Tiffany Wardle mentioned that she tries setting her full name in the type as a test, not out of vanity, because it shows how the characters work.

Generalizing this, I find that a good aesthetic test is to set proper names in the type, perferably somebody you know and respect, either current or historical.

Somehow the emotional weight of a proper name, and thinking of it on a letter head or sign makes the success or failure of the glyphs more obvious.

Well it might be a little bit to do with vanity. :^/ But I always look for the double-f ligature as well as how the Ti and Wa have been kerned. If those three things are there it shows a certain level of attention to detail. IMHO

Those are interesting points! I shall add Tiffany to my T and/or f lists!

Any more?

Bill, Tiff:

Does my distinction re: aesthetics vs kerning value work for you or not really? Maybe I should rephrase. I thought the word ’cancer’ was an excellent test word not just because it has a ’c’ at the beginning & in the middle but because it does a good job of showing the ’c-ness’ of the c’s used in it. Perhaps I am just being odd.

Töötätä – to honk
Hämäläinen – a finnish last name or a person from a certain area in Finland
Tänään – today
Yö – night

Well, I don’t know. To me it’s important to put a letter between both straight and round letters to see how it relates. You can use all kinds of words for the goal here, like ’rhythm’ and ’color’ and ’notan’, but this is all about getting the letters to work together. To me there’s an additional ’pizzaz’ factor, which is that it doesn’t only work, but brings some beauty or excitement or authority to the words.

I switch back and forth between faces, comparing the same name in the Preview Panel in my typeface and in other type faces I admire. This is a humbling experience! When mine starts to look better to me, in some respects anyway, I figure I’m getting somewhere.

Wow! Thank you!

Can you tell me about these words?

Are there Words with ö as the 1st letter? The last? These would be Suomi( Finnish ) words. Correct?

BTW, Anybody can have a copy of this doc when I am done making it or take it to modify for their own use.

Veistämö – carving workshop or something like that
Öylätti - I don’t know what this means but I’m pretty sure it’s a word… :^)
Äänestää - to vote

And yes, these are Finnish. So that was the learn a word of Finnish this week.

Edit: Yes, öylätti is a word. It means a host as in (from Wikipedia) A host is a thin, round wafer made from bread and used for Holy Communion in many Christian churches.

ilmiö - phenomenon
šakki - chess

Awesome! Your the best Lari!

BTW - I Found a way to use Wikipedia to help me. Not as Good as having Lari’s direct insight of course but...

For A breve I found : căciulă . I don’t know what it means yet, but bit by bit. Now to find a Cap A breve word.

Lari, do you speak other languages too? Besides English obviously! ;-)

Well, yes. I speak Swedish and German. Why?

… :^O

Åbo – the swedish name of Turku
Uleåborg – the swedish name of Oulu
Über

Generally fonts don’t look as good when you set Finnish with them compared to English. Finnish sentences contain long words and the words contain lots of double consonants. Plus many finnish words are really boring, like koko (size/whole). Maybe they could be fixed with alternate glyphs that were almost identical but not quite.

I see you got me already. I was just writing: ’I was wondering is you have aesthetic favorite words that use: double s/eszet. Or Aring /Å ... and so on.’

BTW - Would you have any use for this document I am making?

I am keen on making fonts that have nice diacritics and vary their glyphs in the way you describe.

Schaiße, of course.
Also, Spaß, Straßenbahn, Schlafmütze.

Yes, I’d like to get your finished document. I love to have a need for it soon, that is get some of my duhsigns into Fontlab and polished.

It’s great that you’re interested in this. Some otherwise usable fonts have bad umlauts.

Would you mind having a look at a monospace in PDF to comment on some umlauts? Oddly enough I was just working on them. Now it’s the Macrons.

I will send it to you then. I have no idea how long it will take to do - maybe a year. But if you don’t mind I’ll send you beta versions for comment.

There was I thread I started a year or 2 ago regarding very long German words and Czech words with few vowels. Several Typophilers including some of our Finn members contributed some wonderful vowel-rich long words. Lari and Mili were part of it. I have to think of some good search words to find it.

Eben, I think different language text really helps. Itallian is very rhythmic and even while the CE countries texts are much more likelyto be incluusive of typographic kerning issues. I use both in testing (among others).

