Font Family Naming in FontLab Studio 5

[Adam Twardoch (FontLab)]

Creating font families that have family and style naming that works in all systems always was a difficult task. Below is a guide on how you should proceed devising font family and style naming using FontLab Studio 5. This guide uses some new terminology that we will be introducing in our future products.

Each font family should contain two family naming systems. There should be a typographic family (Typo Family) where there is one family name (Typo Family Name, short TFN) and multiple styles truly reflecting the typographic design of each style (each having a Typo Style Name, short TSN).

In addition, for families containing more than four styles, there should be several styling groups (each having a Styling Group Name, short SGN) with up to four styles each (each having a Styling Link Name, short SLN). Those styling groups set up styling links ("is bold of" and "is italic of").

The Styling Link Names must be equal to one of the following four values: "Regular", "Italic", "Bold" or "Bold Italic", and should always reflect the actual styling links set up by the "is italic" and "is bold" checkboxes.

Another important thing to remember: none of the names you need to devise yourself (TFN, TSN, SGN) should include any characters except upppercase and lowercase English letters, and spaces. This means, no digits, no ampersands, no dashes, no pluses, no slashes, no accented characters etc. Also, keep TFN, TSN and SGN less than 32 characters long.

Let's consider the following family grouping:

TFN	TSN	SGN	SLN	Is Bold	Is Italic	Weight
My Garamond	Light	My Garamond Lt	Regular			Light
My Garamond	Light Italic	My Garamond Lt	Italic		X	Light
My Garamond	Regular	My Garamond	Regular			Regular
My Garamond	Italic	My Garamond	Italic		X	Regular
My Garamond	Semibold	My Garamond Lt	Bold	X		Semibold
My Garamond	Semibold Italic	My Garamond Lt	Bold Italic	X	X	Semibold
My Garamond	Bold	My Garamond	Bold	X		Bold
My Garamond	Bold Italic	My Garamond	Bold Italic	X	X	Bold
My Garamond	Condensed	My Garamond Cn	Regular			Regular
My Garamond	Condensed Italic	My Garamond Cn	Italic		X	Regular

In every typo family, there must be one styling group where SGN = TFN. The regular style of that styling group will serve as the default style for the entire typo family. When constructing the SGN for the remaining styling groups, use abbreviated versions of the TSN of the Regular font within that styling group as a suffix that you append (after a space) to the TFN to form the SGN. The reason for the abbreviation is that the standard font selector dialog used by many standard Windows applications (such as WordPad) is quite narrow so if your TFN is rather long, the final parts of the SGN could be cut off and not visible to the user, prohibiting him from distinguishing between the styling groups.

Some suffixes you could use are "Lt" or "Lig" for "Light", "Blk" for "Black", "XLt" or "XLig" for "Extra Light", "Wd" for "Wide", "Nar" for "Narrow", "Ext" for "Extended", "Exp" for "Expanded", "Cn" or "Cond" for "Condensed", "Cm" or "Comp" for "Compressed". You can stack them one after another, separated by spaces, so one example SGN could be "My Garamond Cond XLig" or "My Garamond Cn XLt". Remember that the length of the SGN, like all the other fields, should not exceed 32 characters.

Now, open all styles in FontLab Studio and open the Font Info dialog. In my further notes, I'll put "OT" in front of field names that are on the "OpenType-specific..." pane.

When making PostScript Type 1 fonts:

• Put the same TFN in the "Family Name" field for all fonts, e.g. "My Garamond".
• Append TSN to TFN, separating them by hyphen and stripping all spaces (e.g. "MyGaramond-SemiboldItalic"), and put in the "Font Name" field. Remember, no spaces or special characters are permitted here, and there should be exactly one hyphen.
• Copy the entry from the "Font Name" field to the "Full Name" field (this is recommended). Alternatively (this is less recommended), append TSN to TFN, separating them by space (e.g. "My Garamond Semibold Italic") and put it in the "Full Name" field.
• Copy the entry from the "Full Name" field to the "FOND Name" field (If there is a hyphen, replace it with a space).
• Put SGN in the "Menu Name" field, e.g. "My Garamond Lt".
• Set "Font is italic" and "Font is bold" according to the style linking schema devised.
• For Windows Type 1 fonts, put SLN in the "Style Name" field (remember that it should correspond to the "is italic" and "is bold" checkboxes). For Mac Type 1 fonts, put TSN in the "Style Name" field.
• Put the appropriate Weight to the "Weight" field.
• If you're creating a Windows Type 1 font, generate it. If you're creating a Macintosh Type 1 font, build the suitcase according to the tips given in the Creating ATR-compatible suitcases document.

