Thursday, June 26, 2014

Adjusting working character set(s) / Jump to character / Adjust Multiple sidebearings plugin



Creating a character set work with as opposed to seeing everything. See the screenshots below.
Start by accessing Window > View








How do you get multiple glyph window / spacing center to show up?
Hold cmd + click the space center or the glyph you wish to edit.





Jump to character
I noticed a lot of people have been closing and opening individual window to modify the characters, the default hot key to jump to another character is 'j'  (can be changed in preferences)



Marking glyphs for workflow purposes.
You can mark a glyph by selecting the mark icon on the main panel.



You can customize marking colors in Robofont > Preferences > Misc


Font Bureau has a usefol tool to adjust the spacing of multiple characters. Link to instructions below.
https://github.com/FontBureau/fbOpenTools/tree/master/AdjustMetrics

Monday, June 23, 2014

Test Installing

Make sure you give your font a name in Font > Font Info.





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Instead of generating the font and install it,
You can use the test install function under File > Test install


However, you might want to go check in File > Preferences > Misc
and make sure "Remove Overlap" is checked next to Test Install Options.

Don't worry about the hinting. 


You need to keep Robofont open if you use Test Install, 
the font you created will disappear from your InDesign font selection if you quit Robofont.

If it doesn't work, try checking your Output window (Python > Output Window) to see why it won't work...
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Some tips for drafting http://vimeo.com/34351633

Robofont Guide Pt. 1

There were some recurring questions in class this week. Some of you already know this but for others who are starting to have the same issues.

How do I space the 'space' character?

There should be a glyph called 'space'  in the glyph panel. You should be able to hit 'space' in space center in order to adjust the width of the 'space' character.


If you can't find it for glyph for 'space' for some reason... then go into Font > Add Glyph and add the 'space' character below.

How do I transform all my glyphs at once if I want to make my x-height higher?

Go into the inspector panel (command + I) and make sure you can see most of the panel.



After making sure the above are checked you can go use the dropdown Transform menu.



How should I arrange my workspace?

I usually arrange mine like this 


A single window mode is also available through the settings


Single Window Mode looks like this


How do you get all the point coordinates to show up? 

On the bottom left of the glyph panel, there's some display selections you might want to change, I would select the Point Coordinates and Rulers (for creating overshoot guides)


How do I create an overshoot guides that will show up in all of the glyph window?

Drag a horizontal guide down from the ruler bar at the top (like Illustrator)

Make sure the line is activated (hover on the guideline so that the icon change from the arrow pointer to 2 parallel lines), then do a Ctrl+Click to get the guide option.


Select "Is Global" to have it appear in every glyph.
Might want to select Lock Guides as well so that it is locked in every glyph.

How do I accurately move the point?

Shift + Arrow moves the point by 10
Command + Shift + Arrow moves the point by 100

Command + T to free transform the point(s) you want
Command + T + shift free transform while keeping the proportions

Other default hotkeys for the glyph window are in the link below.

For other command shortcuts, I would go back to the vimeo video I linked in the first email. The hot keys for the arrow / pen tool in the glyph panel are 1, 2 respectively. You can also set your own hotkeys by going into the preferences.


Best,
Prin