Author Archive: Dr. Ken Lunde

Combining 3 Tools Into 1: glyph-list.pl

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

For those who make use of the extract-cids.pl, extract-gids.pl, or extract-names.pl tools, all of which are AFDKO tx tool filters and are included in AFDKO, and whose purpose is to list the glyphs in the specified font resource, I’d like to introduce a new tool, named glyph-list.pl, which combines their functionality, thus making font development simpler.
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Kazuraki: Under The Hood

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I had the opportunity this morning to present at ATypI Hong Kong 2012 about Kazuraki, specifically the details about its OpenType implementation. Hence, the title of the presentation is Kazuraki: Under The Hood. The purpose of this article is simply to make the presentation available.

Manipulating CID-Keyed Fonts Using AFDKO Tools

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Yesterday—meaning Wednesday, October 10th, 2012, Hong Kong Time (UTC+8)—I had the honor and privilege to present the first two hours of a three-hour ATypI Hong Kong 2012 workshop entitled Manipulating CID-Keyed Fonts Using AFDKO Tools. When I did a rough count, there were nearly 30 people in attendance. I’d like to use this opportunity to thank those who were able to attend, which meant that they made the effort to travel to this conference, and also chose to attend this workshop in lieu of attending presentations from the Typography & Reading and Typography & Culture tracks, or other concurrent workshops. I’d also like to provide to those who attended, and to those who were not able to attend, the presentation that I used to drive these two hours, which includes material that can be studied and referenced.

In addition to installing the latest-and-greatest version of AFDKO, the workshop attendees were also provide with the actual sample font data that I used to demonstrate the various workflows and techniques.

My hope is that these materials are useful to those who attended this workshop, and to those who were not able to do so. Enjoy!

Speaking of enjoy, that is what I plan to do for the remaining four days of this five-day conference. ☺

Next Week: ATypI Hong Kong 2012

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

ATypI Hong Kong 2012 takes place next week, starting on Wednesday, October 10th, and ending on Sunday, October 14th. I will be there for all five days, and very much look forward to meeting many people face-to-face, some for the first time.

I will be speaking twice. The first time will be on the afternoon of October 10th, for the first two hours of the three-hour Manipulating CID-keyed Fonts Using AFDKO Tools workshop. My colleague, Masataka HATTORI (服部正貴), will be speaking for the last hour of the workshop.

The second time will be on the morning of October 11th as a twenty-minute presentation entitled Kazuraki: Under The Hood that immediately follows another twenty-minute presentation by two colleagues from our Tokyo office, Taro YAMAMOTO (山本太郎) and Ryoko NISHIZUKA (西塚涼子), entitled Kazuraki: Its Art & Design.

I declared my presentations final this morning, and the materials for the workshop have been prepared and were provided to those who registered.

I am excited…

AFDKO Workflow Diagrams

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

One of the most useful bits of feedback that I received from my portion of the June 25, 2012 AFDKO Workshop was that I include workflow diagrams that visually explain how various tools and control files work together. While preparing to present the same material at ATypI Hong Kong 2012 on the afternoon of October 10, 2012, I spent last Friday and this week creating additional presentation slides that include such workflow diagrams.
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URO

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

The first set of ideographs to be encoded in Unicode (Version 1.1), which are referred to as CJK Unified Ideographs, are also referred to as the URO, which is an abbreviation for Unified Repertoire and Ordering. None of the other extensions are given this label. Extensions A through D have been standardized, and Extension E will soon be standardized. Only Extension A is in the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane). Extension B and beyond are in Plane 2, which is called the SIP (Supplementary Ideographic Plane). What makes the URO special or unique?
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Details About The New AFDKO Version…

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

As I wrote earlier today on our sibling blog, Typblography, a new version of AFDKO was release earlier this month. I want to use this opportunity to point out some of the changes and enhancements that affect font developers who work with CID-keyed fonts. The details are buried in the detailed Release Notes that Read Roberts prepared.
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Glyph Corrections Via AFDKO Tools—Redux

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

As described in the August 24, 2012 article, I am currently updating most of our OpenType Japanese fonts. One aspect of the update is to include the 32 additional IVSes, based on the March 2, 2012 version of the IVD (Ideographic Variation Database), which means that all of the kanji in Adobe-Japan1-6 now have a “plain text” representation. Another aspect of this particular update is to use the latest UTF-32 CMap resources, which include three additional mappings, one of which is U+9FCC that was appended to the URO (Unified Repertoire & Ordering) in Unicode Version 6.1. But, the topic of this article is about fixing a small number of glyphs, and the techniques that I used to do so.
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IMUG = International Multilingual User Group

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Founded in 1987 by Yuan Ho and Seth Schneider, IMUG (International Multilingual User Group) has become Silicon Valley’s best user group for all matters related to internationalization, localization, and globalization. Meeting once a month, usually the third Thursday, IMUG meetings include a presentation by a distinguished member of the internationalization, localization, or globalization community. Adobe began hosting IMUG meetings in 2010 for odd-numbered months, and its Globalization Engineering Council serves as the official host. Even-numbered months are hosted by Google.

Regardless of whether you reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, I encourage you to attend IMUG meetings. Those that are hosted by Adobe are broadcasted via Adobe Connect, meaning that attendees need not be on site.

It seems that I have presented for IMUG six times, in 1995 (Adobe Systems’ CID-Keyed Fonts For Large Character Sets), 1999 (Adventures in Multilingual Publishing), 2005 (The Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection), 2008 (Ideographic Variation Sequences: Implementation Details), 2010 (Kazuraki: Adobe Systems’ Groundbreaking New Japanese Typeface), and 2011 (The Power of “Plain Text” & the Importance of Meaningful Content).

The next IMUG meeting, which will be hosted at Adobe, will include an intriguing presentation by Microsoft’s Michael Kaplan, which will be about new internationalization features in Windows 8, scheduled to be released on October 26, 2012, which is, by the way, approximately two months before our world ends. Please plan to attend, either in person or via Adobe Connect.

Glyph Corrections Via AFDKO Tools

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I spent part of this week staging the data for some minor glyph corrections for our Kozuka Mincho and Kozuka Gothic fonts—and those that are derived from them—and was reminded that the techniques I described in the February 27, 2012 article are incredibly useful and indeed time-saving. These same techniques were also conveyed during the AM session of the June 25, 2012 AFDKO Workshop, as shown is the presentation slide below: