Type & Typography

I have a set of fonts that I created with FDK 1.6. They contain numerous non-standard ligatures, e.g. "a" + combining macron + combining acute. FDK 1.6 stored these in the Private Use Area, and GSUB rules invoking them worked fine on Windows from XP SP2 onwards. I now have to rebuild these fonts using FDK 2.0. After some trouble I have got the new command line switches right (I think), and I have added explicit PUA numbers for the weird ligatures in a GlyphOrderAndAliasDB file, since the documentation warns that FDK will no longer do this for me automatically. The resulting OTF fonts work fine on my MacBook Pro; however, under XP the PUA glyphs do not appear (non-PUA substitutions do happen). I've about run out of ideas for things to try. Any help would be most welcome. John D. Smith

Hello, <br /><br />I am using FDF toolkit to test some CFF and OpenType(CFF) fonts, but I am getting mixed messages. <br /><br />The CFF font (http://www.pdftron.com/pub/cfftest.zip) is actually a CID font and is using a single range (0, 0xFFFF) in the Charset dictionary of CFF font. <br /><br />When I run or CFFChecker (using the older FDK) I get lots of information (see below). Also FDK tools can successfully embed/render the CFF font in PDF. However, spot and some other tools report errors when I try to dump the CFF table saying that there is an error in CFF data.<br /><br />So are 'spot' and other FDK tools able to handle this type of CFF fonts (i.e. the fonts that use CID map as described above)? Is there anything wrong with this font? Are there any other resources that can help us to validate Adobe CFF format?<br /><br />Thank You, <br /><br />IvanN<br /><br />-------------<br />C:\>pytho

Hello- I have a user interested in FontFolio, I've forwarded them all of the product information that I could find and they sent me the following response... I think these fonts will work. For each fonts we are embedding we need .afm, .pfm and .pfb files. As long as these file types are provided it should work. Would anyone here be able to confirm or deny this for me? Thanks in advance. Luther

I just purchase some new fonts and they are all Open Type font. When I use in Photoshop(7), I notice that everytime I have a double letter (e.g. coffee, pool,apple), one of the letter is upper case and the other is lower case. Is there a way that I can change it so it won't be like that? I ask the creator of the fonts about it but he just tell me that it is a feature of Open Type font. What can I do to have it just in the same case when I use the font?

Is Adobe Open Type Font folio IPV6 compliant?

We're converting our Mac Type 1 publications to OpenType and have noticed that the OpenType characters are ascending closer to the top of the text box in InDesign than the Type 1 characters did. I checked into this with FontLab and noticed that for ITC Garamond book, the ascender height for the Type 1 fonts is 671, the descender is -218, the Caps height is 623 and the x height is 445. For ITC Garamond Std Book, the ascender is 703, the descender is -297, the Cas height is 626 and the x height is 451. These are substantially different numbers, resulting in reworking a large number of files to replicate the type 1 fonts. Does anybody know the reason why this happened? Looking forward to some enlightenment!

I have installed Garamond Premier Pro in my iMac G4 equipped with Tiger 10.4.8. All works fine with Garamond premier pro, but not the classical greek capitals with diacritics such as oxia, dasia and so on. I get the info "The application in use doesn't support glyph variant" and so I cannot use the above mentioned capitals. Any tip or suggest? Thank you so much Giorgio (from Italy, excuse my english)

I am doing some video work for a client and need to do some work their logo. Problem is they have no idea what the face is...nor does their agency (who are too lazy to do what I am tryng to do). So...can anyone perhaps help me ID the font used in the CHANCE MORGAN logo at this URL http://www.chancemorgan.com/ I would really appreciate it. Thanks MP

Press Release Source: Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Announces OpenType Edition of Font Folio Monday August 11, 8:12 am ET New Version Offers the Adobe Type Library in Enhanced Cross-Platform Font Format SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2003--Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE - News), the leader in network publishing, today introduced a new version of Adobe® Font Folio(TM) featuring the Adobe Type Library in OpenType® format on one CD-ROM. The Adobe Font Folio (OpenType Edition) product contains more than 2,000 fonts in OpenType format, which allows for richer linguistic support and more advanced typographic control in any print, Web or dynamic media project. Adobe also announced the availability of a new special version with a 10-computer license, making it more affordable for small design shops to access the entire Adobe Type Library. Adobe and Microsoft Corporation created the OpenType font format to improve cross-platform document portability and simplify f

Any news about FDK v.2?

