This would only work if all glyphs were symetrical and equivalent on all their left sides. The trouble is that you must balance interletterspacing to different optical values of space. The left of a V is not optically balanced to the left of an H, for example.

ChrisL

I think that I maybe wasnt so clear in my explanation (probably because my bad english). I give it another try =)

The V and H always has the same unoptical balance, no matter where it’s placed, isnt it?

Keep the same spacing but move the letters all to the left. Like you take every letter and move them to the left. In my opinion, the same optical problems will always occure if they are to the left, middle or to the right.

As an example: The “V” would even even break the left sidebearing, then it will look like this in InDesign.

Maybe I’m completely wrong here, but there must have been theories like this before... for me it seems like the font would become more user-friendly.

The problem with your idea is that, by making the left sidebearings equal (in effect) regardless of size, you will now have twice as much difference on the right sidebearing when comparing different sizes. Sure, it will work okay for flush left text, but not so good for centered or flush right.

Well, you definately got a point there... well, it was just an theory that got stuck in my head. Thanks for your replies.

Anyone who wants to speak about hints?

Hi Goran, I’ve been in typography for thirty years and not been bold or imaginative enough to design an original font. I have also been by turns impressed and dismayed by new fonts that become available. Good luck to you - but do you have something original to offer, or another in an interminable list of tweeks and variants. There are not too many typefaces - but there is a lot of shite about - CM/xx

Dear Privateortheris,

I don’t really understand why you are explaining about your feelings towards new typefaces. My question was regarding hints and a theory about placing the letters.

But, as a straight and honest answer tou you:

I’ve been into type design for about 2-3 years. My first try for a new typeface I did at the age of twenty years old. I did the design in Illustrator at that time. This font is to be produced & released this year by Type Foundry Psy/Ops (www.psyops.com). The name of the font is Neptuna. Maybe you’ll get a chance to see it if you are interested in new fonts and typography.

The reason for now learning Fontographer (and asking these questions) is to be able to make my design for new typefaces directly in a professional font-editor, instead of Illustrator.

I thought this forum was the right place to ask specific questions regarding building typefaces in Fontographer, or Fontlab.

And yes - I do think I have something original to offer, but of course, I let the users be the judge of that.

Now, do you have so knowledge about the hinting process? Please share it, if you have the time.

Thanks.

When I was working in Fontographer, I mainly used autohinting. Fontographer’s manual hinting tools are not very good—they give almost no feedback on the effects of what you are doing. That said, I got mixed results with it, and it was even worse if I tried to do it manually. I don’t think it’s very good with hinting, automatic or manual.

The hinting tools in FontLab are much better. Perhaps now that FontLab owns Fontographer and is actively developing it, they will improve its hinting algorithms and functionality in the new version they are working on (the first new version in ten years).

Mark, Thanks for your answer.

I’m curious, what is the worst that could happen if the hinting process is not so well done?

Is it when (if) people print with very low resolution that the hinting helps to correct the shapes of letters? If not well hinting is done, the letters will form different from what the designer may want?

Is it possible to leave out the hinting process completely, that is no hints at all, and how would it effect the font produced?

Thanks.

Hinting is all about compensating for situations where there not enough pixels or bits to display the font in a reasonable way. What happens is that stem thickness varies, counters fill in, thin features disappear, the characters don’t line up along the baseline, etc. Without hinting, fonts look like a bad fax.

Hinting is a way of telling the font rasterizer which parts of the glyphs are important, which parts are stems (and should appear to be the same thickness), and so on. When a font is rasterized, the shapes of the glyphs are altered to fit the pixel grid better and make the font look better at lower resolutions.

In fact, the character shapes are being distorted, but it’s not possible to display fonts accurately at low resolution anyway, so it’s a good compromise. When the hinting process is not so well done, the hints are inappropriate or incorrect and cause the rasterizer to distort the characters in undesirable ways. The most common problem I have seen with Fontographer’s auto-hinting is characters not always aligning correctly along the baseline or x-height.

Hinting nowadays mostly comes into play when a font is displayed on a computer screen. When outputting to medium- to high-resolution devices like laser printers and film, bad hinting or even no hinting is not such a big problem.

Great Mark, I feel I know a little more about this now. Thanks.

Goran,
You might find this previous thread on autohinting of interest:

http://typophile.com/node/15436

ChrisL

Thanks, ChrisL. =)

” for me it seems like the font would become more user-friendly.”
You’re right about that. First, actually, they wanted fonts that were right to the top of the Em, so that the vertical cousin of the problem you describe would be solved. Many display faces in our library are thus crammed to the top of the Em. The right-left problem used to be solved with a 6 pt. space character, and a huge negative kerning pair, or another text box, which technically, is tradiational ;)

Isn’t there something in OT or ATT for this? Like vertical alignment offset or something?

I usually make style sheets with indents to cover situations where there is a vertical alignment problem. This helps because there are (as we know inj this business) often changes. By establishing stylesheets, you can adjust the block indent to match the different type spec.

ChrisL

dezcom - so you mean that you are putting a little extra space inside the textblock to the left on bodycopy and maybe not on the headings?

But what if we didnt had to do this “tricks”. Wouldnt it be really cool if something could be done regarding this vertical left side? Type it - and it will fit perfectly.

When I think about it again: if a font was build in this way my example shows above, the centered would only be moved a little to the left optically. In my opinion, most of the texts are however placed to the left, so still i found this theory a bit interesting. Or why not make some kind of super-font, that automatically adjusts and choose the version depending on if the text is set left, centered, or right. That couldnt be so tricky to pull, could it? Some script or something... Opentype perhaps, as dberlow speaks about?

dberlow - interesting that some of the display faces are build that way. thanks for sharing the info.

BTW....I wish my english was better... :)

Goran,
Your English is fine, don’t let it bother you.

Yes, I put a bit more space to the left on text when the heads above look out alignment with it. It would be nice if we did not have to come up with tricks to make things work. Typographers always have had tricks (using coppers and brass to fix alignment in metal type and kerning LT combinations on a band saw). I think the money in development aspect comes in to play. The profit on type has gotten so small that people can’t afford to put extra time in to really overcome all the problems.

Also, I very much like your new icon!

ChrisL