Creating a font for a Symbol

[iebng]

Hi,

With rise of Indian economy along with China, the Government of India has approved a symbol used to denote the Indian currency 'Rupee'.

Question is how to implement it as a font.

In General how to create a font. Some say its possible in Adobe Illustrator, how

Thanks

[Jacob Bugge]

iebng,

In General how to create a font. Some say its possible in Adobe Illustrator, how

You can create the glyph/symbol in Illustrator, which is an obvious application for that.

But you cannot make/include it into a font without an actual font creation application.

And you should be aware that there are different quality requirements in different target applications.

You will probably get away with just about anything in a word processing application.

(An application like) Illustrator is particularly particular because it allows you to reshape things (warp, effects, etc), so it may more or less directly declare: this is not a font. It may simply refuse to recognize it so you do not even see the font in the Fonts dropdown, and the font may even crash it.

Depending on your actual/ultimate need, you may consider different levels. I think I remember my having heard of free applications; at Fontlab it starts with 99$ (Type Tool): http://www.fontlab.com/

[Guest]

Why do you want to re-invent the wheel?

A number of fonts have already been created tht include the new Rupee

and Paise symbols. Some of them even have them in their correct

unicode positions.

Google for

new rupee symbol font.

- Herb

[iebng]

Thanks for the post.

We use Clan, Expresso and Prelo series of font in our newspaper.

Question is how to make the rupee symbol to be incorporated in the font series.

What is the process of creating a font in Illustrator and implementing it into the series as font.

Thanks

[Jacob Bugge]

iebng,

In order to integrate the Rupee symbol in your font(s) (rather than changing back and forth, using one of the fonts mentioned by Herb), and without violating any copyright, you may:

1) Decide which glyph you can do without (and one you can easily remember and use);

2) Open (each) font (repeating for bold/italic/bold italic/whichever variation relevant) in the font creation application, rename the font, and find that glyph;

3) Recreate the rupee symbol in Illustrator or other application, choosing a matching size and shape (your rupee symbol(s) can be different, adapted to your font(s);

4) Replace the disposable glyph by your rupee symbol in the font creation application, and save the altered font.

[Thomas Phinney]

I have a couple of corrections to what Jacob suggests:

1) Just at a technical level, it would be a bad idea to replace existing glyphs. If the new symbol has a legitimate or at least proposed Unicode codepoint, it should be used, so one would simply add the glyph. Bogus encodings are very 1980s and early 90s.

2) It sounds like Jacob is proposing modifying the existing fonts. Contrary to his assertion, changing the name of the fonts does NOT avoid copyright issues at all (though it would avoid trademark issues). Most commercial fonts have license terms which would not permit this, Adobe being one of the few exceptions among major vendors.

So instead, one should contact the original vendor, and see first if they are willing to add the glyph themselves, which is the easiest option. If not, and your existing font license would not allow modifications, then ask for permission to modify the fonts to add the needed glyph. If that isn't possible, then you should build a separate one-glyph font for each of your base fonts.

Regards,

T

[Jacob Bugge]

Thank you for the corrections, Thomas. I will bear them in mind.

Concerning copyright, I was thinking of the rupee font, forgetting the obvious issue with the target fonts. I am usually better at remembering all aspects.

But I am pleased to see that the possibilities of slightly altering fonts and using them as your own are more limited than I thought, having read about astonishing general copyright limitations. It seems that the licence conditions hold the key to the protection.