Private Use Area (PUA) for Iconfonts

Hi,

is there any tutorial or small guide for the right use of PUA and characters with fontself? I want to create an icon font and I used only the letters A-Z and some symbols… but thats not best practise of course :wink:

Something like this, only for fontself :slight_smile:
https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/creating-an-icon-webfont
(Yes this tutorial is huge, but exactly that what I mean)

Rolf

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Hi Rolf,
In Fontself, all the glyphs that are imported without any character information are already assigned with a unique PUA code (highlighted as the orange box below glyphs). So by default you don’t need to do anything to export a font with PUA glyphs, just don’t assign any character or number to it (using the Batch button) and FYI we will launch next week a side panel with an option to display exact Unicode values instead of the characters (it’s in today’s latest beta too).

Would this help or is there anything else that would be useful during the creation, or afterwards, when using or handling the font?

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Ah, interesting. :slight_smile: Can I access the latest beta? Maybe I can give a bit feedback.

In my case its important/handy to set a specific unicode value to match the "content: “\e…” in my CSS. If I can do this, fontself is absolutely perfect! :blush:

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PS:
I’m using 2.0.4 (dd2fa) and tried the button “check updates” but only the activity indicator is rotating.

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Ok, beta link will be send in an hour max. The rotating update issue will be fixed soon too :wink:

As for the unicode value, you cannot yet edit directly the HEX value, so you need to paste the actual unicode character for now if you want to enter another PUA.

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Works perfect now in Beta 2!

Maybe for others. I use fontie for the Webfont generation.

Important: Under subsetting (fontie) you have to check “Keep existing characters” and all works fine!
In the CSS you can define the unicode-character with:
content: "\E000"; (see unicode tab in fontself)

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Hi there,
I’ve downloaded the new version today (2.1.1) and it’s great that we are now able to see the Unicode value of PUA glyphs. However, I miss (or haven’t found) an option to enter or edit these unicode values directly. As we can’t update existing glyphs (as far as I know) I sometimes have to delete an glyph inside a group (let’s say I have e900, e901, e902, e903 and I delete e902). If I then add a new glyph, it won’t grab the now free e902 space but appends after the last one and grabs e904. Therefore I have to change e904 to e902.
It would be much easier if I just could change the unicode number than to copy and paste an e902 character.

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So you cannot yet edit the Unicode value, we were just too short before the launch. This will definitely be part of the next updates, stay tuned!

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I’d really love to be able to edit the unicode values for PUA characters… will this be available soon?

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Definitely not the most complex feature to add, so if not in the next update it will arrive in the following one :wink:

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@glyphix @cgpro @g.baxter Hurrah, you can now enter HEX unicode values with the U+ prefix (like U+2655) to create specific glyph, or even rename your objects to import many at once with Batch. Just install Fontself Maker 3.1.0 or newer.

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