ChrisL

I will have to look for that thread. Thanks for your comments!

I will keep watching this thread for pointers from my fellows here and then begin making the document next week.

Eben,
The following is some silly text which I wrote in 2004 to test my first text face. I don’t know that you would call it aesthetic but perhaps just silly. I was just trying to think of words with certain letter combinations and then just free associated stream of conciousness bable.

ChrisL

________

Rainy Days and Sundays always get Quaint affluent Taffy vendors officiating Quid pro quo an aggast angler drew his rod and rheeled in a big fish therefore no bread was had by anyone save for the birds of prey who were polluting where they may willy-nilly down the road of life from now until the hereafter fun fascia fell fondled from here to eternity many may mourn her passage though. “Lord Save us!” she said. Hath no women scorned been here to see the debackle? Rally Round the Flag Boys and quit calling me sweetheart before I plant you perminently in the Petunias Portnoy!

Red Roses Rested Religiously as Ghosts of Christmas Past Paddled Saucy Sail Boats. What Wretch is this when Giddy School Girls Blossom Eating Fowl from a farthing’s fling. God save King John

Eben,
Here is that link from last year that I told you about:

http://typophile.com/node/21117

ChrisL

Thank you & Thank you!

I like your free associations & pangramic style. If this I am making is good there is reason it should not be a bit poetic. Thanks for reminding me of that!

>Some otherwise usable fonts have bad umlauts.

Since Finnish seems to give umlauts the biggest work-outs, I’d be interested in what you think makes for bad and good umlauts. Could you give some examples and say what you think is good and bad about them?

Maybe helpful – some words in german with umlauts.

Täler. Töten. Tücher. | Tä; Tö; Tü
Während. Wörter. Wünsche. | Wä; Wö; Wü
Räkeln. Röhre. Rüssel. | Rä; Rö; Rü
Gänse. Gönner. Güter. | Gä; Gö; Gü
Sämig. Sören. Sümpfe. | Sä; Sö; Sü
Lächeln. Löschen. Lüstern. | Lä; Lö; Lü
Änderung, Österreich. Üppig. | Ä; Ö; Ü

> bad umlauts
I’m interested in your examples also

It’s not that the umlauts are good or bad - it’s their form that is less or more ideal I suspect. Bad looking umlauts would be interesting. And good looking ones too.

Note that these are just my personal opinions. This is no way the worst umlauts ever list, I just randomly browsed my library for examples. Also, I’m no font designer.

The lower case umlauts look too big, the letters cannot carry them so to speak. Compare to Helvetica:

I personally don’t like umlauts that are so close to the letter. (Upper case.) Though Meta’s umlauts are big, I think the letters can handle them quite nicely.

Almost perfect.

These are nice, too. I write umlauts like this myself, two vertical lines. Some people write one horizontal.

These should be moved just a bit to the right. This is something I notice relatively often.

Thanks so much Lari! I haven’t seen such a comparison and analysis anywhere else, so it’s really helpful.

One more issue, which I raised in another thread, concerns the height of the single dot—over the i and j—compared to the umlaut. Do you see any fonts with higher i dots than umlauts, and that work? In the font I am working on, Caslon, it traditionally has rather high dots on the i and j. Currently I have the umlauts smaller and lower. Have you seen this work, or only with all the same height?

William —

Whitman’s dieresis is smaller and lower than the dot on the i. I don’t think this is uncommon.

One of the first magazines to adopt Whitman as part of their type palette (alongside Relay) was the Finnish magazine Trendi. The art director told me in an e-mail “Whitman seems to tackle the strange Finnish language very well.” So, I can only assume that the relation of the i-dot and the dieresis characters is acceptable.

— Kent.

Whitman does far more than the acceptable, it is flat out gorgeous!

ChrisL

One font where the umlauts are, in my opinion, in a totally wrong place.

http://typophile.com/node/29532

Mili, can you explain why the umlauts are so wrong in that face? I am just reying to make sure I do them correctly in my own typeface designs and don’t make the same mistake.

ChrisL

I mean the one in all caps with the umlauts “embedded” in the font, so that the A part looks smaller than the rest of the letters. I just find it ugly and difficult to read.

Mili, would you mind if I sent you samples of my typefaces in Finnish to look at and see if my diacritics are correct?