When making OpenType (PostScript- or TrueType-based) or TrueType fonts:

• Put TFN in the OT "Family Name" field (on the OpenType-specific names pane), e.g. "My Garamond".
• Put TSN in the OT "Style Name" field.
• Append TSN to TFN, separating them by hyphen and stripping all spaces (e.g. "MyGaramond-SemiboldItalic"), and put in the "Font Name" field. Remember, no spaces or special characters are permitted here, and there should be exactly one hyphen.
• Copy the entry from the "Font Name" field to the "Full Name" field (this is recommended). Alternatively (this is less recommended), append TSN to TFN, separating them by space (i.e. "My Garamond Semibold Italic") and put it in the "Full Name" field.
• Put SGN in the "Family Name" field.
• Set "Font is italic" and "Font is bold" according to the style linking schema devised.
• Put SLN in the "Style Name" field (remember that it should correspond to the "is italic" and "is bold" checkboxes).
• Put the appropriate Weight to the "Weight" field. Also set the appropriate Width in the Width field.
• Make sure that in Preferences / Generating OpenType & TrueType, "Use the OpenType names as menu names on Macintosh" is enabled, and in the OpenType PS (.otf) subsection, "Use PostScript FontName as FullName on Windows" is enabled.
• Generate your fonts.

Finally: for OpenType and TrueType fonts, we recommend that you also use the "Font Name" as basis for your filename. So the OpenType version of MyGaramond-SemiboldItalic should be generated as MyGaramond-SemiboldItalic.otf — it is advisable to avoid spaces and special characters in filenames. For Windows Type 1 fonts, it is best if you make a filename that is no more than 8 characters long, especially if you want backwards compatibility with old Windows versions. So the font could be named MYGASBDI.PFB, for example. Alternatively, you can just use the "Font Name" as well (so MyGaramond-SemiboldItalic.pfb). For Mac Type 1 suitcases, use the default filename suggested by FontLab Studio.

I can assure you that we're working hard on making all this much easier in the new versions of our products.

Regards,
Adam Twardoch
Fontlab Ltd.

[Adam Twardoch (FontLab)]

Below are two screenshots showing the relevant Font Info section after the correct naming for an OpenType font has been entered.

[Vladimir Tamari]

Thanks Adam, As a newbie I found the whole question of font-naming baffling. I will study your post carefully when naming my new font family which consists of six weights.  One problem that I find needs a solution (whether in Fontlab or under-the-hood within OT itself) is a way to prevent programs such as MS Word from creating their own fake bolds when the B button is pressed.  Perhaps you know of a way this could be made to work in Fontlab:

Let us say the font family consists of six weights ranging from extra-light (call it A) to light (B) to Regular (C) and so on till (F) extra bold.   Now supposing a user in Word is typing using (A) and wants to make a phrase appear bold; it would be nice if font (B) appears when the Bold button is clicked, rather than Word's own 'fake-bold' version of (A), with its shapeless bloated outline . In other words (B) would be the designated bold for (A). And when using weight (B) it will be nice if weight (C) is or (D) is switched on automatically (not necessarily the next-darker). and so on.

I experimented with setting  all the fonts as Bold so that Word cannot create its own fake bolds, forcing the user to select the weights manually, and that worked. We had discussions of this on Typophile but I do not think a satisfactory conclusion was ever reached http://typophile.com/node/44050 
Best wishes
Vladimir

[Adam Twardoch (FontLab)]

Vladimir,

your case is just like the one I illustrated in my example, with four weights: Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold. The Semibold is the styling bold link of the Light and the Bold is the styling bold link of the Regular. So for six weights, you need three styling groups, each with a separate SGN, and each having one "Regular" and one "Bold" SLN.

