Dear all, I am new here. I have designed own fonts for our editions (Atalanta Utrecht) but in my previous computer installing gave ‘minor issues’ and on my new computer they don’t show up at all. The design mostly is from 1998, the latets versions are made in 2007 with Fontographer 3.5. Old…
I can open the fonts in glyphs! And I have made a glyph file. To use them in InDesign etcetera I’ll have to export them, I suppose. But what is the preferred file format? Standard ‘Postscript/CFF’ as outline flavour (whatever that may be) and ‘otf’ are choosen. That’s OK?
That will work fine, yes.
Thanks! I now exported seven styles of a font not of my own design. It has seven styles, they all look good when the glyphs are inspected, but when I use them in Word one style never comes through. Bold alwys leads to regular in Word, although when the bold otf version is opened in glyphs it is bold indeed. I have removed the font, retsarted the computer, re-installed the bold version, but it remains to be wrong in use. What could be the problem?
Can you drop your fonts onto fontbakery.com? That will give you clues as to what to fix. Look out issues relating to style linking and the name table.
I assume you don’t have style linking set up properly in your Bold instance. You need to check the “Bold” checkbox. Can you show a screenshot of your Bold instance?
Fontbakery is new for me. The bold-version has 2 issues but the correct italic one has 4…!
The style linking isn’t OK anyway. The seven styles show up as seven fonts, not as one font with a dropdown menu for all styles. This is the bold info. The name is empty after Bold, but the family name Swift is correct below. How to fix that?
Delete all extra name (Full Name, Font Name, styleMapFamilyName) and set the Weight class to 700.
I have altered 500 to 700 and have removed the extra parameters, but all other changes lead to ‘could not be saved’ or ‘field cannot be empty’ or so. So the two tabs look like this now, and the problem still exists after re-installing the font…
Fully delete the parameters Font Name and Full Name. Click on them and then use Cmd+Backspace to remove them.
In the tab ‘font’ or in ‘exports’ or in both?
Both. The parameters are only ever necessary if you need specific control over this metadata. Only use them if you know exactly why.
I learned a lot already, all seven styles can be used in Word or so. But 2 things: the bold version is only called ‘Swift’ (the family-name) so I maybe removed too much. (Removing on my Mac is option +).
2
: how can I put all styles under one head with a > to find them?
You need to set the family name to Swift. The exports have style names, set those to Light, Regular, Bold etc.
Read this: Naming | Glyphs
I would recommend unifying all these fonts in one Glyphs file. You can add them as separate masters.
Another question: Do you have the rights to this font? Are you Gerard Unger?
I do not make alterations to the font. Gerard Unger is deceased a few years ago. I have had some correspondence with him, but I do not remember which were the issues. Maybe version issues, the original maybe was made with Ikarus long ago. My copy of the font is legal and used for reprints of a field guide for dragonflies. The computer used for those books has gone dead, last january, and I am still trying to get everything working on my newest Mac. This font family should work, but didn’t. As you have seen there were many extra settings in it, maybe because it’s such an old font? And maybe because Gerard was a control freak!
I’ll read that file you linked to!
In that case, I would really recommend rebuilding a proper Glyphs file from the otfs you have. Do you have any other form of source file?
If you have one file open, go to Font Info > Masters and click the +
button in the bottom left. Select Add Other Font and add the other open fonts. They will be added as masters.
Now you will need to add a Weight axis to Font Info > Font. Set correct weight values for the masters (either based on the stem weight of the n, or on usWeightClass values: Light=300, Regular=400, Bold=700, etc.). Now also add the corresponding exports in the Font Info > Exports tab. If you have added all fonts as a master each, you can select +
> Add Instance for each Master.
This way, you will only need to set the family name in Font Info > Font once.
Don’t hesitate to ask if you run into problems or things are unclear.
In fact I did not dare to start… My plan now is first make backwards compatible versions and when they work I can make expanded versions under a new name. I could import my six files into glyphs (regular and semibold, and within those roman, italic and smallcaps). All kernings are correct. But in the ‘font info’ it looks strange. They do not have the same family name! They have their own name as family, so six different ones. That’s the first thing to do?
You need to understand naming and style linking. Read this tutorial please:
I don’t know what you mean by backwards compatible, but changing the names will change the way the fonts work in apps. Old documents will have to be updated.
That’s very welcome! Thanks.
They work! My old versions of 2006 now work on my newest Mac, all as familymenbers. Even the ‘Bold’ and ‘Italic’ buttons within MicrosoftWord use the correct family members. Kerning is OK too.
Only silly thing: the Expert style is seen as topmost style, not Regular style. Something within the naming?
Swift is a font published by Linotype. Maybe it’s easiest to check if you can get an official update? “Expert” fonts were a dirty hack back when fonts were limited to 256 glyphs and should not really be used anymore…
Swift I will look at when a new edition of the book is necessary. I’ll come back on small caps etcetera for my own font. For the moment I can do my normal work in InDesign, Photoshop or Word.