ChrisL

Not at all, Chris. Remember, though, I’m not a type designer, just interested in type.

Thanks Mili. That is exactly what I need, a users eye—and one well aquainted with reading Finnish glyphs :-)

ChrisL

Hi Kent, great to see you on typophile once again. I only see the diaresis a bit on the PDF on your personal site. There it seems that the i dot is only slightly higher than the dieresis. What I do notice especially is that you’ve given a comfortable amount of ’air’ between the letters and the dieresis. As excessive tightness is one of the ’bad’ features that Lari illustrated, perhaps this is what the Finns liked about your handling of the dieresis or umlaut. At any rate, with your example and the Meta regular weight, I have a pretty good idea of where to go.

Thanks!

Mili, would you comment on these umlauts?

http://typophile.com/node/29761

Looking at your comments I wonder if I should alter mine.

Thanks!

I’m late to the party, but I have to say I use my name not out of vanity, but because I have a good solid idea of what it should look like virtually any face, even if I’ve never seen it before. More precisely, in a new face, I can tell instantly if it looks like it should more quickly than just about any other phrase.

Another trick is, how does the font’s name look? If that doesn’t look right, either the name or the characters are all wrong.

Eben, Mili was talking about the umlauts in the all caps section. The treatment Mili showed is quite common in low res matrix screens, unfortunately.

William, I don’t think the dots have to be strictly aligned.

Another annoying but thankfully not common way is placing the umlauts under the x height. Like this:

It would be very nice to have some one named Erik Spiekermann to share their views.

There is always going to be a tension for screen type about how much x & cap height you carve out vs how much space is left for diacritics. Aringacute is a killer.

Isn’t that only as long as screen resolution is far poorer than print? I keep hearing about electronic ink, IBM’s advances in scree resolution, and other technology, though little has come to market yet. But, supposing the mass market gets 300+ dpi and higher screens, won’t that make things even?

I know that there is nothing like the present, but it seems that all the hinting in the world is possibly just a stopgap.

It is a stop-gap in some sense yes, to be sure. I see your point I think. More rez more subtlty and less being forced. That’s true up to a point. But even if you magically get a device with greater rez than paper - ( say what? - it’s just an agrgument - hang in there ) the deeper tension between elements is going to remain. 300+dpi can’t make things ’even’. Why?

If you know your going to carry umlauts in your design it’s good to know that from the beginning. If you have a Finnish audience in mind specifically then it’s good to know that too. And so on. Think about this : it has been noted that type made for german looks better in german & type made for latin in latin. It’s true. There are real reasons for this. Lots of them. All the little details! They all interact. Plus the pattens and habits seen in the language/s supported must be factored in and in that a balance has to be struck. So type made specifically for say Danish if it’s well made will express itself in the context of Danish needs and priorities and will look and ’act’ differently than one made for English. That is why you have to design for a specific set of circumstances every time.

Think about a custom shoe vs a really well designed shoe made for the masses. They will both have alot in common, and might both be plenty good but if the level of quality is the same something made to fit youspecifically will always ’suit you’ better.

Yes Eben, so true.

That is one handicap of the international market, the typedesigners try to design new faces that fit the bill for all markets.
Example, i have to reduce the wordspacing in “nearly every” typeface coming from e.g. GB or USA, when it comes to textsetting in german language. Wordspacing would be “correct” for english or french generally, but not for german. Ok, this is no big thing, but it has to be made.

>Wordspacing would be “correct” for english or french generally, but not for german.

Is this because the capital letters need more space before them? Or is because German words are longer?

if you need any more german words with umlauts, give a shout - i could make poms list a bit longer if needed. though not with eszetts, because in switzerland we dont use that glyph (even when writing books in high german - its out of use here).

if you make a long s, make extended kerning tests, it often sucks from what i’ve seen (altough i dont know many people who’d use a long s in anything than a blackscript).

as said, Chuchichäschtli can be a real killer. Östrogen could be a nice test, too (its the main female hormone). or Önologie, the science of wines.

What is ’Poms List’?

Thanks for additional test words! Do you have words where Ö is doubled? What about where it appears at the end of a word? Is suspect the answer is no but...

