Guidelines variant

[josescaglione]

We have the files ready for producing fonts with guidelines, but we feel we should only use one of the weights to make things simpler. What do you think?

[vv-monsalve]

Following our latest discussions, we've agreed to use only the Regular weight to produce the Guides style.

However, I'm bringing here your last question related to this here, as it remain open

This is, whether we will have guides+letters, or just guidelines. This implies finding names for those styles as well. And bear in mind that we have at least two models that have italics.

[chrissimpkins]

Does anyone have examples of actual handwriting textbooks used with kids in elementary school? I think that it would be helpful to understand how education documentation is currently printed to talk through the combinations of +/- text +/- guidelines required here.

[chrissimpkins]

IMO the following seem mandatory:

• Default Playwrite (no guidelines)
• Dotted Playwrite with guidelines
• Solid Playwrite with guidelines

Beyond that, I'm not sure. I think that we need feedback on handwriting education worksheet layout if we don't have that.

[vv-monsalve]

In October 2023, a user wrote:

It would be absolutely amazing if primary teachers could have a font in Google Docs that allows the person making the doc to add primary lines and the possibility of letter tracing. As a teacher there is so little time to create and since Google has such an awesome program it would be so helpful if we could create resources for our students using Google Docs with a font like that. I have seen something similar called KG Primary Penmanship and would love to be able to have something like that available to create resources for my students.

In July this year, another user wrote with a similar request, also mentioning the KG Primary fonts.

We just had a teacher asking for this today and unfortunately our only option was to have them use Microsoft Word as they have a font called Microsoft ABC Dashed which my teachers use. There are also TTFs available, such as KG Lined and KG Lined - No Spaces, but those can't be used in Google Apps.

I couldn't find Microsoft ABC Dashed on the web. Now the KG Primary fonts are available at the teachers pay teachers site (among others).

KG Primary Dots Lined

dotted letters with guidelines also for the space character

KG Primary Lined NOSPACE

solid letters with guidelines, but not for the space character. In this font, the | character is left empty to provide the lines only

The latter was created to sort out a couple of identified issues for teachers working on PowerPoint, as the author specifies in the Description of their fonts.

So, based on these requests and fonts as a reference, I believe we should include at least a similar option of an "empty" character for the teachers to create empty guidelines within both fonts, the solid and dotted with guidelines.

[vv-monsalve]

Following our latest discussions, we've agreed to use only the Regular weight to produce the Guides style.

We agreed to use the 'ExtraLight' thickness along with the guidelines, but as the "Regular" style for this variant.

[davelab6]

I believe we should include at least a similar option of an "empty" character for the teachers to create empty guidelines within both fonts, the solid and dotted with guidelines.

Perhaps space has no ink and underscore _ has the ink?

[vv-monsalve]

Perhaps space has no ink and underscore _ has the ink?

So it could be:

• Default Playwrite (no guidelines)
  • Family Name: e.g. Playwrite DK Uloopet
• Solid Playwrite with guidelines
  • Displaying letters in the thinnest weight in the designspace: Thin.
  • Space without ink and underscore _ with the guidelines only. It could be the same width as the space, so it can be used as an inked replacement for it.
  • Family name: Playwrite DK Uloopet Guides
• Dotted Playwrite with guidelines
  • Displaying dots in a weight yet to be decided.
  • Space without ink; _ inked
  • Family name: Playwrite DK Uloopet Dots Guides

[davelab6]

@josescaglione to your original question, kindly, I don't get it. Aren't the guidelines being made by script? and aren't all weight styles belonging to one family? So why only use one of the weights - how does that make things simpler? :)

[josescaglione]

Sorry @davelab6 my comment was in the context of a long discussion regarding the length of font names. I though that if we use a single weight then we can simply say "dotted" as the style name, whereas multiple weights would require a more involved solution.

[vv-monsalve]

Following our latest discussions, we've agreed to use only the Regular weight to produce the Guides style.

We agreed to use the 'ExtraLight' thickness along with the guidelines, but as the "Regular" style for this variant.

Due to the character limit, we've decided to create the Guides and Dots versions only for the "Regular" style.

However, we've also agreed not to use the actual Regular weight but a lighter one to serve better the purpose of tracing during teaching.

The lighter letters in the design space correspond to the Thin weight, so that's why I'm suggesting we use those shapes.

