I was trying to add kerning to my Pamudpod mark in Baybayin, but when updating and reexporting the font, the kerning doesn’t seem to apply when I was working in Figma. Upon further inspection using Fontdrop, I noticed that the adjustments were only activated when the Dist feature was toggled. I haven’t heard of this nor have I added it as a feature in Glyphs. What might be going on here?
That has to do with the script of the glyphs. For most south east asian script, what usually goes into the kern feature needs to go into the dist feature.
Could you send me the file so that I could have a look at it?
Thanks for the files. I refined the glyphData a bit and added it to Glyphs GlyphData. And I tried to draw a icon for the sidebar:
1 Like
The script is called Baybayin, not Tagalog. Tagalog is one of the languages which can be written in Baybayin.
I was wandering about that. Noto uses Tagalog, so I thought I could use it, too …
And OpenType defines the Tagalog script, too.
Interesting, thanks. Indeed, ScriptSource also calls it Tagalog. I wasn’t aware of that.
Thank you for updating the app using the GlyphData file @GeorgSeifert! 
And yes I can confirm @SCarewe that Tagalog may refer to the language, people, or anything of the Tagalog region, but also the term used in the Unicode proposals for encoding the script.
However, my problem with spacing pamudpod mark’s Kerning going to the Dist feature still persists. Since the dist feature appears to be obscure/unsupported, is there a workaround that I can do to fix this on the font level? (I was wondering if adding back the anchors might help?)
For reference, I found this documentation from a Noto Sans Tagalog git where the Kern feature was simply used to adjust for the pamudpod:
I didn’t get to the kerning, yet.
Just had a look. Changed it so that Tagalog is put in the kern by default.
1 Like
Thank you for your assistance @GeorgSeifert !
However I’m also just unsure of the nuance between the Dist and Kern features, and if defaulting to the Kern instead of the Dist for the mark is the right way to go. (or if it should be a problem that figma needs to support)
That will be available with the next update of Glyphs.
Tagalog is one of the scripts that use Universal Shaping Engine (USE):
And dist is one of the feature that are enabled by default for USE:
Figma uses HarfBuzz and HarfBuzz enables dist by default, so I’m not sure what is the source of breakage in your case, but sounds like a Figma bug.
Thank you for the technical explanation @khaled ! I realized that I might be barking at the wrong tree with this and figma needs to resolve it instead.
I’m afraid @GeorgSeifert that you might need to undo that next update and revert back to Dist, sorry for the trouble
It should be fine with the kern feature any way. I’ll switch it back if we find a problem.