Any way to set ttfautohint’s Blue Zone Reference Font from within Glyphs?

Glyphs
1

If I understood it correctly, ttfautohint’s Blue Zone Reference Font performs a similar function to that of Glyphs’ Font Alignment Zones, which is to avoid height differences between different fonts of the same family at small sizes.

I’m exporting my fonts as TTFs. From my testing, autohinted CFF-based fonts respect the font alignment zones, whereas TrueType fonts do not. Is there any way to set the Blue Zone Reference Font from within Glyphs or should I autohint TTFs separately?

Working on Glyphs 2.4.4 and 2.5b (1127).

2

Do you really use ttfautohint? Then you may have more luck asking in the ttfauthint forum.

3

Oh, I thought Glyphs used ttfautohint when I checked Autohint + Save as TTF at export…
I do not use ttfautohint separately right now, only Glyphs.

4

Yes. Glyphs uses fftautohint. I just meant that about details of how to use it you might find more info there.

5

Ok, let me rephrase the issue.

I have my glyphs file set up as follows. Notice the Family Alignment Zones parameter.

49
491102×414 33.3 KB

I exported the fonts in 3 different ways.

  1. In the first example, the fonts were exported as OpenType PS (.otf). The result honors the Family Alignment Zones.
  2. In the second example, the fonts were exported as OpenType TT (.ttf). The result does not honor Family Alignment Zones, as the bold weight gets rendered taller than the regular. I’m guessing Family Alignment Zones only works on PS hinting.
  3. In the last example, the fonts were exported as OpenType TT (.tff) unhinted. Later on I ran ttfautohint on the fonts from Terminal using the --reference parameter.

autohint%20sample

These were the commands I ran on terminal:

ttfautohint Graviola-Regular.ttf Graviola-Regular-hinted.ttf
ttfautohint --reference Graviola-Regular-hinted.ttf Graviola-Bold.ttf Graviola-Bold-hinted.ttf

How can I achieve the result on the third example using Glyphs only? Is there a parameter I can add to my fonts so the Glyphs’ version of ttfautohint knows which instance should be used as Blue Zone Reference Font?

6

I have a look at that.

2 Likes
7

Any news here?

8

OK, here is how to do it:

  1. Place a reference TTF somewhere where you have no spaces in the path, e.g. your home folder, in my case /Users/mekka/font.ttf
  2. Add ttfautohint option parameters to all relevant instances.
  3. Run Script > mekkablue > Hinting > Set ttfautohint Options, pick reference and as value write the full path:
    image
  4. Press Set (perhaps check the Macro window for potential errors) and export the font as TrueType.

In my experience, path abbreviations (like ~) did not work. Neither did placing the path in quotes. That is why the path needs to be free of spaces.

9

Great, thanks Rainer!