I’m trying to figure out a best strategy for setting up the naming in a typface that will have both variable and static fonts. The static instances are based on contrast as well as weight so they have more unconventional names. From the naming tutorial it seems my example might best fit with the discussion there of adding Display and Caption variants, under the “WWS names: name IDs 21 and 22” section. But the “WWS Family Name” and “WWS Subfamily Name” parameters mentioned there do not appear as prompts in my version of Glyphs (3.2[3.2.3.4]). So my questions are:
Is the naming tutorial current?
Would this still be the best practice to achieve what I want?
Is there a reason why those parameters don’t pop up as suggestions?
(Right now I just have my quirky style names in the usual “Style Name” box. One thing I’m hoping my efforts will achieve is better grouping/ordering of the font in apps—I’d like them grouped by quirky name first then weight.)
Okay, I put in Typographic Family Names/Style Names and WWS Family Names/Subfamily Names and we’re getting closer. But now the name 1 field becomes “Fontname quirkyname1 quirkyname1 Bold” etc.—in other words, the subfamily name gets repeated.
Figuring that this came from the Style Name field in the Exports tab, I tried changing those. “quirkyname1 Bold” became just “Bold,” “quirkyname2” became just “Regular,” etc. But then when trying to export all, Glyphs gave me warnings that the filenames would be identical and thus would overwrite each other.
So if I’m using Typographic Names and WWS names, what should go in the Style Names box (leaving it empty is disallowed I see)? Do I need to use some other parameter to alter the file names? Or is something else wrong with my setup?
Removed the Typographic Family Names and Typographic Style Names.
Added Localized Family Names and Localized Style Names.
Generated fonts and they still have “Familyname Quirkyname1 Quirkyname1” in the name1 field.
Changed the general “Style Name” to remove the quirkyname.
Generated fonts. The warning about identical file names did not appear this time. But the generated font files still have the redundancy in the name1 field.
Is the issue that I’m using both WWS names and Localized names? I’m trying to follow the naming tutorial, where the former is there because the quirkynames are not WWS, and the latter is there because I want Adobe apps to group by quirkyname rather than order all by weight.
As long as style name is “Bold”, you only need the Localized Family Name. The Localized Style name and WWS names are redundant.
If you have a style name other than “Regular”, “Bold”, “Italic” and “Bold Italic”, then you can add “Style Map Family/Style Name”. And if you have Weight and Width axis, you might need WWS names, too.
Okay, I think I have it sorted.
Removed Localized style name, WWS names, and removed quirkyname references in the style linking fields. For the “quirkyname” variant that had three weights (Light in addition to Regular and Bold), I had to add Style Map Family and Style Name to get the linking to work right, as you suggested.
Thanks for the help. This naming stuff is frustrating!
For the naming tutorial’s next update, I’d suggest adding clearer guidance on when to use “localized” vs. “typographic” vs. “WWS” entries, and whether to use them in combination, as well as on how linking might need to be adjusted. What threw me for a while is the fact that the general Style names don’t have to be unique if localized names are in place.
Hmm, I removed the style map stuff and now it seems to be working. I could have sworn before, the quirkyname2 Light/Regular/Bold linking was screwing up, but now it seems okay.
So now I just have Localized Family names with “familyname quirkynameX”, and no quirkynames mentioned in the general Style fields nor in the style linking references.
I did have to go back and add some “Font Name” settings to keep the name6 from getting too long.
