Univers Oblique font convesion with Trans Type

[the_lar]

Hi all,

I'm having difficulty with converting a Mac Postcript font. The font is Univers. I have all of my Mac fonts on a Mac CD, then I use transMac to copy fonts to the PC, then TransType to convert them. Mostly this works great. Univers is a big family and it converts 90% just great. The BIG problem I have is with the oblique fonts in the family: CondensedOblique, CondensedBoldOblique, BlackExtendedOblique and so on. All of the converted fonts are the non-oblique versions. Even if I set a completely different family name, menu name - I've tried everything. The little preview in Trans Type shows the font correctly, i.e. oblique fonts are oblique but when I double click the font in the source window it's not oblique. It's all very strange and I'm left scratching my head - these fonts work just fine on the Mac.

See attached screenshot for more info.

Any thoughts???
Regards
Kevin

[Alex Petrov]

Some Oblique fonts are not converted properly with TransType.
Fonts created by Adobe Systems in 1986-1993 are not completely compatible with Adobe's specification of the PostScript Type 1 font format. These fonts use some custom undocumented extensions to the format, and are today considered obsolete. FontLab applications only support fonts that are compatible with published specifications. Adobe has abandoned the practice of creating such fonts years ago, but such fonts still are floating around in people's systems.
  Solution:
You can manually slant the font in Fontlab Studio:

1. From the FontLab menu select Edit>Select All and then Tools>Action>Contour>Slant.
2. Enter the appropriate italic angle (usually 12)
and click on OK. If you are making Type 1 fonts, you can enter the Slant angle in Font Info>Key dimensions
The outlines will remain upright but will be slanted on-the-fly after the font has been installed.
3. Revise the font name by selecting File>Font Info> Names and Copyright, enter "Oblique" as the style name, click the "Font is italic" checkbox and click the "Build Names" button.

[the_lar]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the reply. I have now got the OTF versions of Univers, but although it's the same as the original type 1 versions, it has a different family name (UniversLtStd). This means that all of my documents (inDesign, Photoshop etc) don't recognise the new OTF font as being the same font which is a pain as I have to update ever occurance of Univers (manually in Photoshop). I thought it would be fairly easy to now change the name of the font using TranType and revert the family name back to just Univers (keeping them as OTF versions). I can't seem to get it to work though. The converted OTF font consistently has the original family name of UniversLtStd and not the new name. Am I doing something wrong? Same thing happens if I try to make a ttf version - the family name is UniversLtStd and not Univers

Very strange!

[Alex Petrov]

Kevin,

Generally speaking TransType is not suitable for just renaming fonts. It can easily convert outlines but renaming was never among its' strong features. And more: it seems the Windows 3.0.2 version has the bug which doesn't allow renaming. 

[the_lar]

so I guess it's a matter of upgrading to font lab of is there a newer version that doesn't have this big?

[Alex Petrov]

We are working on TransType 4 but we have no date of release yet.