Family Test 11

[_Marten_Thavenius_]

The Compare Family proofing tool that is part of the FDK is certainly a very useful app. and I have the habit to run it after compiling a font or family.

There is however one test that I dont fully understand and it seems that it is not part of the documentation. This is the family test 11 that checks Mac and Win menu names. If you e.g. run the test on the Myriad Pro family, you will get the following report:

-------------------------
Family Test 11: Check that Mac and Windows menu names differ for all but base font, and are the same for the base font.

Error: Styled font Mac and Windows Compatible Names should differ, but do not. Myriad Pro Black Myriad Pro Black
-------------------------

How should this be interpreted?

Thanks,

/mårten

[Thomas_Phinney]

Ah. There is a minor bug of sorts, though not necessarily what you'd think.

Early in our OT development, we thought it was okay to have a font that was indicated as being bold-styled, even when there was no base font that it was the bold version of. Later, we changed our minds on that score.

Myriad Pro was one of the very first OT families we released, so it was built the first way. The "Black" weight is indicated as having a bold style, even though there is no other base font.

This is a relatively benign issue in this case. However, I will file a specific bug so that the next time we have occasion to revise the font, we change this.

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinney
Program Mgr., Western Language Fonts
Adobe Systems

[_Marten_Thavenius_]

Thanks for your answer Thomas. My message was not at all meant as complaint about the font in the example, but as question about the "family test 11" that gave me the same error message with a font family in development. Myriad Pro was just an illustrative example at hand. Thanks for clearing the 11 issue out for me.

What problems have you discovered with using a bold style for a font that has no regular style companion like in the case with Myriad Pro Black? I made some tests and couldn't see any downsides, only the good thing to prohibit "smear" bold in MS Office apps. that otherwise can occur when the user choose to hit the Bold button after selecting (e.g.) Myriad Pro Black.

/mårten

[Thomas_Phinney]

It was several years ago now, so I don't remember the details as to why we decided it was slightly better not to label the fonts as being styled bold. I think the main reason is that it implies that the font at hand is a style-linked bold, when there is no base font. But there may have been some other factor(s).

T