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 Type Tool 3. This guide uses some new terminology that we will be introducing in our future products.

Each font family can contain two family naming systems. There can 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.

TypeTool 3 does not let you edit the "typographic" family or style names (TFN or TSN) for OpenType (.ttf or .otf) fonts, so you can only edit the styling group names. This means that you have to split every family into a series of styling groups so that each styling group has no more than four members, and these memebers are no different than "Regular", "Italic", "Bold" or "Bold Italic". If you'd like to edit typographic family or style names, you need FontLab Fontographer 5.x or FontLab Studio 5.x or newer.

Now, open all styles in TypeTool and open the Font Info dialog.

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:

• 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.
• 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 TypeTool.

To sum it up, here's a small checklist of the requirements for OpenType (.ttf or .otf) fonts that you need to follow:

1. No more than four fonts in the family may have the same value in the "Family Name" field.
2. Each font with the same "Family Name" value must have a different combination of "Font is bold" and "Font is italic" checkboxes.
3. The "Weight" field should represent the true typographic weight the font. Choose the value provided in the dropdown list that best matches the design of the font, but do not use the "UltraLight", "Thin" or "ExtraLight" values.
4. The "Width" field should represent the true typographic width of the font. Choose the value provided in the dropdown list that best matches the design of the font, but make sure that all fonts with the same Family Name have the same value.
5. The "Style Name" field must have one of the four values: "Regular", "Italic", "Bold", "Bold Italic". No other values are acceptable. Make sure that the values you enter there correspond to the combination of "Font is bold" and "Font is italic" checkboxes, for example, if both checkboxes are enabled, the "Style Name" field must have the value "Bold Italic".

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.

I've got a much more basic naming question.  What I'm trying to do is open an existing font, edit it and generate a new font with a new name.  I'm copying the ttf file and renaming it, then opening it in type tool and editing it and trying to save it with a new name.  I'm changing the name in font info and saving it with a new name but when I generate a font - even though the ttf file has a different name the generated font still has then same name as the original font so I can't save it without replacing the original font.  Would love some advice on what I'm doing wrong.  Any advice would be much appreciated.  Jen

The name of the file is irrelevant to the way the font works (unless it happens to conflict with another file name). It's all in the Font Info. You must be missing something there.