Scaling and units of measure in Type3.2

[emiljabo]

Hi, I'm pretty new to typeface design.

I have created my glyphs in Adobe Illustrator. All of the glyphs in the design are correctly sized in relation to each other in Illustrator. I want to scale the height of my glyphs in Illustrator so that when I import them as an .svg into each character map they are the same size as the current "caps height". Basically so that they import at the correct height without having to scale them in Type3.2. The cap height in my set-up in Type3.2 is "710". I presume that the unit of measure is "Points"? So the "Caps height" is "710 Points", is that correct?


When I set the units in Illustrator to points and then scale the glyphs to "710 points" in height and import them onto the character map they are larger in height than the current caps height in Type3.2.

Can anyone advise me as to what I'm missing here?

Thanks.

[emiljabo]

Ok, been doing some testing and the size of the glyph in Illustrator does not make a difference to what size the glyph is once it is imported into Type3.2. So I suppose my question is now: How can I precisely and uniformly scale my imported glyph so that is it's height is exactly the same as the measurement between the "baseline" and the "'caps height"

Thanks,

[Allan Murray]

Generally the page size of the .svg is scaled to equal the em unit size of the font (unless Type cannot establish the page size, then the bounds of the .svg image are scaled to the em unit size).

Altering the em unit size (font menu > metrics) temporarily before importing will change it imported size (make sure you change it back afterwards).

Or, better use an action script to scale the glyph afterwards:

## Scale to caps height##
set ymin 0
set F0 [ymax-ymin]
## set F0 ymax
set F1 [100*caps/F0]
stretch F1 F1
set rsb 0

[emiljabo]

Thanks Allan, I will try this.

[emiljabo]

Hi Allan,

I tried the action script that you posted to scale the glyph to the caps height and although it scaled the glyph paths the result was not precise. Below is a screen grab of the top of the glyph after I ran the action. As you can see the top of the glyph bleeds over the top of the caps height guide. I measured this overlap with the ruler tool and it is "4". IS there a reason why it may not be scaling to the exact height of the caps height? The bottom of the glyph aligned perfectly to the baseline each time I tried the action. Maybe there is a setting that is causing this?




Thanks.

[Allan Murray]

Sorry, that is due to rounding as the operations being carried out using integer values.

This script should eliminate the effects of rounding:

## Scale to caps height##
set ymin 0
set F0 ymax
set F1 [1000*caps/F0]
stretch F1 F1
stretch 10 10
set rsb 0

[emiljabo]

Allan, wonderful, I'll try that one.