User Guide

FontLab 4
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E n c o di n g Mo de s
Support for almost all known character indexing methods is one of the key
FontLab features.
Here’s how it works:
A font is just a big collection of glyphs that are used to represent many
characters (more about that in the following section). On an average screen
the Font Window can show just a few hundred character cells, so we need
to have some method to browse the font “through” the Font Window.
In FontLab you can choose one of four so-called Encoding modes that
allow you to select a subset of the glyph collection and show it in the top
part of the Font Window for easier access.
In the following sections you will find more information about encoding
modes, Unicode and name-based identification and the character-glyph
model.