Hi! Could you please help to understand naming tables — after analyzing a bunch of files, seems like most (?) professional foundries use fontFamily and fontSubfamily in RIBBI format, and ‘preferred’ names for the actual naming (even when there’s no need to separate the family into different submenus). Seems like the Glyphs naming tutorial doesn’t support that approach, and I’m curious why? Thank you!
Not sure what you mean by ‘actual naming’. What are you missing in the tutorial?
Sorry, I mean, it seems like most foundries use the naming table this way:
fontFamily: Helvetica Semibold
fontSubfamily: Italic
preferredFamily: Helvetica
preferredSubfamily: Semibold Italic
But if I understand correctly from the tutorial, there’s no need to do that for Windows/office software compatibility, and can simply stick with this?:
fontFamily: Helvetica
fontSubfamily: Semibold Italic
So I’m just trying to figure out whether preferred names always need to be filled, or why does everybody do that.
Why do you think it is not needed for office/windows? It most certainly is.
Recommended course of action:
- just fill in the obligatory parts of the Font Info UI as advised in the tutorial:
- Font > Family Name
- Instance > Style Name and Style Linking
- Export and Test if fonts behave as they should
- Only if it doesn’t: consider adding other parameters. Everything I know about the subject is in the Naming tutorial.
Keep in mind that you may need different strategies for Mac and Win entries in the name table. Glyphs does this by default, so usually you don’t need to interfere.
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