Disappearing characters

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Palendrome
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Location: Johannesburg SA

Disappearing characters

Post by Palendrome »

InDesign on the Mac will not allow the word "field" in a font I created to test. It will do "faeld" "foeld" etc but give it field and the standard characters f and i disappear...This does not occur in Word on the MAC...or on any number of PC's - because of that I believe it to be an Indesign thing, but is there someway to make it not do this?

Has anybody else experienced this.

Also uninstalling a font on the Mac seems difficult - the font still seems to linger even after a restart...mmm

Thanks for any hints

Paul
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Erwin Denissen »

It must be a ligature substitution, so make sure your "fi" glyph contains outlines. Alternatively don't export OpenType layout features or remove them.
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MikeW
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by MikeW »

Alteratively, turn off ligatures for the style you have the font being used in.
Palendrome
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Location: Johannesburg SA

Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Palendrome »

Hi Thanks for the help guys
Erwin - do you mean that I should check the individual character "f" to see if it has outlines? and then the "i" if so - where do I do that?
Also I assume that to export without OpenType features mean saying "no"to the OpenType GPOS Table and GSub table in the export settings?
Do I then leave the Legacy "KERN" Off as it has always been? The Outline Format is TrueType and I am making it a *.ttf file
Is that it or are there other hidden settings? sorry to be so green..

Mike - Assume you mean to turn of ligatures in InDesign ?

Thanks again

Paul
MikeW
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by MikeW »

Paul, yes. Sorry. You can turn them off for the paragraph style, as well as globally (if I recall properly without starting it). Globally it only affects new publications. The paragraph style trumps the global.

Mike
Palendrome
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Location: Johannesburg SA

Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Palendrome »

HI Thanks Mike - I am helping someone who is using inDesign and not that familiar with it myself so thanks for the clarification.
She is kind of stressed at getting a publication out so your feedback is really making a difference - thank you and she has succeeded in finding a switch.

I did export another version of the font, based on excluding OpenType Features in the export panel as per Erwins help but she tells me that is still making the fi disappear. Any tips on how to check for outlines and switch off OpenType Features? Pretty frustrating finding information about font files - I see a post from an older version of MainType that reveals file information on the contained tables in the file - but my new MainType Pro version does not seem to include that info - where did it go and how do I reverse engineer font files ? !

Just need to be certain that the font file contains no Opentype functions. The Opentype designer definately seems like the wrong place to go for that and unhelpfully lots of tutorials and helps point to the "Format" menu which no longer exists in V8.

Finding this whole font thing pretty hard to grasp Mike and I can run 3d Studio MAx, Flash and Actionscript 3 and even a bit of Word and Access!
Everything about fonts seems to drop you directly in the esoteric deep end...

please bear with me I will get this and thanks for your help -

Paul
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Palendrome wrote:Erwin - do you mean that I should check the individual character "f" to see if it has outlines? and then the "i" if so - where do I do that?
No, I mean the fi glyph as shown here:
ligature_fi.png
ligature_fi.png (40.57 KiB) Viewed 6787 times
Palendrome wrote:Also I assume that to export without OpenType features mean saying "no"to the OpenType GPOS Table and GSub table in the export settings?
Exactly.
Palendrome wrote:Do I then leave the Legacy "KERN" Off as it has always been? The Outline Format is TrueType and I am making it a *.ttf file
Is that it or are there other hidden settings? sorry to be so green..
Yes, I think that would be best.
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Alfred
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Alfred »

Palendrome wrote:Pretty frustrating finding information about font files - I see a post from an older version of MainType that reveals file information on the contained tables in the file - but my new MainType Pro version does not seem to include that info - where did it go and how do I reverse engineer font files ? !
As Erwin said in reply to your post here, you can use a hex editor to see what font tables are contained in the file. IrfanView (free for non-commercial use) includes a hex viewer, invoked by pressing the F3 function key on your keyboard; I seem to remember that there is also a High-Logic hex editor or viewer, but I can't find the link right now.

Edit: The file 'ViewHex.zip' is attached to Erwin's post here.
FC14 Pro (Help) + MT11.0 Pro (Help) • Windows 10
MikeW
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Re: Disappearing characters

Post by MikeW »

If anyone really wants to view the make-up of a font, use the light version of DTL's OTMaster. Unless you have some spare cash, then purchase the full version. The full version can make changes to the font, the free light version cannot.

Top download link on their Downloadpage.
http://www.fontmaster.nl/

capture-002658.png
Palendrome
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Location: Johannesburg SA

Re: Disappearing characters

Post by Palendrome »

Brilliant! Thanks to all - plenty of things to discover here

Best

Paul
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