Typophile - FontLab Interface Peeves (2) - Comments

John, my problems are so

billtroop — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 08:34:47 -0700

John, my problems are so fundamental that I must think there is something exceptional going on. Perhaps I’ll try a reinstall? I hate to delete preferences, after having spent so much time getting them. I wish people would do what XyWrite does for all preferences and customization files. They’re pure ascii and cannot be corrupted, and can be edited as plain text. What is the matter with that? Binary preference/customization files should be banned. By the way, I assume you are using Aero?

Bill, I’m not having any

John Hudson — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:26:07 -0700

Bill, I’m not having any major problems with FLS 5.0.4 in Vista. The Open command works fine for me.

I’d have to say that my

kris — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:26:06 -0700

I’d have to say that my greatest peeve with FL is the totally inconsistent, unreliable preview in the ’metrics window’. Changing sidebearings makes things jump all over the place, and common combinations will display with different spaces in between. How frustrating.

—K

Is anyone else having

billtroop — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:15:55 -0700

Is anyone else having exceptional problems with Fontlab 5.04 and Vista? I find that for example the OPEN command generates an instant crash, though there are other ways of opening fonts that don’t do this.

One more point while we’re

billtroop — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:06:32 -0700

One more point while we’re on the example above, evaluating, glyph by glyph, a two-master font. I have a complication: two different versions. I have each font open in a window side by side.

Why can’t the MM slider work on both glyph windows simultaneously?

And when are we going to have DIFF for GLIFFS ?

Thomas, I agree that the

billtroop — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:03:59 -0700

Thomas, I agree that the editor can do what it likes with composites — just like Fog always did. But just what _is_ the latest scoop on composites in PS fonts? I just remember the conventional wisdom that composites, though at one time used in Adobe fonts, are not recommended anymore.

Back to David. Most people with a product go about improving it somehow over the years. It is really kind of spooky the way T1/CFF is changing so very little. Maybe it’s time for a new look at what type could be doing? Why is Adobe letting the technology remain so static? Aesthetically, we’re on total overload - - so maybe it’s time to look at some hard technology issues?

Speaking of slow progress, it is a year since we looked at Fontlab 5.01; now we’re at 5.04. When is this company going to address simple focus issues?

FOR EXAMPLE:

I am in the glyph window. I am sequentially evaluating each glyph in a simple one-axis, two-master font.

I start with !. I use the slider to go from -500 to +1500, looking for anomalies and problems.

OK. I looked at that glyph, Now I want to go the next glyph.

Can I use the control-right bracket key to advance to the next glyph? ? ?

NO !

That’s because focus is on the MM slider.

I have to click on to the glyph window, then press control-right bracket, and then move the mouse back over to the wretched MM slider again.

WHAT ? ? ? ?

Why doesn’t control-right bracket (advance to next character) work, no matter where mny focus is ?

Why hasn’t this bug YET been fixed?

Thomas, earlier I had somewhat clumsily asked the question,

“I presume this is because such composites [slanted, rotated] are not valid type 1 instructions. Are they a part of CFF?

What other things are there in CFF that are possible but that font editors are not letting us do ? ? ? ?”

Are you indirectly answering the question and saying that there are no new composite features we don’t know about in CFF?

Also, not to open a can of worms, and at the risk of exposing my ignorance even further, but I remember, when I was starting out, that there was quite a bit of talk about subroutines; you never seem to hear about them now. Anything worth investigating there?

Back to Fontlab bugs. Using control-right-bracket, above ascii 128, the glyph window and the metrics window seem to use different encoding - - - still.

Am I the only one to find this an embarrassing bug?

I would really like a

Jos Buivenga — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:12:39 -0700

I would really like a (large) metrics window that can house 3 or 4 metrics windows in a grid you can determin yourself, where fontsize and textinput is the same for all the “child” metric windows.

But, however dumb they are

Thomas Phinney — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:40:55 -0700

But, however dumb they are in the final font format is only slightly related to how smart or dumb they are in the font editor. FontLab Studio can do what it likes on its end to a very large degree.

“Components are sort of

dberlow — Fri, 9 May 2008 05:12:41 -0700

“Components are sort of second-class citizens in FontLab. “

Components are second-class citizens in TT and T1, they will stay that way forever at the current change rate (which is 0 change in 22 years, and FL will never have a reason to improve their lot. Get used to ’em as dumb as stones and as flexible as well.

Cheers!

As far as I can tell,

Mark Simonson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:39:26 -0700

As far as I can tell, yes.

The only way to get fi to be inserted as a single component is to decompose the fi glyph before generating the ffi composite glyph.

So Mark, is my understanding

billtroop — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:49:47 -0700

So Mark, is my understanding of this correct?

In Fontlab I

1. make an fi composite out of f and dotlessi

2. then make an ffi composite out of ’short f’ and fi

Is the result that I now have a composite of three independent referrants, short f, f, and i ? (rather than a composite referring to short f and fi?)

@Bill: something else must

Mark Simonson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:15:19 -0700

@Bill: something else must work because I have succeeded in flipping composites in the past.

Probably you dragged one of the corners past its opposite. This works, too, but it’s not as precise.

My understanding is that

Mark Simonson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:12:57 -0700

My understanding is that composites are not allowed in CFF fonts, and are not need anyway since CFF fonts are compressed by definition.

>Or are you talking about

billtroop — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:40:13 -0700

>Or are you talking about something different?

Like it says: composites.

Mark, I never knew about those values in scale . . . but something else must work because I have succeeded in flipping composites in the past.

One thing to make clear: Fog will generate some composites as composites, but not ones to which special things like slant, rotate, etc. have been applied; they will appear decomposited in the generated font. I presume this is because such composites are not valid type 1 instructions. Are they a part of CFF?

What other things are there in CFF that are possible but that font editors are not letting us do ? ? ? ?

Also, isn’t time to raise the question again: under what circumstances can floating point points be used in PostScript? What rasterizers, if any, will rasterize such fonts? And where is Fontlab in all of this?

Yes, something different:

Mark Simonson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:51:45 -0700

Yes, something different: Components. Components are sort of second-class citizens in FontLab. A lot of tools and commands don’t work on them at all. When you select them, you are in a sort of component mode in which fewer things are possible.

FontLab Interface Peeves (2)

billtroop — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:46:35 -0700

Pursuant to the old thread on FontLab Interface Peeves, http://typophile.com/node/32709, I’d like to take up this issue again. In response to that thread, we got some MW improvements in 5.03 which I am trying to get my head around, having been away from font design for the past year.

I would like to focus on one of the old suggestions, which is for a mode that would cause whatever you are doing to be done on all masters (when you press a key to activate this mode). So, for example, you’re in a 4-master font. You move a point and some handles - - everything that you’re doing happens in the other three masters. Or you’re in the metrics window. You’ve noticed that you stupidly have sidebearing values of 5 and 5 for the = glyph. You need at least 40, you now realize. Why should you have to enter those values 4 times? Or do that cursor-key movement four times?

Obviously, it’s dangerous to work like this if you don’t know what you’re doing, but then everything about working with multiple masters requires a lot of concentration. So what? So you concentrate.