Cursive fonts?

I don’t understand how the cursive anchors work. Do they work on every character pair, or do they align the entire font to work together? Does this magical alignment stay with the font when it is exported?

If someone could point me to some general tips on designing cursive fonts, I’d be very thankful. I’m worried about the thickness of my entrance and exit lines matching up, and the angles at which they ascend and descend.

Thank you for your time,

TA

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Cursive attachment is not intended for Latin. Which script are you developing for?

Cursive attachment ends up as part of the GPOS table and it depends on the layout environment what it does exactly with the information provided in the font. It can turn out to look different in TextEdit and in InDesign.

I’m doing a standard typeface for English–so a latin character set. If this isn’t automated, how do you make sure the letterforms match up?

  1. Make sure the LSBs and RSBs match each other.
  2. Sometimes you need alternative letterforms:
    http://www.glyphsapp.com/tutorials/features-part-2-contextual-substitutions

Cursive attachment is mostly intended for adjusting vertical positioning, which happens a lot in Arabic calligraphy but not in Latin. In Latin cursive fonts, you would need to make all letters look connected as nicely as possible with basic letters and spacing. But as mekkablue says, you sometimes need alternate letters for different connection or just for fun.

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