updated thorn:

I don't know if there are any words which begin with Eth or Lslash, but if there are, would the following be read as them? I think if I can get away with looping the stem for the crossbar of eth, I should be able to use a similar treatment for the uppercase.

Here's the Ae and Oe alternates following on from the thread in general discussions. Maybe not intrinsically correct but I don't see why they shouldn't be usable in certain situations

Yeah, like when you care about how stuff looks.

hhp

I suppose that could be one such situation ;)

This is the first font where I feel like biting the bullet and doing an expanded (Eastern European, not Greek and Cyrillic!) character set. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to generate the characters I'll need (I'm working in Fontlab), or anyone got a list?

In my opinion, eð and Eð are both too similar to usual swash variations of d and D. I initially read aðan as adan, I'm afraid. (Disclaimer: I am not Icelandic, but to some extent I read Old Norse and its daughter languages, of which one is my native tongue.) Your Þorn is very good, though I want to see just slightly more stem over the bowl (which I think safely can be made a little shallower.)

[...] anyone got a list?

Latin Extended A is the list you need. A very few of the glyphs there are deprecated, though. From memory: kra, I and i tilde, U and u tilde (all earlier used in Greenlandic, I think an Inuit dialect spoken in Alaska still uses kra, though); 'n (Afrikaans) and t' (a couple of Slavic languages used that, both are now preferably set with apostrophe instead). The Catalan mid dot l and L are also not used much, I think. And I doubt long s has any uses at all any more. (I make all of them anyway.)

It is also a good idea to include uni1E9E, uppercase double s from Extended B.

Yeah I read the eths as d's too, but I read them as d in every font, and I read Thorns as P's. Comes with not being exposed to them I guess. So it's good to get somebody who's used to eths and thorns to offer their opinion. What do you think to the new batch?

Almost forgot the new Thorn

Also ampersand alternates - I'm leaning towards 1

Latin Extended A is the list you need.
I think this is more than I was going for(!) but I suppose most will just be composites. Worth trying as a learing experience I suppose.

It is also a good idea to include uni1E9E, uppercase double s from Extended B.
In a script font where all-caps use is certainly not to be encouraged? I was half considering adding a lookup to the calt feature which would sense all-caps usage and urge the writer to reconsider, but then I realised that would be somewhat snooty. If I felt it was worthwhile I might draw extra glyphs for all-caps use for accronyms, but I can't imagine all that many situations where this font would be used in that situation.

[...] all-caps use is certainly not to be encouraged?

Oops. Forgot about that.

[...] calt feature which would sense all-caps usage and urge the writer to reconsider

Ha-ha! That'll teach them!

I really recommend working your way through Extended A, you'll pick up a lot of knowledge on orthographies too, which is never wasted when you're a type designer. (Or at all, really.) The Unicode charts have basic descriptions of the usage of the letters, and are good for reference.

I too prefer ampersand 1.

New Ð and Ł very good. I want the bar on eth lower, fatter, more angled. The ascender should also be pointing backwards quite a bit more.

Better?

Yeah I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it. It's a daunting task though because of the sheer amount of glyphs that I'll need to make. There's all the accented characters but then there's alternate forms needed for a lot of them. Last count I had 24 glyphs involving t - ligatures, alternates, end forms...
Still, whatever holds off sorting out the left hand side bearings of those caps is a good thing!

>>any words which begin with Lslash
UC "Ł" is quite common: Łódź, Łowicz, Łukasz. You can use the part of the first/second Ampersand as a "slash", more wavy and sweeping.
And why French "r" in Królewskie? Tomi made very nice "r" (Cider Script):

Yes I think that's better, thanks.

And why French "r" in Królewskie?
Is that form intrinsically French? As for the reason, there is none really, except that's the kind of r I drew first and it fits better in the font. Just for you, I had a quick bash at doing a regular r to put in as an alternate, and it looked even worse than the swash Euro symbol I've just binned ;-)

Actually, looking at them again, I think I prefer the previous Eth and Lslash, but I admit the crossbars need some work.

and numerals - I think I prefer the 1 without a base

hmmm,might try the base of the 2 for the slash in Eth and Lslash

>>Is that form intrinsically French?
It is hardly recognizable for us, thus the name ;) An alternate "r" sounds good.
Try to adopt the lower part of "L", this move, as a slash - look at Lslash in Monotype Script http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/stroke.html

Really interesting - thanks for the link. You mean like this:

I'll have another go at alternate r, and I'll try that lslash with the slash over the top.

