Advice regarding .isol .fina .medi .init

Design
#1

I’m doing a script typeface using .isol, .fina, .medi and .init.

First the kerning, as the letter shapes are slightly different and I plan on doing western, central and south eastern glyphs what is the best way to setup kerning groups?

Should I set 4 kerning groups for each letter i.e.

a.isol
a.fina
a.medi
a.init

Then create say

aacute.isol / kerning group = a.isol
aacute.fina / kerning group = a.fina
aacute.medi / kerning group = a.medi
aacute.init / kerning group = a.init

Is that the best way to do it, or is there a smarter way. Its a lot of kerning, but would be worth it.

One other question do I even need the .medi glyph? I’m using the script build positional calt feature
can I just use the regular glyph for the .medi? will that work as at the moment my regular glyph is not
used at all?

Any help/advice much appriciated

#2

That depends on your design. Also, I guess that e.g. a.fina can share the left group with a.

Do you need all 4 positions as variants of the default? I suggest one of them should be the regular one, like the medial forms, so you would have:

a (medial shape)
a.isol
a.fina
a.init

#3

glyph-design.jpg1451×1217 155 KB

Thanks for the input, this is still work in progress, when you told me about the .isol, .fina, etc in a previouse question I thought I’d make use of them.

So just to clarify I don’t need .medi the default character is medi. I can remove those from my font.

Will the diacritics just need those .isol .fina and .init extra glyphs too? Sorry for all the questions.

#4

If you generate aacute.isol, it will prefer a.isol above a if available. So, yes.