GPOS (in OTF font) not working in Windows based GDI-interface app

Glyphs
1

Hi there,

I’m working on a client font. They used to use a legacy Windows 7 environment. They’ve now moved to WindowsXP, using EasySign software. An old font they used didn’t work anymore.

They’ve had a freelancer from Bangladesh recreate the font for them, but this didn’t work out. Now they’ve asked me to save the day.

I’ve created an OTF font for them, but apparently the GPOS table is not exported, so the kerning doesn’t work on Windows.

This is the feedback I get from the vendor:

“The font we received from you only contains GPOS information. However, the EasySIGN application doesn’t see any kerning pairs in this font via the GDI interface used in EasySIGN, so kerning from your font isn’t applied.

I then used the FontForge utility to convert your OTF font to an equivalent TTF font. This TTF font contains, in addition to GPOS, kerning pairs automatically generated from GPOS. These kerning pairs are correctly recognized by EasySIGN’s GDI interface.”

How do I create the correct font file from Glyphs to further prevent this issue? Does a “simple TTF” file do the job? Or do I need to make more settings?
The Font Info > Features tab is (except for the Languagesystems) empty, although all the kerning pairs and info is available.

Thanks in advance.

René

2

See the Make your font work in Windows tutorial. In short: always use TTF; if possible add an empty fvar table to make GPOS work. But that may not work for Windows XP. If that is the case, resort to old-style kern table kerning (which effectively breaks your font, but you gotta break an egg for making that proverbial omelet).

1 Like
3

That gets an Oy. :wink: