Apparently in Tengwar, numerals are supposed to be written from right to left (similarly to how in Arabic, numerals are written from left to right even though text goes from right to left); see http://fan.theonering.net/~rolozo/tengwar/tengwar/numbers.htm. I wonder if it would be possible to mark the Tengwar digits as RTL glyphs.

1. At text sizes, the s-tengwar ( and ) look too narrow compared to the bowl-and-stem letters. See Telcontar for a good reference. (There may be a similar issue with the z-tengwar, though I haven’t tested these yet.) At large sizes these letters look fine, so I suspect this may be a result of the font having been designed at a larger size than the one it’s meant to be used at.
2. The o- and u-tehtar look too “flat” to me; for both readability and style reasons, I think they should be more rounded. Again, see Telcontar (though I understand that some adjustments needed to be made when going from a calligraphic style to a “Transitional” style).
3. Not lettershape-related per se, but hinting definitely needs to be improved (even in the OTF version): at text sizes, the thickness of stems varies haphazardly, and this significantly impacts readability.
4. Ideally, when a vowel carrier with tehta precedes a letter with an ascender on the left, the two letters should be spaced further apart, to visually accommodate the tehta. (There are analogous situations in Latin text, e.g. combinations such as íh and íl, but as far as I’m aware no font deals with this issue.)

Congratulations on all the effort required to create such a full-featured font! Unfortunately, at least a couple of punctuation marks are missing, despite being accessible from the (relevant parts of the) keyboard map: ⁘ and ⸭.

Hi Tosche,

thanks for your beautiful font! However, I haven't been able to install either the TTFs or the OTFs. I drag them into Fontbook, the «adding fonts...» dialog briefly pops up, then nothing happens. I can't see Alcarin in the list of installed fonts. Perhaps it has to do with Latin not being present?

Cheers, Christian

I know I mentioned this in a previous issue in the context of possibly adjusting the kerning, but maybe a simpler (and more consistent) solution would be to make the o- and u-tehtar more vertical?

https://github.com/Tosche/Alcarin-Tengwar/blob/7120d4ebb71534fbcce0c3205b78498f45ed397c/OFL.txt#L2 doesn't include the family name which is odd.

Perhaps the RFNs should be Alcarin and Toshi and Tosche (ie trademarks and names other people shouldn't use without permission) -- but not tengwar, since that prohibits any downstream user from using that in the name

Congratulations for this amazing font! I would like to ask whether there are plans to support some of the lesser known Tengwar signs, more specifically:

1. The long carrier ligature for Old English (Sauron Defeated, p. 326), Telcontar handles them with some tengwa + zero-width joiner + long carrier. Superficially it looks a bit like thinnas but it has a different semantic and appears to be less curved. [Telcontar]
2. The silme + harma ligature for Old English (Sauron Defeated, p. 323), Telcontar handles it with silme + zero-width joiner + harma.
3. The doubling strokes for Old English (Sauron Defeated, p. 325), Telcontar encodes them as ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ (E049), because its meaning is unrelated to a double e. Although the Alcarin Glyph Set PDF seems to indicate that there is a variant for two acutes below, this is not rendered in the actual font.

The fourth set of letters above looks reasonably well-spaced, but the other three look inconsistent—the spaces between adjacent stems are greater than between adjacent bowls, or between a stem and a bowl.

I think in some cases the side bearings of stems need to be reduced, and in other cases the side bearings of bowls need to be increased. Note that this is not a matter of hinting, as the issue persists at large sizes.