Back, and a question about a glyph manager

**Aeneas** · 18 January 2008, 01:52 PM

Here is an example. Someone chose the Alchemy font from typographic.net for a website and cover artwork for CD etc

You can download the pdf with all characters here:

http://www.typography.net/info/fonts/Alchemy_Sample.pdf

As you can see there are several variants on many letters.

Here he explains, and shows how that Adobe glyph palette works:

http://www.typography.net/info/How_to_use_OT.pdf

And what I want is to be able to use those in Xara without having to follow the expensive Adobe way.

As I wrote before: I have been away from Xara for a long period and it may be something easy, or it may not. I do hope there's an easy way.

Thanks for your interest and help!

**ss-kalm** · 18 January 2008, 02:13 PM

Well I can't experiment with the Alchemy font as it's a $250.00 font (and I don't have it)

If possible I need to get hold of a font that you need so that I can see what software can use it. I'm assuming that I don't have a suitable fonts on my system, so I need a freeware font or the name of a font, so that I can try and find one. Without a useable example it's going to be nearly impossible to find suitable software.

**Aeneas** · 18 January 2008, 07:01 PM

I don't have the Alchemy font either as I will only buy it if the ones who want it also pay for it. But I have several others, yet none of the "complete" Open Type fonts I know are free. I'll try to find one, but it will be difficult.

Meanwhile I got home and found the Xtreme 3.2 cd's in my letterbox, installed it and the updater to 3.4.
Once again: it's not that I'm not happy with Xara or want to whine about some missing fluffy and highly personal detail.
Xara does have a lot of features InDesign also has (or should I write this vice-versa?) like text in columns, text areas with overflow, ... and a superb anti-alias. Seen the list of fonts that come with it and all the text tools I can't see why this has been overlooked. I'll contact Xara and ask what to do. As you probably saw in that pdf, there are far more than the 25§ ANSI characters.

If I do find a free font, I'll contact you.

**ss-kalm** · 18 January 2008, 07:49 PM

Babel Map (Freeware) - See below - Will read all the unicode characters, and will paste them into Xara. You have to make sure Xara is on the right font (or choose paste in line). You can try if free. Character Map and Character Map Pro will only do 255 Characters. Babel Map will read all the characters I believe, Just have to find an extended free open type font now ......... OR you can try some of yours in BabelMap.

If anyone knows of a freeware open type font that I can experiment with I would be grateful.

**ss-kalm** · 18 January 2008, 08:43 PM

OK - I found a Freeware OTF font (akaArcade) here. This font has 375 Glyphs. BabelMap seems to be able to read all these glyphs and copy them to the clipboard for pasting into Xara without any problems. It may not be as good as you would like, but it works and it's free.

**timhines** · 18 January 2008, 09:35 PM

Originally Posted by ss-kalm

Character Map and Character Map Pro will only do 255 Characters.

The standard Windows XP Character map program (*) will deal with full Unicode fonts okay. This was assembled in Character Map (using a Unicode font - in this case Arial) and cut and pasted as a string as rich text into Xara:

http://www.timhines.com/Temp/charmap.jpg

* If it's not somewhere under Start|Programs|Accessories, you can do Start|Run and type charmap into the box and click OK.

**Aeneas** · 18 January 2008, 09:49 PM

I tried it, and it is certainly a very useful tool.
II've read some webpages on fontforge and it looks like ligatures and variant (alternate) versions are in the so-called "private user" area of the font. I haven't been able to see the glyphs in this area in Babelpro (I only get a rectangular glyph) .

**ss-kalm** · 19 January 2008, 01:58 AM

You're right Tim - Thank You, The Windows Character map will do all the characters. I tried the Character Map Pro and that only did 255. With the Arial font the standard Character Map views ay least 650 glyphs. There is no reason to assume that it cannot read all open type fonts.

Aeneas: Try the standard Windows Character Map with some of your open type fonts. It should work well with Xara.

**Aeneas** · 19 January 2008, 07:38 AM

I tried an Adobe Open Type that came with CS2 and indeed, way down at the bottom I can see the extra characters in the private use department.
Then I tried some of the fonts I bought separately and many of the characters that should be there seem to be missing. So it may well be that I have been looking for things that were advertized but that aren't there.
Which means that I'll have to contact the font-creators and ask them why they aren't or how I can get access to them.

But before that, I'll ask someone I know who has Illustrator whether he wants to show me what variants there are.

Many thanks!
And I will certainly finisnh this thread with a conclusion.