How can I edit an opentype font and then save it again so I can see the Glyphs in Indesign. I can make change to the opentype, but when I save it it is a truetype, I can use this in other programs, but Indesign will not let me see the Glyphs or write with it.

When using Adobe programs, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator 10, InDesign some of my postscript fonts do not display the roman style. For example I can select Futura Italic however the face Futura is not available, Helvetica Italic is available Helvetica is not. If the fonts name is something like Garamond Book it is available. These font styles are available when I am using Quark and Freehand. Any ideas on how to fix this problem. Thanks Paul

Adobe font editing in FontLab, Adobe Creative Suite font problems, Font book OS X 10.4.5 CS2 InDesign 4.0.2 Photoshop 9.0 FontLab 5.0 MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo We have used FontLab to edit Adobe Caslon Pro to add diacritics for Hindi which are not available in the font. These are however, composite edits using existing components only. There are only 12 characters in this version needed. Fonts are now displaying incorrectly, or missing all around. FontBook is 'finding' files for fonts of entirely different font families. Also they are displaying incorrectly there as well. In Safari some fonts are displaying in some kind of symbol which is not readable. Upon launching InDesign now "Bad Font Detected" error is regularly coming up with a specific font listed. None of which are the fonts that we have modified. I have contacted Adobe which we have a tech support contract with, however they do not wish to troubleshoot this due to the modified font which I can appreciate. H

Where can I get an overview of making fonts for Open Type? I've never made a font before, but have a reason to make a personal artsy one with a decidedly hadnwritten look at this time. My limited understanding tells me there are many more characters available per font in the Open Type format, and for this reason I'm looking at this format for my own use. I like the idea of making a handwritten font that does not use only one single version of the letter 'E' for example. I took a quick look at some of the older fontmaking programs. Any suggestions? Is Open Type developer friendly or is it way complicated to the point of being accessible to a highly technical few? Article recommendations? If this works out and I have a knack for it, I may want to pursue it commercially. Thanks.

OK, here's the problem. My company has it's own graphics design department running MAC OS X which is using all PostScript fonts. We got a new digitalcolor laser printer (Xerox iGen3) (aka a digital press) with a WinXP front end (DFE) which has the Adobe Open Type fonts library installed. All new jobs created in the graphics design department will be utilizing the new Open Type fonts. All of the graphics designed until now are using the PS fonts on the MAC workstations which are not compatible with Microsoft. Any old graphics that we have on file will need to have the fonts changed to it's Open Type equivalent. To do that it appears that we would need to find it's equivalent by visually matching the fonts due to file name differences between PS and Open Type fonts. I am tasked to locate some sort of documentation (speadsheet, list, database) on the comparison or mapping of the two font types. For example, a PS font on the MAC is called Goudy, but the Open Type font doesn't have that

Hi there, I want to download my OpenType Font to the printer's filesystem in order to don´t send it each time a job is printed. Does anybody have an idea of what I need to do? I know I need to process the internal font tables and then create a different file with the processed data. The font I have has the postscript outlines (CFF table), does this mean I need to convert the CFF data to a type1 PS font? or Do I only need to extract the CFF binary data and send it as it is? I hope anybody could have the right directions to achieve that. Thanks....

It seems there is a problem with the OpenType "size" feature, at least in the current Windows release of the AFDKO: The values in the resulting otf file are 256 times too large (see example below), so I think there is some problem with the data type. This happens with the sample files for Minion as supplied by Adobe, as well as with my own files. The same error occurs in Fontlab Studio 5 for Windows (which, of course, uses the FDK code). I noticed the error by checking the otf files in FontForge (FontLab Studio 5 seems able to process the "size" information from a .fea file, but I couldn't get it to display the information). Original MinionPro fonts (as shipped by Adobe) are o.k., all files from the FDK show the wrong information. Has anyone else noticed this error? Is there any easy remedy? For example, with the following definition in a .fea file: feature size { parameters 110 # design size (decipoints) 3 # subfamily identifier 84 # range start (exclusive, decipoints) 1

I have just made available for free the "Typographic extensions for UltraEdit-32" that allow syntax coloring for OpenType Layout feature definitions in FontLab-compatible AFDKO/FEA syntax and for TTX files: http://www.twardoch.com/adam/about.php?pt=sft Regards, Adam Twardoch

I've been a graphics software customer of both Adobe and Macromedia for a long time (in Adobe's case, over a decade). Fontographer -originally distributed by Altsys and then acquired by Macromedia- has languished since the summer of 1996. I have an older PC I keep alive just to keep this application running. FOG 4.1.5 glitches out on newer WinXP systems with more than 512MB of RAM. Anyway, I still like FOG and prefer it in a number of aspects to FontLab. I think it would be great if Adobe could give this once-great but now comatose application some attention. Obviously, Fontographer lacks OpenType TT and OpenTypePS capability. There are a number of other productivity improvements (auto-glyph importing, etc.) I would like to see as well. FontLab has lots of modern features, such as the ability to create OTFs. Still, I don't like how that program "feels" in its operation. It's a bit on the clunky side. Ultimately, any font designer is going to want smooth interoperability with Illustra

I hope you don't mind if I pollute your forum with a dumb question but I just purchased my favorite font of all time from the Adobe store (Graphite) and it seems that if I use the font in an application (MS Word, for example) and then email the doc to someone, their system does not display the font as Graphite but substitutes another generic font in its place. This is *really* bumming me out since I doubt anyone I know has that font installed on their system. Is it the case that I can't use it in electronic docs that I intend to share with others? That would be a real shame. Thanks for reading. Nelson

I am working on a big job, that is completely layouted. Now they decided they want the available fractions in the layout in real fractions, as in smaller type with the slash... The font I used is Arial Narrow, and that font is not open type and does not have fractions available... Is there another way of doing fractions? There is around 3000 in the layout, so I would be grateful not to have to do them manually... Changing font would be the last but in no other solution way the latest... I am dutch speaking, forgive me for spelling mistakes Thanks in advance for any input...

Here's how we've made arbitrary fractions work at Adobe. [note: updated 4 Dec 2002] feature frac { lookup FRAC { sub [zero zerooldstyle zero.taboldstyle zerosuperior zero.inferior zero.denominator zero.titling] by zero.numerator; sub [one onefitted oneoldstyle one.taboldstyle onesuperior one.inferior one.denominator one.titling] by one.numerator; sub [two twooldstyle two.taboldstyle twosuperior two.inferior two.denominator two.titling] by two.numerator; sub [three threeoldstyle three.taboldstyle threesuperior three.inferior three.denominator three.titling] by three.numerator; sub [four fouroldstyle four.taboldstyle foursuperior four.inferior four.denominator four.titling] by four.numerator; sub [five fiveoldstyle five.taboldstyle fivesuperior five.inferior five.denominator five.titling] by five.numerator; sub [six sixoldstyle six.taboldstyle sixsuperior six.inferior six.denominator six.titling] by six.numerator; sub [seven sevenoldstyle seven.taboldstyle sevensuperior seven

Does Adobe make a Chinese OpenType font with the full range of traditional characters (like the 65,000 Simsun Foundry Extended TTF)? I would love to buy it... - J Heisig

I just replaced Python 2.2.2 with Python 2.3.2 on my Windows XP (i.e., I uninstalled 2.2.2 first and installed 2.3.2 afterwards). Now I cannot get FDK into working. When running FDK.py or MakeOTF.py, I keep getting: C:\Python23\FDK\Tools\Programs\makeotf\exe>python MakeOTF.py Error: Could not find makeotflib or makeotflibDB ['C:\\Python23\\FDK\\Tools\\Programs\\makeotf\\exe', 'C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\python23.zip', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\site-pac kages\\Pythonwin', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib', 'C:\\Pytho n23\\lib\\site-packages', 'C:\\Python23\\DLLs', 'C:\\Python23\\lib', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\plat-win', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\ lib-tk', 'C:\\Python23', 'C:\\Python23\\FDK\\Tools\\SharedData', 'C:\\Python23\\FDK\\Tools\\Programs\\OTFProof\\exe\\nt' , 'C:\\Python23\\FDK\\Tools\\Programs\\tx\\exe', 'C:\\Python23\\FDK\\Tools\\Programs\\tx\\exe\\nt', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\ site-packages\\FontTools', 'C:\\Python23\\lib\\site-packages\\

I am designing an Armenian OT font in FontLab, and I want to add some features. I did most of the usual features like liga, clig, ordn, etc. but I am having problems with vkrn. I want to raise the marks when they are over capitals. When I use vkrn, the OT preview panel raises the mark and all subsequent glyphs. Plus, when I generate the font and install it, all other features work but the vkrn does not. Is there any way to make this work? Maybe something other than vkrn would be better.