There is one important restriction, though: in Font Info, do not use the Weight entries "Ultra Light" or "Thin", and if you pick "Extra Light", replace the number 200 next to it with the number 250.

So in your case, the family naming might be following:

#	TFN	TSN	SGN	SLN	Is Bold	Is Italic	Weight
1.	Vladimir Sans	ExtraLight	Vladimir Sans XLt	Regular			Extra Light (250)
2.	Vladimir Sans	Light	Vladimir Sans XLt	Bold	X		Light (300)
3.	Vladimir Sans	Regular	Vladimir Sans	Regular			Regular (400)
4.	Vladimir Sans	Semibold	Vladimir Sans SBd	Regular			Semibold (600)
5.	Vladimir Sans	Bold	Vladimir Sans	Bold	X		Bold (700)
6.	Vladimir Sans	Black	Vladimir Sans SBd	Bold	X		Bold (900)

But note that this will mean that the Light, Bold and Black styles will not be available separately in the menu in typical Windows applications, so the only way to access them in, say, Word, would be to select the corresponding style-linked regular link, and then use the "B" button on the toolbar.

[Vladimir Tamari]

Adam,  over the years I saw your painstaking and detailed answers to questions people asked in Typophile and MSN Fontlab Forums. Now I am the beneficiary of your expertise thank you so much!  Your scheme 'hides' three of the weights in Windows applications but prevents the fake-bolds. How about an older idea- giving the fonts separate names ie AlQuds50 AlQuds100 AlQuds150..AlQuds300  and marking them all as 'bold' to prevent fake-bolds? This seemed to work on my PC but are there must be drawbacks, apart from the over-crowded menu list?

[Adam Twardoch (FontLab)]

Vladimir,

doing something just to "prevent fake bolds" is not really much of an interesting motivation. Most users want to actually see a bold font when they format text as bold. Remember that especially with Latin text, the italic and bold formatting is often used, and gets carried over in HTML, RTF or Word documents. So preventing fake bold is good but having truly functional bold is even better (same applies for italic, of course).

The styling group menu naming gets exposed primarily in office applications on Windows. The experience shows that users of those applications prefer to have a functional bold or italic formatting option over the direct comfortable access to all weights. On the other hand, users who want direct access to all weights typically use publishing applications, or they use Mac OS X, where the style linking works fine but the menus is not constrained to the styling group naming (and instead, exposes the full typographic naming).

But of course, the scheme I presented is just one compromise that many font vendors and users seem to agree on. Depending on your particular needs, you are free to modify it.

However, as far as I understand, you seem to suggest to mark _all_ styles as bold (and each having a separate styling group name). I definitely think it is NOT a good idea. This will certainly get you into trouble in some applications when users are trying out various fonts for their text. For example, if the user selects all his text (which may have regular and bold formatting mixed), and switches to a font family made the way you suggested, and then decides against it and switches to yet another family, he may find that all of his text has been reformatted to bold (I believe this is actually what might happen in InDesign). I'd definitely recommend against making families where you have styling groups that have an italic or a bold member but no corresponding regular.

Also, if you are planning to make any Mac Type 1 fonts, remember not to use digits in family names or style names.

Regards,
Adam

[Vladimir Tamari]

Thanks Adam,
Since this is my first (and so far only) font family I guess I was rather happy to see all six weights listed in the Windows App. menu

Of course you are right a user of say, Word, would rather click the B button and see a nice bold appear instead of changing the font itself from the menu.  And as you say those who care about subtleties of weights know how to access them in Adobe graphical programs  or in Mac software. 

This discussion made me think of an idea:  Fontlab has Actions to affect controlled changes like embolding* a font. Perhaps in future editions there will be a slider to input the required change percentage, and more importantly a live view of the changes in the glyph window.  Who knows maybe such a slider will find its way to regular Office or Adobe software, replacing the B button!
Cheers!
* I thought to coin this usage meaning 'to make letters bold' but see this discussion:
(I thought to coin this word, but see http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/28977-embold.html )

[Arno Enslin]

There is a slight mistake in your naming tutorial, Adam:

Remember that the length of the SGN, like all the other fields, should not exceed 32 characters.

