User Guide

just the way you want.
Let’s say you have now worked out a basic alphabet and it
is looking good when you do some proof printing of various
letter combinations. But when you print two “l”s together,
they look mechanical and wooden. Here’s where the fun
begins, and the complications start. Make yourself a nice
calligraphic double “l,” with one letter a little taller than the
other. Then when you’re setting type you can do a “search
and replace” command and drop a hand-tooled double “l” in
for every two twin “l”s. Alternate characters look really
neat, and give the look of authenticity to calligraphic
typesetting. You can create as many double letters as you
want. You can create nice combinations of “Th.” You can
give your font 15 different “a”s, if you feel in the mood.
That’s the creative part.
The complex part comes in with the decision on just where
in the world of keyboard character positioning do you put a
double “l.” There are no standards and no rules. If you are
the only person who is going to use the font, you can do
anything you like, as long as you make yourself a map so
you can find that double “l” six months from now.
But if you’re going to sell the font, you will do some brow
furrowing, because you will probably be supplying both Mac
and PC versions of your font, and characters maps differ
considerably between the two platforms and also within the
two platforms. The safe way out is to not put anything in
the “Upper ASCII” positions (numbers 128 to 255) except
standard position international accent characters. Put extras
into a separate font on the upper/lower case keys, even
though it is much less convenient than having all the
alternates in one font.
Or, if you’re creating fonts in Mac original format, put the
alternates wherever it’s most convenient for Mac users
(bearing in mind that there are differences between System
6 and 7 key positions). Then make a separate font and put
the “Upper ASCII” characters into it, on upper/lower case
keys and supply both fonts for PC users.
Another aspect of calligraphic font making arises if you
decide to make a script face, one in which all letters in a
word appear joined, as if written in one continuous hand. It
is quite possible to create a font of script letters that will
Fontographer User's Manual
2: Creating New Fonts Page #30