CC'ing dave for a more eloquent answer :-)
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Matt Gushee <matt@...2880...> wrote:
Hi, all--
First of all, if this is not the right list for this question, please direct me to a better one.
Anyway, I am interested in using Inkscape (together with FontForge) for font design, and thus I am trying out the more-or-less latest development version from Bazaar, with the typography extensions.
And I'd like to thank the folks developing these extensions; I know good typography tools are not easy. I am curious, though, about why the default and maximum em sizes are what they are: 1000 and 2000, respectively.
I've been Googling hard for info on the "right way" to design glyphs for Freetype or Opentype fonts. I'm sure noone will be surprised to hear that it's hard to find definitive info, but so far I have found:
There doesn't seem to be any universal agreement on the best design size, BUT
An 1000-unit em square is seen as an old-school measurement, associated with Type 1 ("Postscript") fonts, and
Apple uses a 2048-unit em square, and of course Apple is right about everything (just kidding!), and
A size that is a power of 2 is thought to make scaling more efficient and/or accurate, leading many designers to favor 2048 or 1024 units.
At any rate, to the extent there is consensus, people seem to prefer 1024 or 2048 these days. So I'd like to know why 1000 is the default, and if there is a technical reason for setting a maximum size of 2000.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go with 2048, and will tweak the code in my installation to allow that size, and see how it works. I'll report back if I notice anything interesting.
-- Matt Gushee
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