When I open a font file (ttf or otf) containing WinAscent and WinDescent values, these are not listed in the Font Info panel. I would expect them to appear as a custom parameter there, along with typoAscender/Descender and Linegap.
It would be very good if there was also a way to preview Windows metrics in the Edit window, so that changes in these values could be assessed visually.
You can set the Edit View Lineheight parameter to whatever you like. Another question is what a preview of these values should look like. Different apps interpret these values differently. IIRC there is even a difference between Word and the Windows default.
Added import of both values
If I sum WinAscent + |WinDescent| into the Lineheight parameter, will it show the default linespacing as Windows renders it?
Thanks Georg.
I can’t find it now, but I remember a list by someone (was it Tom Phinney?) posted in some forum (TD?) going through a bunch of apps and measuring how various apps on various systems render fonts vertically. And there were so many differences, that you could not even say, this is how system XYZ renders it.
Hm. WinAscent and WinDescent must be specced for a specific purpose, aside from what different apps do with them. I’ll try to find out what the spec says, so we can at least know in principle how they should be dealt with.
I remember this list. It was not from Thomas. But can’t find it.
I would also add that Glyphs fails to show Ascender/Descender values that can be found in the [hhea] group of FontLabStudio (Font Info -> Metrics and Dimentions -> TrueType-specific metrics) in addition to not showing OS/2 WinAscent/WinDescent.
That bit me hard when I tried to use Glyphs to change font names and realized that vertical spacing changed in the process, but I had no clue what happened because Glyphs would not show any difference between the original font and the output font with changed names. Only some googling around and using another app helped me spot the difference and realize that Glyphs silently changed vertical spacing without my knowledge
@GeorgSeifert, would you kindly also add those two additional font information pieces to the Font Info panel?
Thank you
Could all custom parameters be alphabetised and/or grouped please? The list is getting longer and entries seem to be in no systematic order.
They already are implemented as custom parameters. They used to not be imported.
How are they “implemented” if they’re not show in the custom fields and are simply being overwritten on export?
If they were imported, then they’d either show up in the info window or at least not be overwritten.
How did you get the font into Glyphs? Not all font info is retained when you open existing fonts.
I simply opened the font in Glyphs.
I understand it’s not retained, but that’s exactly the issue that should be fixed, especially given that other apps manage to do that (also checked FontCreator, it also shows this information).
Are you using the latest beta? I think some of these things have been updated fairly recently.
EDIT: Agree, it doesn’t seem like a great idea to me for Glyphs to simply discard data in a font.
Version 2.2.2 (827)
I added import of winAscender/Descender and hhea metrics to the FontLab export script yesterday.
Importing .otf keep the values in the latest cutting edge version, too. So the problem is already fixed (even if only very recently).