Inexplicable Behavior: Font Test Shows Different Font

[Leon Gauthier]

FC 9.0 is behaving in a way I cannot account for. When I "Test current font as TTF/OTF " a completely different font seems to be displayed.

Glyph view of loaded font:

Cropped to save space

FCpreview01.png (120.11 KiB) Viewed 8833 times

This is the preview screen:

FCpreview02.png (80.88 KiB) Viewed 8833 times

At first, I thought it was a matter of confusing multiple font files which I had loaded so I started over with an empty FC and opened just one file. Clearly, ContinueBook Italic is not the font being tested in the preview

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

You're using the evaluation version. You can preview your font in the Preview Toolbar (F8) complete with OpenType features and kerning.

Preview Toolbar.png (59.29 KiB) Viewed 8831 times

Register the product to export fonts.

[Leon Gauthier]

Really? So it just throws up some random font? Strange! At other times, it seems to work as expected:

Glyph view:

FCpreview03.png (127.59 KiB) Viewed 8817 times

Preview showing the clipping caused by a 0 WinDescent value:

FCpreview04.png (37.89 KiB) Viewed 8817 times

I guess I'll just have to spring for the program so I can actually fix these darn fonts I just purchased. For some reason they have no WinDescent values and I cannot convince the author that there is a problem here. If I understand correctly, it is the WinAscent, WinDescent and line gap values which control the leading in Windows applications. At least they display correctly here when I set values which I think reflect 10/12.

BTW, what happened to your beautiful font collection? They seem to have disappeared.

[Leon Gauthier]

Ok, I guess that I just don't know what I am talking about. The Preview Toolbar did not show the clipping. But, the clipping shows in the word processor and no amount of adjusting the line spacing corrected it.

FontTest.png (31.3 KiB) Viewed 8817 times

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Really? So it just throws up some random font? Strange! At other times, it seems to work as expected:

We may have to wait for confirmation from the program's author as I don't have the unregistered version. Perhaps it's showing the test if the font is installed?

BTW, what happened to your beautiful font collection? They seem to have disappeared.

The Serif Web Hosting server was down overnight yesterday. It's back up again now.

I guess I'll just have to spring for the program so I can actually fix these darn fonts I just purchased. For some reason they have no WinDescent values and I cannot convince the author that there is a problem here. If I understand correctly, it is the WinAscent, WinDescent and line gap values which control the leading in Windows applications. At least they display correctly here when I set values which I think reflect 10/12.

A registered version of FontCreator would not give you the legal right to edit the font to fix it. It should work in InDesign and some other expensive programs. I suggest asking the font vendor for a refund and buying something that actually works in most programs.

We had a discussion about this recently in this thread. I don't use these “Professional” applications and don't understand the advantages (if any) of designing fonts in this way. I guess it means that one can set the default line-spacing to a value that suits the font, instead of having to recommend that the user sets proportional leading or a multiple value of less than 1.

[Leon Gauthier]

"A registered version of FontCreator would not give you the legal right to edit the font to fix it."

Duh! But it would give me the ability to actually save the changes I've made, right?

FYI, the author of the font has granted me permission to modify the font and embed it at will in epubs. I suspect that he uses InDesign to create his fonts and he figures that I must be using some antiquated software which simply is not up to handling "more sophisticated" fonts.

PS I apologize for the overly large jpgs but your resizing eliminated the whole point of uploading it which was to illustrate clearly that the font in the preview was not the the one in the glyph view. No matter. How should I reduce the size of a screen shot, increase the resolution to 300dpi, or what?
(I just did a little experiment and 300 dpi would have made a smaller image)

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

A registered version of FontCreator would not give you the legal right to edit the font to fix it."

Duh! But it would give me the ability to actually save the changes I've made, right?

Yes. If you have permission from the font's author, then there is no problem. You will need the Standard or Professional Edition of FontCreator to edit fonts for commercial use.

How should I reduce the size of a screen shot, increase the resolution to 300dpi, or what?

Native resolution PNG images are best — resized JPG images are blurry and usually bigger than a properly compressed PNG. Resize your FontCreator window to suit the width of the forum, or crop the image before saving it.

Windows includes a Snipping Tool that can cut just a section of the window.

This thread was getting bloated by all the large screen shots. On broadband we barely notice, but the thread was already 10 Mbytes, which would take an age for anyone on a slower connection to view.

I have cropped your images again and reduced the colour depth to lighten the load on the forum's servers, and out of compassion for those who read the thread later on anything less than super-fast broadband.

[Erwin Denissen]

FC 9.0 is behaving in a way I cannot account for. When I "Test current font as TTF/OTF " a completely different font seems to be displayed.

At first, I thought it was a matter of confusing multiple font files which I had loaded so I started over with an empty FC and opened just one file. Clearly, ContinueBook Italic is not the font being tested in the preview

Can you please send us the font(s), so we can look into this problem? I will send you a pm with the email address.

[MikeW]

Calculating the metrics will resolve the issue. Looking through the font for the lowest decender and setting the windescent manually to that amount or a tad greater will resolve the issue too.

Mike

[Leon Gauthier]

I've looked more closely into what is going on here. In this collection of fonts, one family, Contenu eBook, has a problem with its metrics which results in the clipping of its descenders. Oddly enough, only one, Contenu eBook.otf which is the regular form, displays in “Test current font as TTF/OTF” as it appears in LibreOffice Writer with the descenders clipped. The other family members of this serif font, Italic, Heavy and HeavyItalic, display as a sans serif font without the clipping even though their metrics also have a zero value for Win Descent. In the Preview Toolbar (F8) the fonts always display as they are (serif, bold, italic ctc.) except that there is no clipping.

The other three families in this collection, Contenu, Contenu Book and Buddy, have no clipping issues and yet only the “regular” versions display properly in “Test” while italic, bold and bolditalic display some substitute sans serif font. Buddy is a sans serif font however a substitute sans serif font is displayed for italic, bold and bolditalic.

In addition, when I examine (making no changes) the “Font Properties” and then click “ok”, FC changes something (the upper left corner of the tab becomes red) and FC asks if the file should be saved when I delete it or close. What is being changed, I do not know. I will say the the font metrics do not seem to be correct to me, even those which do have a Win Descent value below zero. When I use the calculate button, I get numbers closer to what I'd expect for 10 points in 12 points.

Bottom line: FC just does not seem to like these fonts and I am not liking them much either.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

In addition, when I examine (making no changes) the “Font Properties” and then click “ok”, FC changes something (the upper left corner of the tab becomes red) and FC asks if the file should be saved when I delete it or close. What is being changed, I do not know.

Check the undo history dropdown. It may be the Unicode Ranges and Code Pages being updated automatically.

[Leon Gauthier]

If you mean the dropdown arrow next to the Undo button, it just says "Edit Font Settings" which of course is just where I was.

[Erwin Denissen]

I'm not in the office right now, but can look into this tomorrow morning if the font file is in my mail box.

[Leon Gauthier]

Erwin, it has been sent.

I suspect that this "change" may be an empty field that FC is simply filling-in upon opening the font properties window.

PS There was some talk in the other thread Bhikkhu pointed to about fonts printing correctly even though they might appear to be clipped in an aplication ... Well, the Contenu eBook "Test" prints just as it is displayed.

[MikeW]

That was me who stated that. Never had an installed font that the display is clipped not output correctly. At least in XDP, coreldraw, indesign or Ai. Haven't ever tried a word processor if that's what you are using.

Almost bought the font bundle just to try it and see what's up for sure. Still might, but it's so close to so many of my serif fonts that it's hard to pull the trigger on a purchase.

Mike