joachim

Jens Kutílek

Joachim,

u2028 and u2029 are not part of WGL4, so I wouldn't worry about them ;) I have no idea what they should look like.

Regarding the block elements: I make the dimensions of the »master block« so that when the font is set without extra leading, the tops and bottoms of the block and line drawing elements touch (or better, overlap a few units). This way they can be used for block graphics like the border elements in this terminal window:

joachim

thank you very much Jens!
so that's what those blocks are for.... great, it makes good sense now.

you're right about the 'separators' not being in wgl4, it turns out they're a specific requirement of the client. they seem to work like the "br" and "p" in html. my assumption about making them empty at width=0 was confirmed.

thx also for the link to the wgl4 list!
--j--

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