Hi all, I'm not sure if this is the best place to post a question like this, so if not, maybe someone could direct me to a better place to find an answer.

Here's my issue. I'm creating my first font. I designed the font in InkScape and then opened the .svg file in FontForge. Right now everything is looking good except for the single quotes and the double quotes. In Inkscape, I can only designate uncurled glyphs for these. So when I had the file open in Fontforge I just duplicated the images I'd made, flipped them around and then renamed the glyphs in the Element Glyph popup menu.

However when I install the font and start typing, every time I try to insert a ' or " or apostrophe Word kicks me out of my font and starts typing in either Currier New or Times New Roman. But when I highlight the text (including the ' and ") and change it back to my font name, the correct symbols that I designed show up.

I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Does anyone who designs fonts have any insight?

Just a wild guess, but could this be a misunderstanding between the "different kinds of apostrophes"? Maybe you could start with this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Unicode

Thanks for the reply.

I assigned it u+2019 and then in the alternate unicode encodings area I inserted the u+0027. Do I need to create duplicate glyphs and assign them individually?

But this is also having trouble with double quotes, too. I used u+201c and 201d for those. Correct?

Okay, Thanks for the screen capture. I mistakenly assumed that the codes that showed in the blue box were codes that FF had automatically assigned to the characters. So once I figured out that was not the case, I inserted all the codes into the alternate encoding variations area, all is working just fine.

Thanks, for taking time to help!

LynetteBonner, There are quite a few different places to put the quotation marks, for proper display:

034 quote dbl
039 quote single

These two positions are for 'straight quotes', that appear in a text document. You'll need different source graphics for these.

130 quote single base
132 quote dbl base

These two are right quotation marks, and are placed on the base line, rather than near the caps height.

145 quote left
146 quote right
147 double quote left
148 double quote right

These are well above the base line, where you'd want them to be in text.

When using single or double quotes around a word, phrase, or sentence, you might need to close the quotes, for the left quote to appear in text display.

I can't tell you more. I had the same problem until recently, I was given the above advice, and the quotes work fine in my new font, not yet released.

~bobistheowl

Thanks! I'll take a look at that. I'm still doing a lot of reading on font design. Appreciate the input!

I am totally unfamiliar wit FontForge - and hope to keep it that way. Other font editors have a more logical approach which helps undertanding how to do things.
As Bobbie said there are several different sort of quotes as used by, for example MS Word. These need to be correctly mapped and preferably have the correct glyph sequence. It so seems - but Claude can explain better on that - that FontForge does not map according the Windows and Mac glyph sequence. So make one mistake and the whole thing becomes a mess. There are font editors out there that help you prevent this. Not the Linux thingies though

That's good to know. I don't need one for Linux. Was just using it because it was free. Any recommendations for good starter programs other than Fontforge? I'm willing to pay, but don't wan't to spend hundreds.

Le pire soft est Glyph , pas de manuel. J'ai rien pu faire avec ce logiciel.

Use ISO-8859-1 or ISO-10656-1



Ctrl-i

Stay with FontForge. Once you get the hang of it, you will like it. Ask Claude. Just look at his fonts, those were done in FontForge. You can also make pretty fonts in FontForge, just like Claude, once you get to know the program better.

I do not think there is a font editor that can match FontForge at that price range ($0 - $0).

Claude and Toto, Good to know. I'll just stick with it for the time being then.

LynnetteBonner, I have a number of font editing programs, but I do almost all of my font creation with ScanFont 3 from FontLab. It was released around 1995, and is no longer sold. It has nothing directly in common with the FontLab software called ScanFont 5, currently sold.

Scanfont 3 is a stand alone Font editor that can create .ttf, and .pfa/ .pfb font files, and .vfb project files that can be opened and modified with FontLab Studio. Scanfont 5 is a plug-in for FontLab Studio.

Unfortunately, ScanFont 3 doesn't work with Windows operating systems later than XP, and not with some Windows automatic update installed soon after January 31, 2014. I had to get a second computer that's not connected to the Internet, with Windows XP as the operating system, to be able to keep using ScanFont 3.

I have to move files between computers with a flash drive, because the two computers would have to be connected through the Internet to have them on a Local Area Network.

My methods are, however, very different from most everyone else'. I use imported monochrome bitmap images made with MS Paint, as opposed to composing glyphs in the font editor, or importing images prepared in an app like Adobe Illustrator. I 'sculpt' rough edged vectors that approximate bitmap images, as opposed to creating a vector image of an illustration prepared and imported from a graphic design program.

With Windows 8, you couldn't use ScanFont 3, even if you wanted to. It's a big reason why I stick with XP, despite not being able to use newer applications that only work with operating systems after XP.

Since I'm on Windows 8.1 that probably won't work for me then. I think for now, after doing some more research, I will stick with the method I used for this one which was to draw the font in InkScape and then import the .SVG file into FontForge and edit a bit more on it there.

I submitted the font to Dafont and they approved it for addition to the site. Here it is: http://www.dafont.com/briarwood.font

I'm already working on another that will be quite different from this one, but alas, my Christmas vacation is long over and life has turned busy again. Even so, I've learned a lot and appreciate all the input I've received here. I think my next one will be better as far as the number of glyphs included etc.

Lynnette

LynetteBonner, you can't go wrong, listening to claudeserieux and toto@k22. Most of what I know about making fonts was either learned from them, or learned on my own, through trial and error.

If you're just starting out, and haven't developed bad habits yet, I'd suggest you try spending a lesser amount of the design time in creating the source graphic you want to import, and more time editing the vector version of that image, in the font editor. With typography, the final state of your vector images is all that matters. You can import a ready made vector, you can import a finished image to convert it to vector, you can draw the glyph entirely within the font editor, or you can 'sculpt' the glyph from a rough shape.

You might want to do a glyph or two by each method in your next font, and see which procedure best suits your creativity.

I used to spend all of my design time making detailed monochrome clip art, to import into a font editor, to attempt to retain as much as possible or the details, when converted to vector format.

Later I've just drawn a rough shape in my font editor, eliminated the unneeded nodes defining the contour outline, and manipulated the remaining nodes like modelling clay. I get my best results that way, where each glyph has as few nodes as possible, but great care is taken, in where the're placed. I'll send you a private message, with some image links related to what I've described above, concerning sculpted glyphs.