2022-09-07 - Variable Font with Weight and Slant
Here is a sample font project you can freely use that comes with a weight and a slant axis.
Font project file: Whistle.fcp
2022-08-18 - The Smallest Last Resort Font
In general, fonts are used to display text, but no font can hold meaningful glyph outlines for all known characters. Currently, with Unicode 15 to be released in Q3/Q4 of 2022, there are 286,719 code-points assigned, while an OpenType font has a 65,535 glyph limit. While Unicode continues to expand, the OpenType specification might go beyond this 65K limit in the future.
In cases where a shaping engine detects that a character is missing in a font, it will use a fallback font that does contain the specific character. In general, a last resort font contains mappings to all Unicode code points, but does not have a valid glyph outline for all. Ken Lunde has made several of these fonts, for example Adobe Blank 2. As an experiment, we created such a font with FontCreator.
LaRe is an OpenType font with TrueType outlines. It contains two glyphs, the .notdef glyph and an empty glyph for the entire Unicode range (0x0000-0x10FFFF), so including all invalid code-points. True last resort fonts use a special format 13 cmap subtable, which is not widely supported. Web browsers do support it.
Here is the font:
And for some more fun a stripped-down version:
Note: we also made the smallest font ever at 440 bytes in 2014, see below!
2021 - Fractions with help of GSUB LookupType 8
There have been numerous ways to implement fractions, some basic, some advanced, but so far (June 2021) we have never seen it the way we did it with this demo. This nifty feature code implements the frac feature with help of GSUB LookupType 8 (Reverse Chaining Contextual Single Substitution).
languagesystem latn dflt; # Latin default
@figures = [zero-nine];
@figuresNumerator = [zerosuperior one.sups-three.sups foursuperior fivesuperior sixsuperior sevensuperior eightsuperior ninesuperior];
@figuresDenominator = [zero.subs-nine.subs];
lookup ToDenominator { # GSUB lookup type SingleSubstitution
sub @figures by @figuresDenominator;
} ToDenominator;
feature frac { # Fractions
lookup SlashToFraction { # GSUB lookup type SingleSubstitution
sub slash by fraction;
} SlashToFraction;
lookup ReverseChainingContextNumerator { # GSUB lookup type ReverseChainingContext
rsub @figures' fraction by @figuresNumerator;
rsub @figures' @figuresNumerator by @figuresNumerator;
} ReverseChainingContextNumerator;
lookup ChainingContextDenominator { # GSUB lookup type ChainingContext
sub fraction @figures' lookup ToDenominator;
sub @figuresDenominator @figures' lookup ToDenominator;
} ChainingContextDenominator;
} frac;
Demo here: Frac
2021 - Feature Variations go GPOS (kerning)
In January 2021, we made the first variable font with FontCreator. It instantly showed the power of the OpenType Designer, as it allows you to take full control of all OpenType layout features, including feature variations for both GSUB and GPOS. This variable font contains a variation feature substitution that replaces a kern feature that is triggered for large weights.
Updated demo here: Kervrn
2016 - Localisation Demo
An online demo from 2016 which allows you to trigger the locl feature in a font.
Online web page: Mandala and the Dutch ij
2014 - Monstre Color Font
In October 2014 we made a demo color font based on Monstre; only the Capital A is included.
Demo page: Monstre
2014 - Almost Random using calt
A forum topic from February 6, 2014 about:
Add Contextual Alternates to Mimic Random Glyph Rotation
And the online demo page: AlmostRandom
2014 - The smallest font
440 bytes and still valid according to Windows. See this forum topic from February 2014:
The smallest valid font for Windows
2013 - First Color Font
Back in 2013, FontCreator was the first commercial font editor which allows you to make color fonts.
Here is a demo we made showing our logo: Color Font Demo Page