31 characters, but not 32.

__________________________________

With regard to the next versions of FontLab, I would like to see, if the developers would create a panel more close to the specifications. Why not take the same terms as in the specifications? DTL OTMaster and Highlogic FontCreator both provide those solutions. That’s less irritating than fantasy terms like typographic family. The four member sub family (Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic) also is a typographic family. If you take the terms, that are written in the specs, you avoid doubts about the meaning.

I don’t name fonts with FontLab because of all the bugs, but I decompile the name table and the CFF table with TTX, edit it in a text editor and than I merge it into the source font.

It would be nice, if the next version of FontLab would provide two name panels. One for TTF and OTF and one for Type1 fonts. And names, that will not be stored in TTF (the names from the CFF-table) should be marked. And the names, that are required according to the specifications also should be marked. When I am naming a font in the next version of FontLab, I would like to know, which name will be put into which namerecord(s). My proposal is, not to write tutorials for font naming, but to create a naming panel, that is the tutorial. The screen is big enough for that. And generally – it would be nice, if the panel had fields for personal comments of the users, that are stored in a user file.

Mmh, I think, that Adobe limits the number of the characters of the PostScript name according to the old technical notes, that are regarding to Type1 fonts. All this mess is unbelievable. I meanwhile have read dozens of different values for the maximum string length. The TRUE maximum length also should be stored on the naming panel. Or two values for each name. The one, that is recommended (because of limitations of old tools, printers and so on), and the one, that matches with the specifications.

[paragraph]

Hi Adam,
my latest display font (Tertre) does not lend itself easily to the 'family' concept: Thin, Light, Medium, Bold, Heavy, possibly Black (no italics). Calling Medium 'bold' in the 'Thin' family does not sound right. Already, with Thin, Light and Bold it does not work in MS Word (Mac). What am I to do?

[Arno Enslin]

What am I to do?

Please upload (in a file) a table with the names, weight values and the status of the checkboxes of all styles.

Calling Medium 'bold' in the 'Thin' family does not sound right.

If you mean the SLN, it is right. That doesn’t cause the problem.

[paragraph]

Arno, thanks for your answer. My worry is that I do not know which fonts people will purchase. The scheme above where Light is the bold style of Extra Light, and as such never shows in the menu is not acceptable. No one might wish to use my Light as bold for the Extra Light. They might want to buy the Light and use the Bold with it. I would rather make them all individual fonts and abandon any pretense of families: the problem is that under the same family name no more than two seem to load into MS applications.

[Arno Enslin]

paragraph

There is no duty to build sub families with four members. A sub family (the family name in the font info panel – in case of OpenType, not in case of Type 1) can contain 1–4 members. If you have many weights, the best way is, to build sub families, that contain two members only. Each sub family contains the upright style of a weight and the italic style of the same weight. If the user wants to change the weight, he has to use the drop down list of the font menu. Then you should use Regular and Italic as SLN only.

This should work, if you prefer, not to style link:

TFN	TSN	SGN	SLN	Is Bold	Is Italic	Weight
Tertre	Thin	Tertre Thin	Regular			Thin
Tertre	Light	Tertre Light	Regular			Light
Tertre	Medium	Tertre Medium	Regular			Medium
Tertre	Bold	Tertre Bold	Regular			Bold
Tertre	Heavy	Tertre Heavy	Regular			Heavy
Tertre	Black	Tertre Black	Regular			Black

[paragraph]

Thanks, Arno. That looks like the only way out, one family each. Do you by any chance know why Adam recommends not using Thin and changing the value to 250 above?

[jamespuckett]

Do you by any chance know why Adam recommends not using Thin and changing the value to 250 above?

Karsten Lucke notes in his naming guide that some applications handle weights below 250 by fattening them. I’m not sure why that’s a font problem and not a software problem…

[paragraph]

Thanks, James. Good luck with Downturn!

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