Since you guys know what I am talking about I would love to hear what accomodations you may habe noticed or made to better intergrate dicritics of various kinds. The other things is that when I was working on some for my latest font the method I used was to try to center the marks on each other to some degree. The dot on the i is the ’exception’. Would you let me know what you think of this attached example? I should note that it’s a monospace. Please feel free to tell me if you think it’s all wrong. But if so please also say how you would correct it!

Or is because German words are longer?

Does it also have to do with Caps being too dark/heavy in US & UK designed fonts for german setting? I need to get caught up on modern german typesetting.

What kind of relation does the presence of many diacritics in a language have to the ideal length of descenders/ascenders ?

@Dan
>Is this because the capital letters need more space before them? Or is because German words are longer?
Hm, less space, because it is more easy to separate words.
Longer german words - yes, you can add this.

#

For non-german speakers – a nonsense text; “Wortberge” (what is Blindtext called in english?) to get an “original feel” for the “rhythm of german”. Maybe you should add an text out of the medical, technical, science field to get the feeling for the real long words .

http://www.newmediadesigner.de/
Blindtexte
Wortberge

#

@Eben
I brought the list because i thought i could be interesting to see caps followed by an umlaut in real words. Maybe an kerning issue, too.

>Do you have words where Ö is doubled?
I think there is no doubled umlaut, i don’t remember

>umlaut at the end
Malmö ist eine Stadt in Schweden. (Malmö is a swedish city.)

>Does it also have to do with Caps being too dark/heavy in US & UK designed fonts for german setting?
Do you mean something like Caslon?

A couple of years ago:
http://typophile.com/node/9373

Now, I think the solution may be to do an OpenType font with a “German Caps with Lowered Umlauts” stylistic set.

Interiööri, miljöö… not exactly traditional finnish words but…

There are lots of words that end with ö.

I think your diaresis could be heavier but the aring looks splendid! How does the cap look like?

You hav’t tell what those 2 beauts mean Lari!

ChrisL

Eben, the zdot will appear in Polish close to i in quite a few words, so IMO it looks like a mistake to have it lower than the i dot. And when you get into Celtic....

As a principle, I’d say it’s OK to have umlaut dot accents a tad lower than the i dot, if they’re also smaller, and because they’re two of them. But really, the dot on the eye IS an accent (note Turkish), so it should be treated consistently.

eben: “poms list” is the list of german words by the user “poms” earlier in this thread. and as he notes, i cant think of any german words ending with an ö or having two ö’s after each other. i could probably find a swiss german word doing it, but swiss german is only written in emails and sms, otherwhise it only gets used while talking. but if we write swiss german, we use lots of umlauts.

Oh, they’re quite boring, interior and milieu. There are completely finnish words to be used instead of these. Öland, an island is Sweden is known as Öölanti in Finland. Also the err, am(?), well equivalent is öö, with the exception that the Finnish öö can last several seconds, if you don’t know what to say. Kööri ≈ gang (as in the gang that sometimes ids faces around here).

Turkish is an important “umlaut language” also. Ünlü, Gül and such. In Germany there live some million people with turkish heritage or being turkish. Not so unimportant.
What a nice thread :) – ööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö

William —

For what it’s worth, here are two random Finnish excerpts in Whitman. The first is from a horoscope (Aries, back in Dec 2003). The second is an instruction from a recipe (for something called Hunajaiset juuresnyytit). I don’t speak a lick of Finnish, so I haven’t the foggiest clue what these samples say. I chose them for the päiväjärjestyksestä, neliöita, and folioneliöiden.

— K.

@ Kentlew:
Here’s the rough translaton:
Christmas time is all go, so don’t leave important tasks till last minute. Your sleepy season is about to end. The more thorough you were in clearing unimportant issues from your agenda since Summer, the clearer start you’ll have for the New Year.

Cut foil into squares (about 30 x 30) and then divide the vegetable ragout on the squares.

The final word päälle should have two ls

@Eben:

I just had a look at your Software Developer, and I like it. Maybe the umlauts could be a bit closer to each other? Personally I don’t like them too far apart.

Nick, Thanks for the hints on the dot accent!

Mili, Thierry Poms & Lari : Thanks also.

All: I should have a new round of txt docs with example words for the ’brute force testing thread’ and this one in the next week or so.