Here's the alternate r. All attempts at making this form connect to the next letter were in vain, as were my efforts at Adam Twardock's script lslash.

Sindre, you are absolutely wrong regarding tcaron glyph. Your sentence "(a couple of Slavic languages used that, both are now preferably set with apostrophe instead)" made me laugh, sorry.

You can't replace the glyph tcaron by t + apostrophe, this is like replacing W by VV.

The letter ť represents a distinctive sound and can be found in Czech and Slovak languages only. Although the diacritical marks is called háček (caron) it has a special vertical form, sometimes similar to a comma or an apostrophe.

You can find a plain apostrophe placed next to the letter only in poorly designed fonts. Unfortunately such an arrogant approach is quite widespread. The result of this is simple: the fonts can't be used for typesetting Czech or Slovak and professional designers avoid such typefaces.

If you'd like to see a good samples of tcaron, please visit Storm Type, TypeTogether or Suitcase Type Foundries to name a few.

Please read very careful explanation how to design this kind of caron which is btw. used also together with d (ď) and l/L (ľ/Ľ; not to be confused with ĺ/Ĺ).

http://diacritics.typo.cz/index.php?id=5

Post Scriptum: The letter t followed by an apostrophe is also used in Czech language, but the meaning is different: the apostrophe represents missing letter, but you can only find it in poems or in an attempt to write slang pronunciation. This is another reason you can't replace ť by t'.

Another interesting link. Thanks. With all these extra characters, their alternates and alternates of alternates(!) my glyph count is starting to stack up.

You can't replace the glyph tcaron by t + apostrophe, this is like replacing W by VV. [...] Unfortunately such an arrogant approach is quite widespread.

I apologise, the reason for my statement is a hasty misreading of The Unicode Consortium's Latin Extended A code chart: "Latin small letter t with caron: The form using apostrophe is preferred in all typesetting."

Thank you for clearing this up.

For the record: All my typefaces has uni0165, with the caron (in its apostrophe-like form) placed with care. (As well as all other Extended A glyphs and a well-thought-out selection of Extended B glyphs). This mistake is indeed very embarrassing for me.

Underline feature. This puts an underline under the previous letters when two or more underscores are typed. So "Schizot____________ype___ Fonts__________" gives this result:

That's very cool! I suppose it builds the underline as you type so you can just eyeball how many underscores to add?

yeah that's right. Saw how to do it in Nick Cooke's rollerball critique thread. Metroscript does a similar thing with tails. What's cool about it is that the underline glyphs can be put into ignore subs in lookups to make sure the letters either side of the underline still connect how they should:
lookup endforms {
ignore sub @tobeendform' @afterletter;
#ignore sub @tobeendform' @underline @afterletter;
sub @tobeendform' by @endform;
}endforms;
greying out the ignore sub @tobeendform' @underline @afterletter; from this lookup means that there would be an endform on the character before the underline, like this:

lookup aftero {
sub @ovw @changeafterovw' by @afterovw;
sub @ovw @underline @changeafterovw' by @afterovw;
}aftero;
is another example - means after letters with a high lead out (o, v, w, b etc. in this font), the next letter has a high lead in (or at least fits with the high lead out), and this remains true even if there are underscores after the o etc.:

I find this pair feels a little off. I think the r feel too big. Perhaps a different o to connect with it so the entrance stroke can be lower?

Feels ok to me with the high lead in, but I might take a little weight out of the top of the stem in r.

Better? There's always the alternate r

Thinking of names now. What do people think to Freshscript?

Dollop.

hhp

haha - I'll put it on the list of possibilities ;)
For no particular reason I wanted it to begin with a letter that none of my other fonts have! EFHIJLORVWXYZ
Cheers

PS - thickened the loop in o|v|w|b glyphs so the weight difference between them and r is not as pronounced

How about "Blush"?

