Custom glyph names in PUA

[Mans]

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum, though I've been using FontLab for about five years (and Fontographer before that).

Apologies in advance if this question has been asked before. I am developing a font which includes a large number of glyphs in the Private Use Area. For these I would like to use my own names, primarily because many of them have alternate forms accessible through aalt, stylistic sets etc. Coding would get much easier if I could use semantic names rather than "uniExxx", especially in case I want to change the Unicode index of a glyph (each time I do that, I have to track down every reference to that glyph in the code and change the name).

Problem is, when I use my custom names the OpenType features stop working, and InDesign gives the glyph names as <null>.

Is there any way to get custom names to work? If this has been answered before, kindly point me in the right direction. On Typophile I read a comment to the effect that "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I don't know why".

Oh, and I know custom characters should not always be in the PUA. Suffice to say, I want them there in this particular font.

Best wishes and Happy Easter,

Måns

[siggy]

I don't know about FontLab Studio, but I've been using the new Fontographer 5, and it is very strict about the names for glyphs in an OpenType Standard encoded font -- I can't use custom names for the first 279 standard glyphs. Beyond those positions, I've successfully used a few custom glyph names.

I ran into a glitch when trying to use an older FOG file with the non-breaking space named as 'nbspace' -- but the new FOG 5 names it after the unicode position, and will not generate a working OT font with any other name for that glyph. That glyph is located within the first 279 standard glyphs.

Hope this helps!

[mekkablue]

AFAIK, an application may expect a certain glyphname. For instance, Mac OS X pre 10.5 reconstructed the codepoint through the glyphname. Or in PDFs, only glyphnames are saved, not unicodes. It’s essential to stick to the naming conventions because otherwise, copying and pasting from a PDF won’t work as expected.

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