Thanks, Kent. That shows the relationships of the i and umlauts very well. I’ll play with mine to get that kind of relationship between height above the letters and weight, though mine’ll have to be different as the design has a quite different feel.

Eben, perhaps a good test file for each character, based off this thread’s responses, could be added to diacritics.typo.cz?

Sure. Sounds good. If they want it there. I was keen to make it because it wasn’t there yet. :-)

Kent: That was wicked awesome!

Another test word, very difficult to space:

lyxvilla = luxury villa in Swedish

Recommended by Gerard Unger.

Difficult to space and impossible to afford :-)

ChrisL

I was thinking about this a bit more - and thinking about organizing principles.

Originally I thought I would organize the examples around letters laid out in a TIRO like sequence a, and then acute, and all the lc a examples, and then b. This still seems okay to me.

But then I thought about doing it my language. Then there would be either one giant list or many small lists. Or both. The idea there would be to allow you select a language or a series to support rather than making you wade through all 60 kinds of lc a+accent combos.

There is 3rd way as well the diacritics.typo.cz way which is to organize around the diacritic itself:

Acute
Bar
Breve
Cedilla
Circumflex
Comma Accent
Diaeresis / Umlaut
Dot Accent
Double Acute
Grave
Háček (Caron)

etc.

The problem I saw with that is that it doesn’t give equal billing to the eth for instance.

So I am starting to lean towards the language centered model. It ties in nicely with pages like this:

http://diacritics.typo.cz/index.php?id=32

But really, I wonder what you think would be most useful to your own font development process. How do you prefer to organize your work & thoughts? What would be most helpful to you?

I tend to think by language makes the most sense. There are glyph combinations that are common in one language and rare in another. If you compare Finnish and Czech, you get a wholesale change. French, Spanish, and Italian are not that much different. Icelandic has a unique look. In the CE languages, It is not just the coloration created by the heavy use of diacritics, but the clustering of asenders and the frequency of glyph pairings not typical to romance languages. Italian feels rounder and softer with so many vowels compared to the heavier use of angled glyphs in Slovak or Polish.

ChrisL

I came across a site last year that has the story of the Tower of Babel in many languages. I will look it up when I get home but you can just as easily Google for it (which is how I found it).

ChrisL

PS: I found it, here:

http://www.omniglot.com/babel/index.htm

Cris, good point - I like it. I think I am pretty much convinced. Doing this by langauge also parcels out the work a bit which is nice. I think language centered it is.

If anybody disagrees or has a counter arguement, I hope you post soon!

I think I’ll do one in English 1st & then maybe Mili ( and others?) will help me do the finnish & so on. Come to that is anybody willing to help me with the english? Once I have an testbed done as an example does anybody want to claim a language to do?

I am with you Eben.

ChrisL

Language specific glyph tests : English
Version 0.01
Date: Feb 7 2007
Last editor: Eben Sorkin

******************
FONT DEVELOPERS: FEEL FREE TO TRIM THESE NOTES OFF

Notes to those adding to or correcting this document: Aesthtics, Frequency and
Difficulty should be considered when adding to this document.

Glyphs covered in this document include:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

also

ÂÀÄÆÊÈÑÙÔÏÇ
âàäæêèñùôïç

Pattern:

For glyphs which are not puctuation the pattern to be used (when possible) is as follows:
1 word with the glyph as the 1st character, 1 word with the glyph as the last, 1 word
with the glyph doubled. Each word is presented in lower case, Inish Caps, and ALL CAPS.
Additional variations may be included at the discretion of the editor, but these should
follow the core sample pattern.

If a pangrams can beadded at the end with or without notes and or translation.

If possible typical/common puctuation such as those for ordering, money, weights etc.
would be good to include as well.

Thanks to : http://www.eki.ee, diacritics.typo.cz, wikipedia.org and typophile.com

******************
Aa
apple, Apple, APPLE, napa, Napa, NAPA, aah, Aah, AAH, baathist, Baathist, BAATHIST,

Bb
beanpole, Beanpole, BEANPOLE, nib, Nib, NIB, babble, Babble, BABBLE,

Cc
cancer, Cancer, CANCER, vaccine, Vaccine, VACCINE, cachectic, Cachectic, CACHECTIC,

That is my rough start. Comments?