[chrissimpkins]

We were able to dig up some of our kids' old handwriting journals and workbooks from elementary school. I thought that this might be useful to inform the approach to the Playwrite guidelines variants. It looks like the approach used in these Zaner-Bloser model education tools is guidelines for:

• cap height (solid line)
• x-height (dashed line)
• baseline (solid line)

[simoncozens]

Many of the examples we have seen have a dashed guideline at x-height. I'm not sure it's possible to replicate this effect very well, for two reasons.

First, we currently build all the instances by instantiating a variation at a particular point in variation space. We build a binary VF and cut instances. What this means is that the sources have to be compatible. But with a dashed guideline, the number of dashes (and hence the number of contours) will be different based on the different widths of the glyph. And these widths do vary considerably across the design space. For example: H VEXT=375 has a width of 888, H VEXT=1000 has a width of 1375. With a "50 units on, 50 units off" dash pattern, VEXT=375 has ten dashes and VEXT=1000 has fifteen dashes. So the masters will never be compatible.

If this was the only problem, we could potentially work around it by instantiating the original Glyphs file at a particular point in the designspace for the country variant, then build it, and then add the guideline contours afterwards. We are only planning to create a Regular instance for the guidelines font so we don't technically need variation. Heck, we could even add the dash contours to the glyf table of the static binary after building it.

However, there is a second problem, which is to do with the rhythm of the dashes. F VEXT=375 has a width of 625. Let's suppose the dash pattern is 50 units on, 50 units off. Where should the dashes start and end? 625 is annoyingly in the middle of an "on" and and "off":

So when we put two F's together we get a dash-and-a-half:

Not terrible but noticeable.

Other advance widths are even more annoying: G is 858 units wide; a 50 unit dash will end at positions 50,150,250...850 which means that the next glyph will always start eight units after the end of the last dash:

How do we solve this? We can't fiddle with the advance widths because that would mess up all the cursive variants; they wouldn't connect any more. So our option is to fiddle with the dash widths. Going back to the F, what if we subtly modify the dash width so that it's not a fixed 50 units, but has a little bit of flex in it so that dashes are spaced out nicely?

Better! Except... there's actually kerning between those pairs, which means the J moves back and in reality it looks like this:

In summary: even if we solve the variable font problem and add dashed guidelines to statics, (a) for the rhythm of the dashes to work correctly, we need the advance widths of all the glyphs to be an exact multiple of the dash width, but they never are; and (b) even if we adjust the dash width each time so that the rhythm is nominally correct, at any point kerning could throw off the rhythm again... The only way to do this well would be to have all the glyphs and kerning designed to be unitized from the start.

In my opinion, doing dashed guidelines and having them look poor would be worse than not doing dashed guidelines at all.

[simoncozens]

Additional thought: If we are going to use "space" for space without guidelines and "underscore" for space with guidelines, they'd better both have the same advance width.

[vv-monsalve]

At today's meeting, reviewing the decisions for the Guides variants, we agreed on:

Solid Playwrite with guidelines

• The selected weight to be used in these fonts is ExtraLight (image below).
• Space without ink - Underscore _ with the guidelines only.
  • We confirmed it should have the same width as the space so that it can be used as an inked replacement for it. - Guides style
  • Solid. No dashes
  • The baseline should be thicker (as it currently is, image below)
• Family name example: Playwrite DK Uloopet Guides

Next items to solve

• [x] Fixing the guidelines gaps

  @simoncozens, José suggested that for the "non-spacing" glyphs such some connections, the guides could use the outline width instead of the glyph's advanced width

• [x] Underscore Edit: Pers Simon's comment (below) the two variants of the underscore are not needed :)

[simoncozens]

We don't need variants for the underscore. The way I have implemented the code to make the guidelines variant, you can turn on and off outlines and guidelines on a per-glyph basis. So we can turn off outlines for the underscore glyph and turn off guidelines for the space glyph. This is controlled using Glyphs userData on the glyph object. The problem with the gaps is also fixed.

[vv-monsalve]

So we can turn off outlines for the underscore glyph and turn off guidelines for the space glyph. This is controlled using Glyphs userData on the glyph object.

Awesome! This is even better :). @josescaglione So the only remaining thing now would be to make the underscore to have the Advanced width of the space.

[josescaglione]

@vv-monsalve please check the Fixes branch and merge into main as discussed. I will make the change immediately after that

So we can turn off outlines for the underscore glyph and turn off guidelines for the space glyph. This is controlled using Glyphs userData on the glyph object.

Awesome! This is even better :). @josescaglione So the only remaining thing now would be to make the underscore to have the Advanced width of the space.