I just converted a bunch of old Adobe PostScript fonts to OpenType. The process was quick, and the fonts files were all named correctly. Then I selected a family and double clicked it to open a preview in FontBook. To my dismay, there was no distinction between regular, condensed and expanded fonts in the menu. I loaded the fonts and tried them out in InDesign and the problem was even worse. There was only one set of fonts (regular, italic, bold, bold italic) but selecting bold, say, showed the condensed bold and italic showed the expanded italic. I haven't run across this before so I was wondering if Adobe fonts require special conversion settings.

Which version of TransType did you use?

Version 3.1.1 Mac
Build 4622

Unfortunately, in TransType 3, you need to edit each font's OT Style name manually. Click on the "down" arrow next to the family name entry in the right pane, choose Properties. There, click on the font for which you'd like to edit the info and enter the desired typographic style name into the OT Style name field. The easiest way to do it is to copy the name part right of the hyphen in the PS Font Name, and paste that into the OT Style name. For example, if the PS Font Name is MyGaramond-BlackItalic, then enter BlackItalic or Black Italic into the OT Style name field. The OT Style name may contain spaces (while the PS Font Name field may not). After the edit, click on the green diamond next to the Full name field, and repeat for all fonts in the family.

In the next few weeks, we'll be publishing a next build of TransType 4 Public Preview for Mac OS X. With that app, doing it all will be much easier. (Currently, TransType 4 Public Preview only exports TTF fonts, not OTF -- but if you're fine with TTF, you can already try it instead of TransType 3).

You can get TransType 4 Public Preview for Mac OS X at:
http://forum.fontlab.com/index.php?topic=8704.0

If you use Windows, you'll need to wait a bit more for TransType 4 for Windows. But it'll also be published in the next weeks, perhaps a few months.

Regards,
Adam Twardoch
Fontlab Ltd.

Ps. I also recommend reading the post Family Naming recommendations, which should shed additional light onto why this all needs to be done, and explains some concepts behind it.

That's what I was trying to avoid (i.e., manual editing). If I uncheck "Group OpenType TT/PS fonts by Alternative Family name," will it then use the family and style names that Adobe worked so hard to create?