Seems clear enough, Eben. I can help you with the Finnish. Would you prefer short or long words, or perhaps a mixture?

“Apple, ’Apple, Napa” Napa’ (Apple Napa) etc. ?

Puntuation test?

ChrisL

I was going for a mix because English uses short & medium length words in typical use. In contrast, the German version of this document should have short medium & long I think.

Because English includes ’loanwords’ like doppelgänger and Pâté that are used with accents I included accents too but I have separated towards the end them because they are atypical.

Unfortunately I don’t have the abreviations and punctuation examples in place yet.

I was thinking one sample per common/major puntuation glyph:

. - Hello.
? - How are you?
, - I am fine, how are you?
; - I was fine before; and now I am fine too.
! - What a silly conversation!
’ - ’What a silly conversation’?
” - Yesterday he said “I don’t know what you mean by ’What a silly conversation’ can you explain?”.

(I need to add curly quotes as well)

() - How can you say ( cough, cough) ’What a silly conversation!’?
& - It’s just what Bob & Alice say all the time.
# - And write with their #3 pencil I might add.
* - # three* *= Sometimes Number is writter as #.

That kind of thing.

I would also like to have things like ’lbs. , St. (street), St (Saint) but the truth is I haven’t looked into it in enough detail. Also I am not as sure that breaking that by langauge is the right way to do it. It might be better to have examples and list where they are used. For instance US & UK standard for this stuff vary I expect.

Mili do you want to start right away or wait until we have all vetted an english template?

Puntuation test?

Well, that’s why I posted it. No doubt there may be better words, better ways or organizing them and even missed examples that aught to be included. What do you think Chris? Are you sggesting working a puctuation test in as well? I think that might be too much visual info in one go to be helpful. But maybe not. What do you all think?

Eben, I’m going to start thinking about the words in a bus on my way to a meeting today, but please don’t expect immediate results. I’m rather busy at the moment.

I am grateful for all your help already. Anything additional will be a bonus whenever that is. Thanks!

Some words in portuguese:

conseqüência
argüição
monções
pinhão
coelhinho

Like this?

Ää
äänittää, Äänittää, ÄÄNITTÄÄ (three in one!)
äiti, Äiti, ÄITI; mikä, Mikä, MIKÄ or sää, Sää, SÄÄ; säätiö, Säätiö, SÄÄTIÖ

Öö
öky, Öky, ÖKY; keskiö, Keskiö, KESKIÖ or yö, Yö, YÖ; söötti, Söötti, SÖÖTTI

Söötti and öky should probably be replaced with better words. That Öölanti, maybe.

Lari, I’ve got also ääliö, määkiä, käymälä, öylätti, töölö and kylmiö on my list now.

Problems with doubles and endings with B, C, F, G (aggressiivinen and grilli are in), H (hohhoijaa? not really a word), J, K and M (last letter missing), Q (completely empy), V (end missing), W (only Wirtanen...), X and Z (empty), Å (double and end)

Most of the missing cases mentioned above are either extremely rare in Finnish or nonexistent.

All the other letters have been thought about but not yet typed

Finnish looks like so much fun! It just makes you smile to look at it.

ChrisL

Sinebrychoff, puffi, Zacharius… this is hard. Proper words that end in consonants are rare. L, N and S (T with plurals) are the only ones I can think of right now. B, C, F, Q, W, X, Z and Å are not even part of the ye olde finnish alphabet, that is there are no words other than those borrowed from other languages that have them.

Well, here’s one version of the Finnish:

A
ahven, Ahven, AHVEN
maalaaja, Maalaaja, MAALAAJA
kukka, Kukka, KUKKA
B
blini, Blini, BLINI
abba, Abba, ABBA

C
celcius, Celcius, CELCIUS
D
derivaatta, Derivaatta, DERIVAATTA
E
etätyö, Etätyö, ETÄTYÖ
teepannu, Teepannu, TEEPANNU
kalle, Kalle, KALLE
F
foliorulla, Foliorulla, FOLIORULLA
puffi, Puffi, PUFFI
sinebrychoff, Sinebrychoff, SINEBRYCHOFF
G
grilli, Grilli, GRILLI
aggressiivinen, Aggressiivinen, AGGRESSIIVINEN

