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ImDocHolliday Unfortunately, when it comes to WEFT, Microsoft doesn't really provide a good FAQ or a list of Best Practices. It's a learn-as-you-go proposition. I can tell you what works for me and it has helped me create some pretty good embedded font files for use in my web pages. Remember, make sure the fonts you want to use are active on your system. If not, these instructions won't do any good.
First - do NOT let WEFT search your entire web site and determine which fonts you have in use. Create a page called "fontembed.htm" (or html) and put it in a folder called "fonts" off of the root of your web site. In the fontembed page, add the following lines. Do this in HTML, not while viewing the output. If you like, you can use Notepad to edit the page.
Manuscript
A BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890`~!@#$%^&*()_-[{}]|;:"',<>./?®©°’
Copy these lines for all of the fonts you will use in your web site. Change the face tag and name to the true font name for each. Set the background and fonts color to what your viewers will see. Make sure the stays between the A and B; it's blank space character and if you don't use it, you'll get little boxes all over your pages. If you do see little boxes in the place of any of the characters (usually the ones after the zero) it means the typeface you are using does not support that character. Remove them because there's no sense in having WEFT go through the process of trying to create characters that don't exist. Some typefaces may use all of these; others may use just the letters and numbers. NOTE! - most typefaces are NOT public domain and the author may not have given permission to use the typeface on a web page. YOU are responsible to follow all copyrights. If the file cannot be generated by WEFT, don't send flame-mail or ask how to get around it. It won't happen; just accept it.
Once you have created the fontembed page, start WEFT and point to this page ONLY! WEFT will read it and create the EOT files, if possible, based on this page. Generally, I've found that I have to type in the full URL to my fontembed page:
Do NOT browse for the page. Just type it in manually. When you save the EOT files, let WEFT create the CSS declarations. However, WEFT will not create it exactly right; you'll have to edit them for use in your CSS file. Yes, you SHOULD use CSS file. Make your @font-face declarations look like this:
WEFT will just put the font name in the URL() function. Don't keep it that way. Use the full URL to the EOT file.
Also, you may not be able to save the EOT files to your web site directly. That's fine. Just save them to your local computer. You can copy them to the fonts folder in your web site later.
That's pretty much it. Search the web for a good tutorial on using CSS. It will help.
- John