I like it!

Moving on with Extended A character set. Skipped over ij, IJ, Greenland k and long s. On that topic, what is the point of ij and IJ, in most fonts I've looked at they look exactly the same as the separate glyphs. Only reason I can think of is to stop fij combination ligating the f and i, so I should probably put in ij, but is there then some specific OpenType code I need to put in the language feature?

Here's some Polish. I've made alternates with high lead ins for the necessary characters - lslash in the example above. Now got to do end forms and initial forms for all accented characters. I assume there are some of the glyphs that never appear at the start and/or end of a word, but I think finding this list would be more time consuming than just making the glyphs.
Before I go about smoothing all the ogoneks to the glyphs, is their size/position ok? And regarding end forms of ogoneks, would a looped form like the below right be acceptable?

IJ/ij is vor der Nederlands.

but is it meant to look the same as ij (the non digraph combination)?

Be free, man.
http://typophile.com/node/34111

hhp

Thought I could get away without IJ but looks like it is often capitalised in its entirity at the start of words (although some sources say that's wrong), so its back to the old AE OE Ae Oe argument, except this time there's no special Ij alternate required, so it's just IJ:

And that's Latin extended A complete (minus Greenland k and long s and plus scommaaccent, tcommaaccent, Scommaaccent and Tcommaaccent) plus alternates and end forms.

Still got to do initial forms for o and s diacritics and smooth out those ogoneks.

That last /I/ of /IJ/ looks too much like a /T/, I fear. What does your /Y/ look like? I do like the connected tittles.

Check Adam's guide for script lslash placement: http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/stroke.html

The Catalan mid dot l and L are also not used much, I think.

Not sure about this, saw plenty of it when visiting Barcelona a few years ago.

Yeah I though context might be enough to stop it being read TJ. It also looks like a Pi and also the pilcrow from this font, so I've changed it.

Fear not, ldot and Ldot are in there.

I attempted Adam's script lslash and failed miserably. One more go then I'm admitting defeat and sticking with this cramped one.

I was going to say earlier: Catalan definitely still uses the midpoint!

hhp

normal version lslash, and the script version:

Is lslash ever followed by an ascender? I'm guessing not if it's pronounced w. I was thinking of putting this in the swash feature, but if it's actually readable for Poles I suppose it'd be better as a glyph substitution in a language feature. Never done a language feature before though, any pointers?

I think this type (with loop) of l doesn't work with slash.
Can you rotate the acute a bit CCW? And again this "s" doesn't work with acute (you can try with this "s" http://typophile.com/node/83831#comment-471608 ).
Some test words: bełt, łkać, Jagiełło
Best
J

Thanks Janek.
So the lslash should not have a loop. Is the slash part of it ok? I can switch the sacute to that one without a lead-in easily enough. Is it worth doing this with scaron and scircumflex too? What's your take on my endform ogoneks - smooth or looped?
Another thing - you said the script r was not recognisable to you - should I put the alternate r as default for Polish? Anyone know of any other languages where script r should be avoided, or would it be best to leave it up to the individual user and leave it as a stylistic set?
Dutch - should IJ and ij ligatures be default for Dutch or not?

>>Is the slash part of it ok?<< Could be more like "tilde". A bit too heavy on the right side? I think you are on the right path now, "Jagiełło" looks quite good.
>>What's your take on my endform ogoneks - smooth or looped?<< picture please...
>>would it be best to leave it (r.alt) up to the individual user and leave it as a stylistic set?<< I think the latter is better solution - after all it is user who decide which form to chose.
Regarding Polish acutes - I think they are a bit too bent and as a consequence point somewhere far left, not point at own letters. See Adam comment on Palatino and Georgia here: http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/kreska.html . And here I vote for LOCL feature. BTW the more vertical "Polish kreska" helps when is followed by letters with ascender, like "ćb" in "choćbyś".

http://typophile.com/files/eogonekend_5759.JPG

In these negligent samples you can see that the move which creates left side of "e" is repeted (only smaller) as an ogonek.

(my hand, ink and a piece of reed)