H
häntä, Häntä, HÄNTÄ
hihhuli Hihhuli HIHHULI
pöh, Pöh, PÖH
I
iilimato, Iilimato, IILIMATO
piimä, Piimä, PIIMÄ
talvikki, Talvikki, TALVIKKI
J
jalopeura, Jalopeura, JALOPEURA
kaija, Kaija, KAIJA

K
kuorma-auto, Kuorma-auto, KUORMA-AUTO
pakkanen, Pakkanen, PAKKANEN

L
lainelauta, Lainelauta, LAINELAUTA
mollukka, Molukka, MOLLUKKA
sammal, Sammal, SAMMAL
M
märehtijä, Märehtijä, MÄREHTIJÄ
mämmi, Mämmi, MÄMMI

N
nenäliina, Nenäliina, NENÄLIINA
pannukakku, Pannukakku, PANNUKAKKU
pörriäinen, Pörriäinen, PÖRRIÄINEN
O
ohjauspyörä, Ohjauspyörä, OHJAUSPYÖRÄ
soosi, Soosi, SOOSI
valvomo, Valvomo, VALVOMO
P
pääministeri, Pääministeri, PÄÄMINISTERI
oppipoika, Oppipoika, OPPIPOIKA
Q
R
raitiovaunu, Raitiovaunu, RAITIOVAUNU
parrasvalo, Parrasvalo, PARRASVALO
tytär, Tytär, TYTÄR
S
sammakko, Sammakko, SAMMAKKO
kassi, Kassi, KASSI
vatsakas, Vatsakas, VATSAKAS
T
tähtivyö, Tähtivyö, TÄHTIVYÖ
päättäjäiset, Päättäjäiset, PÄÄTTÄJÄISET
hölmöt, Hölmöt, HÖLMÖT
U
uimakoulu, Uimakoulu, UIMAKOULU
muuttua, Muuttua, MUUTTUA or kuu-uutinen, Kuu-uutinen, KUU-UUTINEN
almu, Almu, ALMU
V
vilkkuva, Vilkkuva, VILKKUVA

W
wirtanen, Wirtanen, WIRTANEN

X
Y
yrjänä, Yrjänä, YRJÄNÄ
pyynikki, Pyynikki, PYYNIKKI
hyppy, Hyppy, HYPPY
Z
zacharias, Zacharias, ZACHARIAS

Å
åland, Åland, ÅLAND

Ä
äiti, Äiti, ÄITI
määkiä, Määkiä, MÄÄKIÄ
pähkinä, Pähkinä, PÄHKINÄ
Ö
öylätti, Öylätti, ÖYLÄTTI
töölö, Töölö, TÖÖLÖ
kylmiö, Kylmiö, KYLMIÖ

Great stuff Mili!

ChrisL

This is what I made for English today (& I second my appreciation; Great stuff Mili!) Feel free to quibble with my choices or add to them if you like.

