CID keyed fonts can set information on the CID font as a whole (rather than just the current sub-font, which is what this command does) from CID->CID Font Info.
- Copy Feature to Font...
- This dialog allows you to copy a set of features from one font to another.
- Default ATT
-
In the font view this is a sub-menu which allows you to generate default
values for various features of the
GPOS
and
GSUB
tables.
The sub-menu consists of a list of feature names (and a few more generic names like "All" which will provide defaults for everything it can figure out, and "Ligatures" which will provide defaults for all ligatures). PfaEdit will look for defaults for all selected characters. There is also one special entry:
- Suffix to Tag...
-
In adobe's glyph naming conventions, alternate forms of glyphs may be named
by appending a suffix to the normal glyph's name. Thus a swash variant of
"A" might be named "A.swash".
Using this command you can tell PfaEdit to associate a given suffix with a feature tag. (in the above example you could associate ".swash" with 'swsh' -- except you don't need to, because PfaEdit already knows about that one).
- Remove All Features
- Removes all typographic features.
- Remove Feature(s)...
- This dialog allows you to select which features to remove.
- Remove Unused Nested Features
- If there are any nested features which are not referred to within any contextual/chaining feature nor apple state machine then this command will remove them.
- Retag Feature(s)...
- This dialog allows you to change the opentype tag (or apple feature/setting) on a given feature.(This does not retag kerning information).
If you
have bitmap fonts this will show their pixel sizes. If you remove a size
that is in the list then that font will be deleted from the sfd file. If
you add a size then that size font will be created and stored in the sfd
file.
PfaEdit deals in pixel sizes, not point sizes. The conversion between pixels and points differs on different systems and indeed on different screens. A point is (approximately) 1/72 of an inch, a pixel is however big a pixel happens to be on your screen. Usually pixels range from about 1/72 of an inch to about 1/144 of an inch. Different systems support different screen resolutions as "standard", and PfaEdit tries to know about these standards.
Screen Resolution |
72dpi Mac |
75dpi X |
96dpi Win |
100dpi X |
120dpi Win |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10pt | 10 | 10 | 13 | 14 | 17 |
| 12pt | 12 | 12~13 | 16 | 17 | 20 |
| 18pt | 18 | 19 | 24 | 25 | 30 |
| 24pt | 24 | 25 | 32 | 33 | 40 |
Sadly your screen will probably not match one of the standard screens precisely. On X the standard resolutions are 75 and 100dpi, on MS Windows 96 and 120dpi, and on the Mac 72dpi. This dialog provides the conversion between pixel size and point sizes at these resolutions.
Normally the new characters are created by rasterizing the outline font. If your system has the freetype2 library installed (and you checked the "Use FreeType" box) then PfaEdit will use the FreeType rasterizer to generate bitmaps, otherwise it will use PfaEdit's built-in rasterizer (which isn't as good, but involves a little less overhead).
Finally, if you have no outline font then the new characters will be created by scaling the (bitmap) font displayed in the font view.
In CID keyed fonts there will not be a set of bitmaps for each sub font,
instead the entire complex of sub-fonts share bitmaps.
PfaEdit
also supports anti-aliased bitmap fonts, and you can use this dialog to generate
them. If you want to generate a 12 point anti-aliased font with 8 bits per
pixel you would type 12@8 into the dialog above. PfaEdit supports 1, 2, 4
and 8 bit per pixel fonts (a 1 bit per pixel font is a standard bitmap, the
others are greymaps).
(New greymaps can not be created by scaling old greymaps, if you wish to
generate a greymap font, you must have an outline font).
As before, if you wish to change a greymap you should refer to it by <pixel-size>@<bits-per-pixel>.
- Flip Horizontally
- Flips the bitmap horizontally.
- Flip Vertically
- Flips the bitmap vertically.
- Rotate 90° CW
- Rotates the bitmap 90° clockwise.
- Rotate 90° CCW
- Rotates the bitmap 90° counter-clockwise.
- Rotate 180°
- Rotates the bitmap 180°
- Skew
- Allows you to specify a ratio by which to skew the bitmap 1:3 means for every 3 pixel rise in y, skew the bitmap one pixel horizontally.
configure-pfaedit.h and then rebuild PfaEdit. This command allows
the user to specify a non-linear transformation as a pair of expressions
(the first specifies the transformation for the x coordinate, the second
for the y coordinate). These expressions may be fairly general functions
of x and y. See the scripting page
for a description of the syntax.
Above is a simple example of what expand stroke can do. It takes the two open paths above left and turns them into the two closed paths right.
The Expand Stroke dialog gives you control over various aspects of the expansion process. You can chose a stroke width, how the ends of an open path should be drawn, and how the path should look when two splines (or lines) join which do not have the same slope (ie. at a corner point). Or you may choose to have the path be that which would be traced by a calligraphic pen, or an eliptical pen. For closed contours you may also choose to remove either the generated contour which is inside the original, or that which is outside.
configure-pfaedit.h and then rebuild PfaEdit. This command takes
the contents of the clipboard and treats it as a tile which is applied to
any selected contours.
