Typophile - Agamemnon continued, v.34 Cherokee, Greek, Cyrillic updated - Comments

Yes I do use FontForge.

cuttlefish — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 00:37:58 -0800

Yes I do use FontForge. Thanks for the tip.

Jason, you use FontForge,

guifa — Sat, 8 Nov 2008 22:36:44 -0800

Jason, you use FontForge, yeah?

Element -> Font Info... -> OS/2 -> Metrics.

Take the non-accented file and uncheck “Is Offset” by all of those fields. Those are the numbers you’ll want to manually input to your accented file if you want the accented one to have exactly the same line height (this will cause overlap of course with some combinations).

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

As far as line spacing, the

cuttlefish — Sat, 8 Nov 2008 22:28:07 -0800

As far as line spacing, the design rides low on the em, as I’ve heard it put, so it appears small relative to many other fonts set at the same point size, but also I find that the main version with the full complement of stacked diacriticals (for Vietnamese and Livonian support) the space between the lines is much greater than the versions without those glyphs.

I really must move my monitor so I can thoroughly read my software’s documentation without headaches.

I also am having trouble

piccic — Sat, 8 Nov 2008 13:47:04 -0800

I also am having trouble resolving the linespacing issues resulting from stacked diacritics.
Which kind of trouble? I ask because I’ve had to solve myself recently a linespacing issue, and often it’s enough to adjust the “Typolinegap” value, to avoid cutting-offs.

The cupped serifs are

cuttlefish — Sun, 2 Nov 2008 10:27:13 -0800

The cupped serifs are designed to compensate for the round letters short overshoot. I tried making the overshoot greater before and they looked odd.

Hi cuttlefish, I think you

nithrandur — Sat, 1 Nov 2008 18:51:23 -0700

Hi cuttlefish,

I think you should lower the glyphs with the bended lower serifs. If you put those – for example, lc l — and a circular glyph (which needs to overshoot), then word would look really odd. Maybe try putting the apex of the arc of the bended lower serif at the baseline and let its serifs overshoot?

That aside, I like the figures very much, especially 4.

–Josef

I haven’t attempted any

cuttlefish — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:54:50 -0700

I haven’t attempted any Greek extensions. I had a hard enough time getting it this far, being totally unfamiliar with that alphabet before making this attempt. I’m glad you like what I’ve done so far.

Hi cuttlefish, I like the

Nymus — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:17:19 -0700

Hi cuttlefish, I like the Agamemnon Greek very much, superb zeta, xi and sigma1. Its characters have a distinct and definitely novel look. Have you designed the Extended Greek characters by the way?

Some lingering problems:

cuttlefish — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:59:34 -0700

Some lingering problems:

I’d like to be able to output a limited version of the font, say, containing only the characters designated in the Adobe Latin 2 character list. I don’t presently know how to do this.

I also am having trouble resolving the linespacing issues resulting from stacked diacritics.

These are probably better asked on the FontForge users ML, after reading the manual, but it’s what I’m stuck on for the moment.

There are obsolete IPA

speter — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:22:24 -0700

There are obsolete IPA glyphs too (glyphs that have now been replaced by different forms, especially at Kiel 1989)

Officially obsolete, yes, but linguists just love using all kinds of signs. Not everyone transcribes using “approved” IPA.

Ack who left a tag open?

guifa — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:08:16 -0700

Ack who left a tag open? [edit: apparently me ... but the italic thing is recent and that post of mine is ages old]

The trick for IPA is making sure that you leave combining mark information for every single glyph that can be used in IPA. (I’m going overboard at the moment with Coruña and including top, bottom, top-right, overlay, and cedilla marks for EVERY SINGLE alphabetic character and most symbols haha, but that’s abnormal).

I’m going to try to get myself a nice document with lots of close IPA transcription that will include the potential double or triple diacritics on some of the letters (oh yes, I forgot, you need combining marks on your combining marks :) )

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

I would agree that IPA is

archaica — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 05:09:07 -0700

I would agree that IPA is not used by many people, but as a linguist, I don’t find the glyphs obsolete.

There are obsolete IPA glyphs too (glyphs that have now been replaced by different forms, especially at Kiel 1989) and I think they are in Unicode for backward compatibility with prior 8-bit encodings. They should probably be included in any font that has the IPA, though, because it may be necessary to set documents created using earlier versions of the IPA.

I have not put in many of

cuttlefish — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:10:19 -0700

I have not put in many of the IPA characters as listed on its separate Unicode range, just those that happened to lie on other Latin pages. Have a look through the latest PDF I posted above. (I thought I had more up there. I’ll have to replace those that I think are missing.)
Let me know if you need any IPA characters that aren’t included, or if any of the included ones are malformed.

I would agree that IPA is

speter — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:35:49 -0700

I would agree that IPA is not used by many people, but as a linguist, I don’t find the glyphs obsolete. I wouldn’t expect them in every typeface, but it is nice to have choices.

well, there’s the db and

cuttlefish — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:28:38 -0700

well, there’s the db and qp ligatures, a whole bunch with curls and hooks, um... darn I’ll have to sift through the thing again.

suffice it to say, at the time I did it, I had just got a hold of the Unicode PDFs and went crazy trying to fill in every Latin slot there is, and included a whole bunch of stuff that of use to very few people, and some that is of no use to anyone, except perhaps for archaic orthographies. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Agamemnon continued, v.34 Cherokee, Greek, Cyrillic updated

cuttlefish — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:29:29 -0800

Agamemnon began as an experiment I did on Fontographer years ago. I revived it over a year ago and began discussing it here on Typophile. That original thread is here, but has become long and unwieldy, potentially frightening off new critics trying to wade through the history of revisions. I’ve since moved development of this font to FontForge. The ability to edit with Spiro curve technology has been invaluable!

The font could be categorized as transitional and slab serif. The serifs and horizontal strokes are cupped and curved, creating a visual texture that should maintain legibility at small sizes and great distances. The current weight, though, is a tad awkward; too heavy for a book weight, but not quite a bold.

Over time I have expanded the character set. Once started with a basic MacRoman, I have since expanded it to include most of the Unicode Latin codepages, as well as basic Cyrillic, Greek, and Cherokee, plus Latin small caps, tabular oldstyle figures, fractions, stylistic alternates, special Icelandic ligatures, and a whole lot of currency and miscellaneous symbols.

And the snark, uppercase eszet, ruble sign, & al.

The PDF files attached here are all development version numbered, beginning with version twenty-nine. Earlier revisions are documented in the original thread linked above. The most recent one will have the highest number. Files with the same number are different settings of the same version.