[ome fata A Simplified Guide to ore tite omits wittn FontLab, TypeTool,ScanFomg and/AsiaFont StudioLearn FONTLAB Fast A Simplified Guide to Creating Fonts with FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio Written and Designed by Leslie Cabarga Technical Editor: Adam Twardoch Thanks to Ted Harrison, Yuri Yarmola, Sasha Petrov, Lisa Devlin, and the FontLab team. Also, thanks to Thomas Phinney, Stuart Sandler, Mark Simonson, Steve Zafarana, Hrant Papazian, ‘Sammy Or, James Grieshaber, fill Bell, Eric Olsen, Jeff Holtzman, Zuzana Licho, John Hudson, David Barlia, Ray Larabie, David Berlow, Erik van Blokland, Christian Schwartz, Brian Sooy. Special thanks to Adam Tivardoch for his expertise, and for tolerating my endless questions. This book is composed in Adobe Palatino, and in Amplitude, designed by Christian Schwartz for The Font Bureatt © 2004 by Leslie Cabarga. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro- duced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage or retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Printed in the USA. ISBN 0-9657628-5-8 Published by ICONOCLASSICS Publishing Co. 253 S. Orange Dr. Los Angeles, CA 90036 ‘Tel: 323 549 0700 email: [email protected] website: www.logofontandlettering.com To order additional books direct from the publisher, call or visit: www.logofontandlettering.com Please inquire about bulk and educational discounts.Learn FONTLAB Fast 3 Contents 1 Preliminaries 8 Creating a font: Basic procedure * 10 Launch FontLab * 14 Start a new font © 12 The Glyph window 13 The enhanced Glyph window * 14 What's different in FontLab? © 15 Font encodings: Latin-based 16 Choosing Encodings for designing and generating fonts * 17 Non-latin font encodings * 18 Save the font © 19 The Font Info dialog box * 23 Cap height comparison 2 Starting a Font 23 Getting Characters Into FontLab © 26 Open an existing font * 27 Selecting the right font to open 27 Open a Fontographer .fog file * 28 Import glyphs from Illustrator * 30 Import bitmap scans from Photoshop * 31 In depth: Preparing scanned images ® 33 Make an outline into a background © 34 ‘Make bitmap scans with ScanFont © 39 Autotraced characters in FontLab ¢ 4 Creating glyphs with a digital pen * 44 The Brush tool and digital pen * 43 Vector Paint tools * 45 Tracing with Pen tool and digital tablet © 46 How to trace a scan 3 Drawing a Font 48 Glyph Window details * 49 Alignment Zones * 50 Making points with the Drawing tool + 52 ‘Making and Breaking connections © 84 How to select points and paths * 85 Selecting, Deselecting; the Magic Wand * 56 Working with nodes and paths ¢ 58 Drawing Glyphs * 61 How to Preview your drawing * 65 Pop-up Menus * 67 Transform, Transforming, Transformation * 74 Letter spacing 101 72 Check progress in the Metrics Window * 73 Working suggestions ¢ 74 Optional drawing tools Sketch mode * 75 Working in Sketch mode * 76 Drawing with off-point curves * 77 The Grid and off- point curves * 78 Meter mode A Generating, installing and Printing a Font 81 Making a usable font; Comparing font formats * 83 Generate a Mac Type 1 font * 84 Generate a ‘Mac Type 1 font and install it into Mac OS X.3 ¢ 85 Generate a Mac or PC TrueType font * 87 Install ‘TrueType, OpenType or Type 1 fonts for Mac into Macintosh OS 8.x or 9.x * 8B Install TrueType, OpenType or Type 1 fonts for PC into Windows XP or 2000 # 89 Printing test documents in FontLab 90 Printing tests from installed fonts * 91 FontLab Studio 5's expanded printing