Font name limitations

Are there still font name limitations regarding the lengths of the names? I have a new font with a rather long family name and long style names like “Extralight Italic”. I vaguely remember that the postscript name (ID6) shouldn’t exceed 29 characters, full name (ID4) not more then 31 characters. How does Glyphs handle this?

I remember one solution when ID4 is longer then 31 characters: Add ID18 (with a max of 31 characters). When I look into the fonts Glyphs generated, I see that it’s doing just this, but in a very inconsistent way. It changes for example “Extralight Italic” in ID18 to “Exlight Italic”, but “Ultralight Italic” to “Ultralight It”.

Is it wise to add a custom parameter in this cases, or even for all styles?

Glyphs tries to shorten the names by using abbreviations for certain words (like Extra>Ex) automatically. Please check the resulting files (with OTMaster or TTX) and see what happens. IF you don’t like what you see there, you need to use custom parameters.

It still is an issue with Windows 8.1. Didn’t test in v.10 yet.
Read this and scroll down to ‘Keep Your Style Name Short’.

thanks, this seems a reasonable way to do the naming and keep them short. However, I think I run into a bug with the newest version of Glyphs (796). When I do Italics there is always the same name ID 1 for Windows (platformID 3) regardless which name I put into the Style-name field. See images attached.

In Glyphs 768 it works correctly.


can you send me the .glyphs file?

Hi,

I tried using custom parameters to prevent the conversion from “Condensed” to “Cond” and “ExtraLight” to “ExLight”

(
{
“Name Table Entry” = “18 1; Barlow Semi Condensed ExtraLight Italic”;
},
{
“Name Table Entry” = “1 3; Barlow Semi Condensed ExtraLight”;
}
)

But Glyphs seems to be ignoring this and shortening “1 3” (Windows) to ExLight anyway. Is there another value I should be setting?

I fixed that last week. An update will be out soon.

1 Like

I can add Name Table Entry for 4 3 1 1033 OK but the 18 1 0 0 is not being added?

55

I have a nagging feeling that the (order of the) numbers are wrong. I can double check for you if you like, but for Name ID 18, I would simply use the compatibleFullName parameter.

hmm. Will take a look, but it follows the order as the one above =

Syntax = nameID platformID encodingID languageID;TEXT

?

Doesn’t want to add the compatibleFullName parameter :frowning_face:

It works if I add

Name Table Entry 32123 1 0 0;Text

and then edit 32123 to 18 in OT Master :slight_smile:
– so I guess table 18 is banned ?

Try only name and platform ID:

18 1; xxxx

No luck

I just tried again and compatibleNameTable works as expected in builds 1195 and later. How do you test for Name ID 18?

Update: and 18 1;Xxxx works as expected as well.

Ahh, everything works as long as the required text has no spaces (not ideal)
So I can have FontnameCondLightIt but not Fontname Cond Light It

No, it also works with spaces:

Can you send me your .glyphs file? Let me see if there is something else fishy.

I had a look at your file, and makeotf ignores your Name ID 18 entry, probably because it is the default full name anyway. It only makes sense to set it if it were different from the Mac Name ID 4, which is not the case in your font. To test, you can add ‘blabla’ to it, and then makeotf will not ignore it.

OK. Will see how I get on

Yes. MakeOTF has some opinions about duplicating names. Thats why Glyphs writes its own name table now. I added the parameter as you described and it worked fine for me.