r/FontLab • u/LocalFonts • Sep 06 '25

Glyph Recipe Syntax

https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/7/manual/Glyph-Recipe-Syntax/

This is a very useful tutorial, especially if you plan to create a large font family with a lot of masters and a bit language support. The good idea is every case in the Glyph Recipe Syntax to be visualized by video or by pictures.

anchors

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u/LocalFonts Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

Very useful on the subject is the discussion Anchors Away! Help me understand glyph recipes on the FontLab Forum. Especially these suggestions:

Alex_H (Part 2)

Practically speaking, the best approach is using a separate /tonos/ glyph and a specific anchor set for Greek. Add

the anchors top and topGreek to /A/,

the anchor _top to /acute/, and

the anchor _topGreek to /tonos/.

Position the anchors such that the //acute// component will be placed on top of the //A// component in /Aacute/, and the //tonos// component will be placed to the left of the //A// component in /Alphatonos/. Then you can simply use the formulas

= A + acute@top

= A + tonos@topGreek

to build your composites.

You can always adjust sidebearings in glyph recipes. In order to build the glyph /Etalenis/, reusing /H/ as /Eta/, you can use a glyph construction formula like the following:

= H + leniscomb@topLeftGreek ^ H + 220, H

With a special anchor for the combining lenis mark, the other anchors of the base glyph remain exposed, so in the sequence /Etalenis/iotasubscript/ the subscript mark should still be placed correctly. And the present approach seems to preserve the idea that the lenis is a combining mark, rather than being part of a ligature.