Aa: apple, Apple, APPLE, aah, Aah, AAH, baathist, Baathist, BAATHIST, napa, Napa, NAPA,
Bb: beanpole, Beanpole, BEANPOLE, babble, Babble, BABBLE, nib, Nib, NIB,
Cc: cancer, Cancer, CANCER, vaccine, Vaccine, VACCINE, antiseptic, Antiseptic, ANTISEPTIC,
Dd: dog, Dog, DOG, sodden, Sodden, SODDEN, god, God, GOD,
Ee: empathy, Empathy, EMPATHY, been, Been, BEEN, smile, Smile, SMILE, licensee, Licensee, LICENSEE
Ff: frog, Frog, FROG, stuffed, Stuffed, STUFFED, staff, Staff, STAFF,
Gg: great, Great, GREAT, froggy, Froggy, FROGGY, stag, Stag, STAG,
Hh: hill, Hill, HILL, hitchhike, Hitchhike, HITCHHIKE, fish, Fish, FISH
Ii: insight, Insight, INSIGHT, waterskiing, Waterskiing, WATERSKIING, cacti, Cacti, CACTI
Jj: job, Job, JOB, avijja, Avijja, AVIJJA, hajji, Hajji, HAJJI, taj, Taj, TAJ
Kk: knit, Knit, KNIT, trekkers, Trekkers, TREKKERS, book, Book, BOOK
Ll: light, Light, LIGHT, alligator, Alligator, ALLIGATOR, mall, Mall, MALL
Mm: mouse, Mouse, MOUSE, mommy, Mommy, MOMMY, allium, Allium, ALLIUM
Nn: nymphs, Nymphs, NYMPHS, sunny, Sunny, SUNNY, amphibian, Amphibian, AMPHIBIAN
Oo: owl, Owl, OWL, spoon, Spoon, SPOON, also, Also, ALSO
Pp: practical, Practical, PRACTICAL, flippancy, Flippancy, FLIPPANCY, top, Top, TOP
Qq: quake, Quake, QUAKE, zaqqum, Zaqqum, ZAQQUM, umiaq, Umiaq, UMIAQ
Rr: grrl, Grrl, GRRL, hurricane, Hurricane, HURRICANE, ear, Ear, EAR
Ss: so, So, SO, sassafrass, Sassafrass, SASSAFRASS, atrocious, Atrocious, ATROCIOUS
Tt: the, The, THE, tsunami, Tsunami, TSUNAMI, mottled, Mottled, MOTTLED,
Uu: ulu, Ulu, ULU, vacuum, Vacuum, VACUUM, bayou, Bayou, BAYOU
Vv: valley, Valley, VALLEY, savvy, Savvy, SAVVY, maglev, Maglev, MAGLEV
Ww: white, White, WHITE, glowworm, Glowworm, GLOWWORM, sorrow, Sorrow, SORROW
Xx: xenophobe, Xenophobe, XENOPHOBE, zaxxon, Zaxxon, ZAXXON, bordeaux, Bordeaux, BORDEAUX
Yy: you, You, You lyyn, Lyyn, LYYN, smiley, Smiley, SMILEY
Zz: zowie, Zowie, ZOWIE, puzzle, Puzzle, PUZZLE, fuzz, Fuzz, FUZZ,

This is a long thread, and I have only skimmed it, so I may be trying to make points already made.

The “word test” is a nice idea, but it would be a tremendous effort. In the original post, I saw WAVE. Remember, the amount you kern the “A” to the “W” is constant for all following letters. I pretty much guarantee you if you pick a kern value for “WA” looking at “WAVE’, you will be shocked about the “WA” kern value when the word is “WAR.”

You are also not apt to come up with all the pairs needed. I’ve been setting type for almost 30 years, and something you’ve never thought of always becomes a problem — Quick: is there a word using “Yg”? Yes, Ygraine, the name of King Arthur’s mom.

As to diacritics, I agree they often need work, and not only the umlaut. Both position and shape matters. The macron should have a height over the letters in keeping with the umlaut, and these should also relate to the other diacritics. I also think the accents over capitals should relate to those over the lower-case letters, though what bothers one person may not bother another. The capital accents in Quadraat have always seemed unfortunate to me. Your mileage may vary.

Another place to look at diacritics is in conjunction with other letters. How about “f” with any of the vowels carrying an umlaut or a grave? Frequently, more f-ligatures are needed — “f_agrave,” f_egrave,” “f_udieresus” etc. When they are needed, you usually have to redraw the “f” a bit as well as fooling with the position and spacing of accent.

So while a list might be nice, as a comp I’ve abandoned any hope of coming up with anything complete, and fix things (when the EULA allows, of course) as they come up. I can’t resist: for those of you who have a EULA which prohibits the user from any modification, including kerning, I’ll bet a considerable sum I’ve set a book about some topic that will embarrass your font. A better practice, I think, is to work with your “end-users” and update the fonts from time to time as problems appear and are resolved.

Charles Ellertson

“Froggy” hmmm, now that has some possibilities :-)

ChrisL

I had almost forgotten my favorite English poem for testing type. It has several nonstandard pairings of glyphs is is just plain fun too!

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

ChrisL

Charles, the samples we are working on here are not meant to be the basis of a kern test. There are many other good ways of doing that. These samples are meant to help us get a sense of how glyphs are combined in a given language. To help us see patterns we would not imagine otherwise. And so that our designs can be tuned to languages beyond our own.

Chris, I always loved that poem.

Does any body have suggestions about who else to ask so we can add languages? Any volunteers?