Phinney on Fonts

Tag: encoding

  • More free FontLab encoding files for type designers

    Last week I wrote about posting five FontLab encoding files for Adobe Latin character sets.

    Today I posted in the same Github repository three FontLab encoding files for Adobe Cyrillic character sets, and updated the five Latin files with a few added currency symbols and glyph name changes (as I expected I might).

    The character set definitions underlying these files were built on a bunch of research I did at Adobe back in 2006–08, with additional work by Miguel Sousa. The headers include much detail on the differences between each set, and the languages covered. Both of these character sets reflect the latest data from Adobe on how they name glyphs and what they are including in current fonts (not including OpenType alternates and features, mind you). The headers of the files have some interesting details and history, especially on the Cyrillic side.

    Thanks as always to my old friends at Adobe, including Miguel and David Lemon, for their willingness to share production information with the type design community.

    I dedicate this post and my work on the Cyrillic encoding files to the memory of Emil Yakupov, CEO of the ParaType type foundry in Moscow, who passed away just a month ago at the age of 56. His advice and feedback on Cyrillic character sets—among many things—was invaluable to me. I remember one of our first meetings, when Emil gave me a pair of ParaType catalogs as I was first becoming involved with Cyrillic type design. I still consult them to this day when trying to internalize what forms different Cyrillic characters can take in different font styles.

    Also, Emil remembered by Adam Twardoch.

    Прощай, Эмиль.

     

     

  • Free FontLab Latin encoding files for type designers

    I just posted some free FontLab “.enc” encoding/​character set files for the five Adobe Latin character sets, in my Github repository.

    To install, quit FontLab, find the “Encoding” folder in the shared “FontLab” folder, and drop the files in there. Restart FontLab and these will be available as encodings.

    NOTE: These were later updated to reflect minor tweaks Adobe has made since I described the character sets and posted the data, almost six years ago. I added currency symbols such as the Indian rupee, Turkish lira, Russian ruble and Ukrainian hryvni, and changed a few glyph names to match current Adobe practice. Thanks as always to my old friends at Adobe, including Miguel and David Lemon, for their willingness to share production information with the type design community.

    This follows a couple of possibly-​useful FontLab scripts I posted a couple of weeks ago, in the same place.