This update fixes a major technical bug described in the animation below. Now…
In the past updates, I added more and more special letters that would reflect the characteristics of Dr. King’s handwriting. For example, unique final forms or initial forms of a letter that appear at the beginning or end of a word, or added more versions of a letter so that no similar letterforms are placed next to each other.
This happens naturally when you write with your hand. But on a computer, this can be challenging. There are only letters A-Z and a-z, and no place for a particular initial-a or fancy end-z.
Well, technically, there are places for these extra letters. But they are geared towards something other than the reproduction of handwriting, and often, you need professional software with long manuals to access them.
I tried to do everything with one code that efficiently works out of the box:
As you type, the font actively looks for spaces that indicate a word’s end and a new word’s beginning to place the appropriate final or initial letterform. Secondly, it exchanges between alternative letters (ensuring that no two same letters are placed next to each other – if alternatives are available).
Sounds straightforward, but there are some variations in how the code is executed, depending on your software. For example, Microsoft Word executes the code only in the line you are typing in, whereas Apple Pages execute the code also in the forgoing line. You can see this when you compare the animation above and below.
By the way, this also works on your mobile devices. In your account, you will also find an installer for iPad or iPhone.
You may notice that the code here is executed slightly differently than on a desktop computer.
If you like to experiment with this, you could also start by opening the sample Word documents on your phone. However, I could use them in Word, but when I exported a PDF, the fonts were broken. But this could also be my device. Did you experience the same issue?
Without going into too much detail, the code works a bit like an enigma encryption machine that rotates letter sets. I add this to fonts, with many different versions of each letter.
While creating the Martin Luther King font, I started to add more alphabets to the font. Not only lower and uppercase letters, but also initial letters a-z and another alphabet to be used at the end of a word.
Now the two mechanisms, altering and fitting ends and beginnings, “kind – of” canceled each other out. The first requires a rather bureaucratic design in which everything is rigidly accounted for. The latter was improvised and created on the fly while making the MLK font each month. I took the last three days to re-design the font structure to process both functions, which was a rather bureaucratic undertaking and made the font grow from around 400 to over 1300 glyphs.
I hope this updated structure will last. At least until the next invention, which will make the font even better… and I look forward to it 😉
Download the updated font.
PS.: This is the first release that comes only in OpenType PostScript Format (.otf). I used to include both TrueType and OpenType with each update because TrueType tended to work better with Microsoft Word. I recently rechecked this, and they both work fine, so I am sticking with OpenType. Hopefully, this makes the process for everybody more straightforward, and you don’t have to think about which font format is better. Please let me know if you have any problems with the .otf font file so I can address this in the next update.