Microsoft vs font styles

[Sandy]

I've created an otf font family with 7 weights in regular and italic faces (14 total). For use here, I'll call it Myfont. Mindful of Microsoft's restriction to 4 styles per family, I've named the font families Myfont (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic), Myfont-Demi (Regular, Italic), Myfont-Subheading (Regular, Italic), Myfont-Heading (Regular, Italic), Myfont-Title (Regular, Italic), and Myfont-Nameplate (Regular, Italic).

It works flawlessly in otf aware apps and in all apps I've tested it with on the Mac. When I take it over to a PC though and test it in Microsoft apps I get strange results in the font selector.

Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic work fine.

Myfont Demi shows available styles of Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. (Selecting either the Regular or Bold style uses Demi - selecting Italic or Bold Italic uses Demi Italic).

Why would 4 styles appear here? Should the font selector only display Regular and Italic?

The remaining fonts show available styles of Bold and Bold Italic.

Why does the font selector display Bold and Bold Italic as the available styles? Should it not display Regular and Italic?

Other than in the main 4 font family, I have set all styles in FontLab to either Regular or Italic. Do I also have to set the weight to "Normal" regardless of the actual font weight? Wouldn't that also affect the font menus in otf aware apps? 

[Der FontMeister]

The PC only recognizes four weights in a family. You would need to build the other weights as stand-alone fonts.

Jimmy G.

[Sandy]

Um, that is what I said I did, in the 1st paragraph.

The base family (Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic) have their corresponding style flags set. All other fonts either have no style flag set or in the case of italics, only the Italic style flag set. So where is Windows getting the styles from?

Demi's family name is Myfont Demi, the style name is Regular and no style attribute is assigned. Demi Italic's style name is Italic and the italic attribute is assigned. Why does Notepad and Word's font selector show available styles as Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic?

Subheading's family name is Myfont Subheading, the style name is Regular and no style attribute is assigned. Subheading Italic's style name is Italic and the italic attribute is assigned. Why does Notepad and Word's font selector show available styles as Bold and Bold Italic, instead of Regular and Italic?
_________

I think I understand what is happening, but now I'm more perplexed than ever.

There are 2 settings for "style" on the Font Info screen. One is the "style flag" -- select italic, bold or bold and italic. The other is the "style name" which could probably, and more appropriately, be called the "subfamily".

On the Mac any font family must have a "Regular" face as the base style -- that is, there is no style flag set. Other fonts in that family can be linked in any combination of Italic, bold or bold italic, up to the 4 style limit.

It would seem in Microsoft's current font algorithm/font selector, when you select a font family, you must also select a style (you can't select Times Italic directly for instance, you must select Times as the font and Italic as the style.) In addition, where as the Mac "sees" only those fonts/styles linked to the base font, up to the 4 styles -- in Microsoft apps, the font selector displays 4 styles regardless of whether the actual font styles exist or not. If you are using a 2 face font, you are presented with faux styles for the other 2 styles, but in some apps, like Notepad, with no indication that they are faux styles.

What that means is that if you have Afont Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic and Afont Semibold Regular and Italic installed, the font selector shows Afont with 4 corresponding styles and Afont Semibold with 4 corresponding styles, even though Afont is really linked to 4 styles and Afont Semibold is really linked to only 2 corresponding styles.

To make matters more confusing to me, the MS font selector not only uses the style flag, but style name, weight and width to link styles as well. It recognizes that anything bolder than bold is a bold font. So if you throw Afont Black Regular and Italic into the mix, what you end up with in the font selector is Afont with 4 styles, Afont Medium with 4 styles and Afont Black with 2 styles (Bold and Bold Italic).

That applies to ps otf fonts. ttf otf fonts seem to be treated to a different algorithm again, with every font family, regardless of weight, supplied with 4 styles, the actual number of styles + faux styles to bring the total to 4.


That is not meant as a platform flame in any way. I should hasten to point out that Adobe's PC apps don't use the Microsoft font selector and don't suffer from the same confusion and that Microsoft is developing a new font selection method that should ease the confusion in the future. I just found the way styles are currently applied in the MS font selector utterly confusing and thought my post might help someone else developing fonts on the Mac, meant to be cross-platform.

And by all means...if I'm mistaken about any of that, feel free to correct me.

[Der FontMeister]

if you select one of those unexpected Bold weights - is it possible you are getting FAKE bold?

Jimmy G.

[Goran Soderstrom]

If you follow this it will work as expected.

http://groups.msn.com/fontlab/tipsandtricks.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=2843
Follow each step very carefully, as it is easy to make some small error here and there.