TG font collaboration #2 Roundhead

[angelize]

Rather than having them as extra characters of an OTF which is not supported by Xara would be possible to map them to keyboard symbols that are usable in Xara programs?

Full support for open type fonts is something that has been asked for on the forums but I don't think we will be seeing it anytime soon, providing regular keyboard access, even if it has to be an Alt +numberpad code to these extra glyphs would be better IMO at least.

[Christine Farrelly]

That sounds fine - I'll look at doing the regular ones for these.

Christine

[wizard509]

Christine I'm doing the punctuation. Have it part way done.

[Barbara B]

You guys are doing great, and I am thrilled that you are reaching for the stars to make this a usable and practical font.

I have some suggestions, and they are only suggestions since I am not doing any of the tracing or coding work myself !

I think that it would be really nice, if the font contained all the character's you'd need (or as many as possible) if you were using the MS US or English International Keyboard layout. I haven't done the research to know exactly what characters you'd have to do-- but this keyboard layout from the Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.) could show the way. Also you might want to consider releasing an open type version and a tt (for Xara 3d users)



Any extras you might see fit to make or have made that don't fit (Bill can let you all know) could be released as a companion, extra's typeface.

If this idea is approved by this workgroup here is a golden opportunity for any admirers or lurkers to jump in and let Frances and Christine know that you'd like to help doing the research on what additional characters would need to be created and ir help with creating them.

Cheers

[Barbara B]

More character suggestions.

I also think that common typographic elements like em and en dashes, ellipsis. Maybe some nice bullets. Bill do you know if stuff like thin spaces, and non-breaking spaces and hypens is coded into an individual font?

And one of my favorite characters, that you may not be familiar with would be a fun addition - the interrobang, which is used to mark an exclamatory question.

The Wikipedia (Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License) says this about the interrobang

The interrobang is not a standard punctuation mark. Few modern typefaces or fonts include a glyph for the interrobang character. It is at Unicode code point U+203D ‽ interrobang (HTML: ‽).

The interrobang can be used in some word processors with the alt code ALT+8253 when working in a font that supports the interrobang, or using an operating system that performs font substitution.
Depending on the browser and which fonts the user has installed, some of these may or may not be displayed or may be substituted with a different font.

Image	Default font	Fixed	Palatino Linotype	Calibri	Arial Unicode MS	Code2000	Helvetica	Unicode*
	‽	‽	‽	‽	‽	‽	‽	‽
*The Unicode column uses one of a selection of wide coverage Unicode fonts depending on what is installed on your system

Those small p-like glyphs you are seeing in the boxes above actually are text that you can copy and paste into Xara or Word. Select the character and then scroll though your font choices to see what fonts you already have that support the interrobang. It is fun to see how the different font have styled this character.

In fact, I think that looking at how others have interpreted a character using this method could provide insight and inspiration when figuring out how to create the missing roundhand characters.

[angelize]

I decided to break the open type font compatibility discussion into it's own thread so we can continue it there and this thread can continue to be used for discussing the Roundhead font collaboration.

Christine if there are more glyphs you need let me know. Is anyone doing the interrobang?

[Fred C]

...and here the Caps. There are some alternate glyphs; we'll need to decide if/how to use them.

[Christine Farrelly]

Bill, I am quite happy for Fred's glyphs to be used, we interpreted them differently but Fred's will make a smaller font file, fewer nodes.

Christine

[angelize]

Ok first I have a few real world items to take care of, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have for forum stuff for the next couple of days. So either you will have to wait for me or if someone will volunteer to check the .xar files we have so far and look for consistency would be much appreciated.

And Fred, did you do over all of the glyphs Christine did?

My thoughts on Michelle's glyphs: I think the thicker glyphs might work better with the font, like the second euro sign, the first ampersand and the pound sterling sign, but I would like to hear other's opinions on this. Also you have a duplicate ampersand in your .xar file Michelle you have two of the curly one I'd like to see the thicker one if we could.

The fancy alternative glyphs I did I think would be nice as extras, and I haven't had time to look at Larry's file.

[Soquili]

Thank you Christine, I would like for glyphs from everyone to be included.

Alternate glyphs are easily added using Open Type Font features but currently Xara applications do not support their use. We can add them by replacing some little used glyphs.

TalkGraphics is an international forum with members that use umlaut, tilde, grave, cedilla, etc so I would like to include the highlighted glyphs shown in the attached image.