This command is probably the buggiest in PfaEdit. So before PfaEdit invokes the command it will save the state to the error recovery file.
Warning: Splines which are tangent (or nearly so) cause problems. Points which are close together can cause problems.
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This will remove everything not in the intersection of two regions.
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This will remove the selected contours from the unselected ones. Only available in the outline character view.
- How far the simplified contour is allowed to stray from the original
- Whether to allow removal of extreme points
- Whether to allow the slope to change at points.
- Whether to make corner points into curve points (by adjusting the control points)
- Whether to flatten small bumps off of lines
Changes
the selected characters so that instead of being a solid block, only the
outline of the character is visible. The characters' bounding box will not
change.
The user has control over the shadow size and angle.
NOTE: It does not read TeX .mf files. The name is chosen because it has some similarity in terms of features.
- Average Points
-
This will look at all the selected points and find the coordinate with the
least change. Then it will average find the median point on that axis and
set all the selected points to have that value for the appropriate
coordinate.
So if you have a line which is almost horizontal, and select its endpoints and apply this command it will be horizontal.
(if you select exactly two points, and they lie close to a 45 diagonal, then they will be forced to the diagonal rather than to horizontal/vertical) - Space Points
-
If you have three or more points selected then PfaEdit will figure out the
coordinate that has the greatest change and will space the points out regularly
along that axis.
If you select one point (and that point is in the middle of a path) then (internally) the point's location will be expressed in a coordinate system which is rotated so that one axis is parallel to the line between the two points that surround the selected point. The selected point will be moved mid-way between the two on this axis, while it's other coordinate remains fixed.
That's an extremely complicated way of saying: If the selected point is connected to two points which are on a horizontal line, then the selected point's x coordinate will be midway between the two, while its y coordinate remains unchanged.
- Space Regions
-
This is similar to the above command except that it allows you to make a
rather simple definition of a collection of points which should be moved
together. Each of these regions will be regularly spaced along the chosen
axis. A region is defined as a collection of points, each one of which is
within some maximum distance of at least one other point in the region. The
purpose of this is to allow you to space out the stems of the letter "m"
so that they regularly spaced horizontally. Sadly it won't work in many cases
because in a serifed font the serifs will often be closer to each other than
to their respective stems.
- Make Parallel
-
If four points are selected, and there are two lines between them, then PfaEdit
will make those lines parallel. If there are four lines between them (ie.
they form a quadrilateral, then PfaEdit will turn it into a parallelogram.
(note, this only works on lines, not on curved splines)
The last point selected will be the one moved (sometimes PfaEdit doesn't remember which point was selected last, then it will just pick one randomly. If you don't want that to happen, select your points and then single click on the one you want moved).
If you have a character which contains both contours and references, PfaEdit does not specify whether references or contours are drawn first (or whether the two are intermixed). If this matters to you, unlink your references.
If not paths are selected, or if all selected paths are open this will be greyed out. I a selected path intersects itself results are indeterminate.
If not paths are selected, or if all selected paths are open this will be greyed out. I a selected path intersects itself results are indeterminate.
This command may produce unexpected results if two splines cross.
If a character contains a flipped reference, this command will be unable to correct the contours inside of the reference directly, instead it will offer to unlink the reference after which it can treat its (former) contours like any others.
If the shift key is not depressed when selecting the menu item this will only build accented letters, if the shift key is depressed it will build general composite characters (fractions, ligatures, digits inside parens, roman numerals, etc.) as well. If invoked by short-cut (Ctl-Shft-A) or mnemonic it will only build accented letters.
If the current character is an accented character (and all the base characters
and accents have already been created) then this command will delete anything
that is currently in the foreground and put a reference to the base character
and another reference to the accent character into the foreground. So if
the current character were "À" then a reference to "A" would be added
to it, and a reference to "`" would be centered above the "A".
If Copy From is set to All Fonts then any
bitmaps will have a similar process done (even in the outline character
view).
A more complete description is given in the section on
accented characters.
PfaEdit does the following when merging CID-keyed fonts:
- If the font in the window (the mergee) is a normal font and the other font (the merger) is a CID keyed font, then the merger font is effectively flattened and the result merged into the mergee.
- If the mergee is a CID keyed font and the merger font is a normal font then the merger font will be merged into whichever of the mergee's subfonts is currently active.
-
If both are CID keyed fonts, then they should:
- Have the same registry and ordering
- The supplement number of the mergee should be at least as big as that of the merger
- The mergee should have at least as many subfonts as the merger.
If these conditions be met then any CIDs from the merger which are not present in the mergee will be merged into the same subfont of the mergee as they came from in the merger.
This strikes me as somewhat problematic, but I can't think of a better solution.