Middle dot problem with double el (Barlow Google Fonts)

[Guuustav]

Hi Jeremy,

Good morning. I hope you're well. I have found that the middle dot does not work correctly with the double letter el. In my native language, Catalan (language of a region of Spain), it is common to find words with the middle dot. The Barlow is mischievous and when you write the second letter she places the dot on top of the first one Haha.

This error is with the version of Google Fonts which is the one I use since I also need the letter Ñ that I couldn't use with the Github version.

Arial and Barlow comparison:

Middle dot in Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct#Catalan

Have a good day.

[Guuustav]

I've done some testing and it seems like a bit of a random bug. I don't know how to help more because I don't know how to define when it happens because right now it only happens to me in a text box of a letter made up in InDesign. But if I create a new text box in that same document then it works correctly. In a new InDesign, Illustrator or Word document I don't have that problem. It's a mystery.

On the other hand, my coworker with the same Barlow from Google Fonts has this same problem in Word. It doesn't matter if he starts writing with the Calibri and changes it to Barlow, or writes directly with the Barlow. In both cases he has the problem that the middle point rises to the first letter el.

I have also tried changing the tracking of the paragraph and the kerning between the two els and the middle point without solving it. It does not happen with capital letters, nor between numbers or between another pair of letters.

I am attaching an InDesign document with the problem to see if you can figure something out. Middle dot.indd.zip

Let's see if there is luck and we find the solution. I am the chief designer of the city council of my city and we have established Barlow as the new corporate typeface and in Catalan, our official language, it is very common to find words with a middle dot. Until yesterday, laying out a letter from the mayoress of the city, we did not detect this problem. I got around it by writing a space after the middle dot and tightening the kerning to visually remove that space. Haha.

[jpt]

Hi @Guuustav thank you for raising this issue. It is fixed in the 1.5 version of Barlow which is not yet released. You can download it and see more about the issue here. I am hoping to publish the fix for general release soon, please let me know if you need any assistance

[Guuustav]

Thank you very much for your ofreciment. My apologies for duplicating the topic.

We will wait for the 1.5 update because I commented in the other thread that we opened that we need the "ñ". For this reason we are using the TTF version of Google Fonts that we saw did not have the Ñ problem.

When you have the new version with the l·l and ñ corrected, will you update the version of Google Fonts?

Thanks in advance and great work Jeremy!

Kind Regards.

[Guuustav]

Hello @jpt I hope you are good.

I just found that Glyphs provides the solution to the problem on its own website. I don't know if you already knew it:

https://glyphsapp.com/learn/localize-your-font-catalan-punt-volat

Have a good day.

[jpt]

Hi @Guuustav As you may remember from above, the punt volat is fixed in the 1.5 branch. If this has changed, I'll have to take another look. I don't know when I'll be able to prioritize it

[Guuustav]

My apologies. You're right. What we talked about a few weeks ago was about the letters Ñ/ñ being missing in version 1.5.

With all the tests I did a few weeks ago I was now confused. In the exhaustive tests I did in versions 1.422, 1.5 and Google Fonts, on L·L, l·l, Ñ and ñ. In 1.5 the letters Ñ/ñ are written as N/n.

I apologize again and have a good weekend.

I close this thread.

[xcolomer]

Hello Jeremy, First, congratulations for the Barlow project.

I've been testing the typeface Barlow as a web font (fonts/woff) on the font testing site Cyreal.org. The "punt volat" (middle dot) does not work correctly with the double letter el. Even though the repository Github says that it is corrected in version 1.5.

In Google fonts, the "punt volat" (middle dot), only works well if you do it with "Shift+3". This is the text I tested: cel·la, CEL·LA, CEĿLA, ceŀla

Let me know if there is any way to solve this error? Thanks in advance

[xcolomer]

Hi Jeremy,

Good morning. I hope you're well. I have found that the middle dot does not work correctly with the double letter el. In my native language, Catalan (language of a region of Spain), it is common to find words with the middle dot. The Barlow is mischievous and when you write the second letter she places the dot on top of the first one Haha.

This error is with the version of Google Fonts which is the one I use since I also need the letter Ñ that I couldn't use with the Github version.

Arial and Barlow comparison:

Middle dot in Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct#Catalan

Have a good day.

@Guuustav Have you found any solution for this error? Thanks

[Guuustav]

Hi @xcolomer

As you found out, version 1.5 has the middle dot problem corrected. You can download it from here:

https://github.com/jpt/barlow/tree/1.5/fonts

But this version 1.5 has another big problem in the Spanish language. The Ñ is not represented. Jeremy is already aware and indicated that it will be corrected in a future version. I myself opened this other thread to inform Jeremy:

https://github.com/jpt/barlow/issues/87

All the best.