FontLab encodings tool
For all FontLab users out there who hate building numbered lists for FontLab encoding files, especially as glyph complements are getting bigger and bigger.
We have just updated a tool that helps to manipulate text lists of glyph names. With it you can renumber a sequence of glyphs using a new text file of glyph names or an existing FL encoding file.
The tool will pick out the first word of each line in the text file and re-apply the encoding sequence starting with the number you give. You can leave empty blocks or incorporate dummy sequences using the codes shown.
WARNING
Never use it on a FontLab encoding file in the Encodings folder, always use a duplicate.
It’s not much but it helps us, so we are sharing it.
Download the Mac Version here
Download the Windows version here
User:fluser
Password:flencodings
All comments and suggestions are welcome at mail@dtptypes.com but please remember you use the software at your own risk.
20.Jun.2008 10.22am
Cool! I love it.
Thank you very much
20.Jun.2008 6.36pm
Very good.
Thanks
20.Jun.2008 7.44pm
I keep getting a prompt for a login and password from your server. Is there a guest login?
ChrisL
21.Jun.2008 7.43am
Chris
Use the following:
User:fluser
Password:flencodings
21.Jun.2008 10.09am
Thanks!
ChrisL
27.Jun.2008 3.34pm
Thanks for sharing! Could anyone share why is it good to have numbered encodings? In my setup the glyphs are coming in the order I write them in a simple text file with a break after each word.
I must have been missing something? :)
2.Jul.2008 6.31am
Goran
It is a way to give a visual reference to different groups of glyphs.
If like me, you work in FL with a 32 cell wide font grid, it is good to group glyphs in a similar pattern, e.g. Cap A-Z in cells 65-90 and smallcap a-z in cells 385-410, 10 rows down.
It is, of course, just a personal preference.
2.Jul.2008 6.56am
As far as I know when generating Mac Type 1 fonts the encoding has to have decimal positions of the characters specified.
At least, that’s what the FL manual states.
Best,
Artur
2.Jul.2008 10.22am
Malcolm, I got it – thank you very much – it is indeed a handy tool.
Cheers!
2.Jul.2008 6.21pm
Arthur, I agree with you, Type1’s need to have the encoding defined correctly to match the output, but with TrueType and OpenType the encoding scheme is just a convenient way of displaying the glyphs in a layout grid, which I find is quite important when working on fonts of many hundred glyphs.
15.Jul.2008 2.33am
That’s a very neat tool! I am using it for my current project. Now I can bin the clumsy spreadsheet I had been using for this purpose.
Just a little cosmetic “feature request”: Would it be possible not to give empty lines a number (but still increase the count)? The only effect would be that in FontLab these cells would get the caption “—-” instead of the number, which helps when you use them as intentionally empty “spacers”.
18.Jul.2008 1.27am
what i really like about features in FontLab are the dockable toolbars. There are separate toolbars for the application window, the font window-where the entire font is displayed, and for the glyph editing window-where the individual characters are edited.that mekes the designing very easy.
Vik
————
Local Directory
18.Jul.2008 5.03pm
Tim - Thanks for the feedback. I’ll put in a check box option to ’Omit numbers on empty lines.’ and post the update in a few days.
Malcolm
21.Jul.2008 1.51am
New version now available with Tims’ suggested change.
Download the Mac Version here
Download the Windows version here
User:fluser
Password:flencodings
If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to let me know. One suggestion has been put forward to make this more of an FL encodings manager tool, but I’m not sure I have the time to do that at the moment.
23.Jul.2008 2.11pm
Hi Malcolm, thanks but the Mac version still seems to be the same, the .app file has a last modified date of 20 June. Any chance we can get an update there as well?
28.Jul.2008 2.34am
Tim - Mac update uploaded now.
Sorry for the delay.
Malcolm
29.Jul.2008 2.29pm
Are there special requirements so the program recognizes lines as empty? I can’t get it to omit the numbers on blank lines although I ticked the checkbox. I also tried various encodings and line breaks.
30.Jul.2008 5.52am
Tim - Nothing special here, Mac version didn’t like the empty lines. Not sure why. New Mac version uploaded now. Hope it works for you this time.
Malcolm