Font Height Options misbehave with rounded fonts
Recently I started to notice that some of the fonts I use make wrong result when x-height or cap-height is used to set a font size.
I clearly see that the height is of, by eye and the underlying grid, but Character palette says otherwise. I outline the font, I measure glyphs and I get smaller dimensions.
Take a look at the file and the picture attached.
When fonts with straight terminals are used, everything is fine. Visual dimensions match metrics precisely.
But when a font with rounded terminals is used, like two examples at the bottom, things go weird.
Here is my idea what is going on.
Curved glyphs are made with the optical compensations. You can clearly see that with 'o' glyphs. Both top examples have their o-s slightly bigger than the x-height — and that is correct.
When a font designer makes a vertical terminal rounded, they lower it below the baseline to compensate the lack of weight this rounding causes. If you compare the vertical stem of 'r' with the bottom bar of 'z', you will the that 'r' overshoots the baseline.
So if you measure a glyph with flat top and bottom, like 'z' (here), you can see that it stands on the baseline, but the x-height is smaller that set 40mm.
If you measure an 'r' glyph from the bottom overshoot (which is below the baseline) to the top point (notice that it differs form font to font and thus can not be used at all) the result is off again.
But if you measure from overshoot to the flat top... now it gives 40. And this seems to be what Illustrator does.
Instead of measuring from the baseline, it starts from an optical compensator some glyphs have and should not be used for the measurement. It takes right metrics, but starts at the wrong, overshoot zero.
AdminEgor Chistyakov
(Admin, Adobe Illustrator)
shared this idea
Hi All,
Thanks for reporting the issue .
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Aishwarya G Gadodia
Illustrator Team
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The same problem, but for inset glyphs:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/41615035