Combining fonts with different EM sizes

[Ozaru]

I'm trying to combine some public domain fonts to create a single new font (for use with an eBook) that contains the standard Roman alphabet together with a few 'accented' characters (i.e. with macrons) and about a dozen Japanese characters.

The trouble is, the Japanese fonts I've found use an EM size of 4096 while the others are generally 1000. As Type does not appear to contain a 'scale' feature, I can't see any easy way to get them to match, other than using the Roman letters included within the Japanese fonts (which are generally quite hideous, and often monospaced).

Any ideas? Perhaps there are some good Roman public domain fonts with an EM size of 4096? Or other software that allows resizing?

[Allan Murray]

Rescaling can be done using the full version, but not the freeware version.

Cheers
Allan

[Ozaru]

So to confirm, with the full version I should be able to...

1) Open a Japanese font with an EM size of 4096, select a glyph, copy glyph
2) Open a Roman font with an EM size of 1000, find the Japanese character's code point and paste in the glyph, then shrink it to 1/4 the size
3) Save the font and repeat steps 1 & 2 as often as needed
4) Use the resulting font the same way any other Roman font is used

Correct? Are any other steps likely to be necessary, e.g. changing font/glyph metrics, hinting, etc.?

[Allan Murray]

You can do it that way. But if you are importing alot of glyphs then you could also save a range of glyphs to a .gfs file (from the Japanese font). Then you could import all of the glyphs from the gfs file to the Roman font in one go. You can then run a simple action script over the imported glyphs to rescale the glyphs and the glyph metrics. Then you can map them to their correct code points.

This is an action script you could use:
set F1 aw
set F2 lsb
origin 0 0
stretch 25 25
set lsb [F2/4]
set aw [F1/4]
this will rescale the glyph by 25% and divide the (glyph metrics) left side bearing and advance width by 4. You can assign this to a numeric key to perform it at the press of a button, or execute it over a range of glyphs.

Note that hinting would not be retained on the rescaled glyphs.

I suggest you try the demo version to see if you can get the result that you desire (you will not be able to save the complete font - only the first 50 glyphs).