Why can’t I get consistent positioning for components?

I’m trying to use components for the endings of some characters in a type with two masters (weight). I’m also using anchors to ensure the attachment is precise. In the example attached, the character on the right is used as component for the one on the left in an attempt to guarantee getting the same exact shape as outcome. However, when I generate the intermediate exports, I keep getting unwanted kinks on the corners.

Grid rounding errors.

Use anchors. Or look into special components like cap or corner or smart components. Also, I’m not really sure a component is the best solution for this situation at all.

As was described in the original post, anchors are being used (as one can also see, since automatic alignment is activated).
As Rainer pointed out, standard components are maybe not the best approach here. Have a look at cap and corner components.

1 Like

Tried replicating for the sake of learning, but seems perfectly aligned in my case. Is your setup somehow different?

Components Rounding.glyphs (12.5 KB)

1 Like

I tried to use corner components, it just seems a but counterintuitive that I have to deform the letter shapes in order to make them align as desired.

Thanks for the reply.

I’m not sure what exactly we are doing that is making the difference. These are just some ideas:

  • In my font the weight of the stems is varying as well.
  • The top serif component might be affecting the alignment of the contour that connects with the bottom serif.
  • The angle of the italic might be affecting how the coordinates are calculated.

What I’ve done trying to solve the problem is positioning the anchors where the coordinate X=0. This has helped with most of the characters, but there are still a couple of pesky ones, especially those that use components for the top serifs.

I rebuild the sample font from above with cap components:
Components Rounding gs.glyphs.zip (3.1 KB)

See how well the same foot serif connects to the different slanted stem in the n and the l.

1 Like

Interesting! I guess the stem thickness or other component shouldn’t affect it, but the angle and the Y change might… Have you tried pushing the overlapping nodes a few units away? Maybe it’s just a bad luck and it will round better with a little change in either of the coordinates [assuming you have reasons to not follow suggestions to use other types of components].

1 Like

Thanks, Georg. That will help me to understand better how to position corner components.

I’ve tried fiddling around with the position of the anchors and the position of the components as well. The problem is that given this component is used by other characters, the components are going to mismatch in the characters that are already working well. So there’s basically no way to secure consistency across all the letters even though I’ve made sure all the stems have the same inclination.

1 Like

Can you show some examples where it is not working?