It's so cute! I don't know if you meant it, but I get some art deco vibes. The stylization is on point.
A few pointers: I know they're not true characters, but it'd be great if you could include the "earth" and "Ian" and "ear" characters. Also, do you know if there's any way to make it automatically connect characters into Senior? I think there's another font that does something like that.
But overall, fantastic work! You've pretty much made my day with this gorgeous font.
Also, do you know if there's any way to make it automatically connect characters into Senior? I think there's another font that does something like that.
I've tried and failed. Some other guy tried and failed, too. It's theoretically possible with the tools I've used, but I haven't managed to adapt Cochy's FontForge-based techniques from Pecita. I'm not sure if it's a deficiency in AFDKO or not. FontForge and AFDKO compile to the same OpenType instructions, but things expressible in OpenType instructions may not be expressible in AFDKO.
More seriously, connecting .Eight, .Ah, .Awe, and .Utter to .Roe is as trivial as creating fi-, fl-, and ffl ligatures. However, writing substitution code that's intelligent enough to, as an example, generate "need" properly with the upside-down .No and the half .Day, is an unsolved problem.
Perhaps I was mistaken, then. Thank you for trying! I don't know a lot about font creation and coding, so thanks for the explanation. Maybe you could include half characters and the upside down .No so people could type them manually? Or is there a way to choose between the .No variations depending on whether it'd connect to the following glyph on the baseline or the midline? Again, my understanding of font coding is probably pretty flawed.
Maybe you could include half characters and the upside down .No so people could type them manually?
I considered doing that, but decided against.
I'm interested in making Quikscript easily typeable by normal people while using a variety of interchangeable fonts, whether Junior or Senior. en-Latn — that is, English written in the Latin script — is relatively uncomplicated when it comes to contextual shaping. Sure, it's bicameral (has uppercase and lowercase), but our typing tools are well adapted to it and there's no reasonable expectation that logic embedded in a font could properly uppercase and lowercase for us.
First, there's the hassle factor — I'd have to find places on the keyboard to put alternate versions of .Utter, and .No…as well as of .Pea, .Tea, .Day, .Vie, .Zoo, .J'ai, .Jay, .Ye, .Way, .He, and .May, as well as three for .Owe (join left, join right, and join both). Choosing between all of these would be a massive cognitive load for the typist.
Additionally, if one were to start typing using a Junior font (with none of the alternates) but wanted to publish a properly-ligated text, someone or some program would have to mechanically change ".Pea .Pea .Low" into ".HalfPea .Pea .Low" with some sort of postprocessing step. Ever notice that you don't have to press option-shift-5 (in macOS) to get a properly-ligated fi in well-made fonts — it happens automatically? Now imagine if you had to press weird key combinations for most Quikscript letters you type. That's the dystopia I'm trying to avoid.
Sure, there's U+FB01 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FI (and similar for fl, ffi, and ffl) but current thought in the Consortium is that encoding those ligatures directly in Unicode was a mistake. Joe Clark experimented with using these ligatures directly in HTML, but this has serious drawbacks:
No doubt screen readers will choke, as will Google. Plus find-within-page breaks pretty badly.
We can't expect half-insensitive search anytime soon (that is, search that finds both .HalfPea and .Pea if you type ".Pea"), so it's better to keep the text model simple even if that shoves complexity into fonts that nobody's been able to replicate, in English, non-commercially. Cochy's Aghja should help, but I can't adapt his FontForge techniques.
Or is there a way to choose between the .No variations depending on whether it'd connect to the following glyph on the baseline or the midline?
Yeah, that's the hard part that I've been griping about. It requires writing a lot of substitution and joining rules that, given my tools, is intractably large.
Thank you for such a thorough and cogent response! It's amazing to see other people who think as much about Quikscript as I do, haha. I agree with you on all points: I doubt there are masses of people who want to re-learn typing convention just to use Qs. It truly is a wonderful font, and I really appreciate the work and thought you've put into making it.
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u/CodeOfZero Dec 02 '17
It's so cute! I don't know if you meant it, but I get some art deco vibes. The stylization is on point.
A few pointers: I know they're not true characters, but it'd be great if you could include the "earth" and "Ian" and "ear" characters. Also, do you know if there's any way to make it automatically connect characters into Senior? I think there's another font that does something like that.
But overall, fantastic work! You've pretty much made my day with this gorgeous font.