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pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc) writes:
>I would like the advice of people with experience in the design of fonts
>with diacritical marks.
>
>I am in the process of modifying a couple of LaserJet fonts to add several
>accented letters, including capitals. The problem is that there is not
>enough free space above the letters as they are now to accomodate the accents
>without bumping into the descenders from the preceeding line.

There is an important difference between the bounding box of a character and
the height of the font.

	-----------------------  font height

           AA------------------  cap height
           AAA
          A  AA
         A    AA
        AAAAAAAAA
       A        AA
      AAA       AAA -----------  baseline


		    -----------  descender depth

		    -----------  beard (optional)

A metal font might have space both above and below an A or g, for example.
This is so that when you set rows of type, the descender of the g doesn't
touch the ascender of the A.  This pracice was carried over into digital type.

There is usually space for accents between the cap height and the font height.
In this case, there's often little or no beard below the descenders.

Hence, you can probably add the accent on top of the A, and make sure that
the font bounding box and font height are ajusted if necessary.
If you adjust the font bounding box, you might be able to get away without
increasing font height, by moving it upwards -- i.e. taking away from the
beard.  I forget if you can do this on the LaserJet, though.

A good approach might be to write a little language for transforming a font:
    character 194 is cpile { "^" over "A" }
and so on.

Lee

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