International Character problems

[7seas]

I have FontCreator 9 Professional Edition. I created a calligraphy style font and have been selling it. It has been doing really well but now I am getting requests to include international characters. So I went back and added the basic international characters that I had discluded in the beginning. But now I am having problems with them working correctly. One of my customers has informed me that in Photoshop, the international characters that she types will not show with my font. But she can type them with another font and then change it to my font and the characters will show fine.
I am not experienced enough to figure out what I have done wrong, or not done that I should have.... Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction?
Thanks in advance for any help!

(Sorry if this is a duplicate post, I tried to submit the first time but it was not showing up, not even in my profile)

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I deleted your duplicate post, which was anyway in the wrong forum.

New members' first three posts require moderator approval — it stops spammers in their tracks.

Without the font, it is hard to say what might be wrong with it. You can send the font project file to my email address.

[7seas]

Thanks, I just emailed it to you. Hopefully it is just something simple!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Some accents are above the WinAscent line, e.g. Å ring

Try Font menu, Properties, Metrics, Calculate to fix that issue.

[7seas]

Thanks for that, I hadn't even noticed that one. Is this something that would cause them to not display at all? The customer gave me an example, she was typing "coração". She says the international letters were not recognized. But she would change fonts re type it and then change the word back to my font and it would show like it should. I was thinking could it possibly be something with my code? She says it is behaving this way in Illustrator as well.
Thanks

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Thanks for that, I hadn't even noticed that one. Is this something that would cause them to not display at all? The customer gave me an example, she was typing "coração". She says the international letters were not recognized. But she would change fonts re type it and then change the word back to my font and it would show like it should. I was thinking could it possibly be something with my code? She says it is behaving this way in Illustrator as well.
Thanks

It would only result in clipping of the higher accents — it would have no effect on lowercase as in coração. The font works just fine in PagePlus when I select the test font.

[7seas]

Thanks for taking the time to test it for me. I'm not sure where to go from here though, if there is an issue somewhere in the font that is making it behave this way in Photoshop & Illustrator, or perhaps on the customers end?
Thanks again for your help

[MikeW]

Who knows. It should work in Adobe applications if it works in PagePlus. Is it possible the customer has both versions loaded?

Mike

[7seas]

Mike, I don't think so, it should have just updated the previous version, but I will ask anyway. I have had her close out the programs and restart her system and nothing seems to fix it.

I am not very good with code, I pretty much learn as I go, is there something that I should have in the code that makes the software aware of these characters? I don't know if this even relates at all, but I only had "script latn" in my code to start with. Then I added "script DFLT" thinking maby that was the problem. Of course, it didn't fix it, but maby I am missing something else?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't see much wrong with the code, but I am not an expert on scripts and languages.

I do see an odd glyph at asciicircumflex (decimal 94), which is more like a period centre (middle-dot) than an ascii tilde ^

There are also several positive kerning pairs that use it.

Code: Select all

    pos zero asciicircum <148> <0>;
    pos one asciicircum <242> <0>;
    pos two asciicircum <241> <0>;
    pos three asciicircum <203> <0>;
    pos four asciicircum <101> <0>;
    pos five asciicircum <218> <0>;
    pos six asciicircum <194> <0>;
    pos seven asciicircum <93> <0>;
    pos eight asciicircum <210> <0>;
    pos nine asciicircum <194> <0>;

There is work to be done by creating kerning classes for a_lowercase to include áàãåäâ in a single class, and likewise for eiou, AEIOU. Then kern T with the class a_lowercase instead of just with lowercase a.

[MikeW]

... but I only had "script latn" in my code to start with. Then I added "script DFLT" thinking maby that was the problem. Of course, it didn't fix it, but maby I am missing something else?

Any application should be able to utilize the latn section. Glyphs might only be available via the glyphs panel in applications that have one (all Adobe applications). DFLT should make glyphs available to the OS system default language and hence keyboard. If I recall properly anyway. But not all applications handle both declarations well, and in a couple (non-Adobe) applications which declaration comes before the other can make a difference (latn before DFLT in the case of CorelDraw for instance).

If you would like someone to test your font in Adobe applications versus using the customer, feel free to let me know.

Mike

[7seas]

Thanks Bhikkhu, that is actually a feature that I included in the font, I used the ^ as a shortcut method to make a little bullet like dot instead of the ^. It is to mimick the postal art trend where people will place a dot between each number of their postal codes. (I sell to a lot of creatives.) Of course I chose this as the shortcut before I knew I would be adding the international characters. But now I have had the chance to test it, it does not seem to conflict either way.

I asked her which keyboard she is using with her system, it is the US International keyboard layout, so I installed that on my system and the characters are working fine for me in Photoshop. So maby Mike is right, perhaps she has a duplicate of the font installed. I will ask her to remove it entirely and reinstall it. Hopefully this will do the trick.

Thanks so much for taking the time to help!

[MikeW]

Do be aware that for a font to be active in an Adobe application it doesn't actually need to be installed in the OS font folder. I would recommend that she removes all versions in all locations. Reboot and start PS and see if it still available. If it is, there is a copy in the Adobe font folder or in a folder named Document Fonts (or being cached and loaded by a font manager). If it is not available, then she should load the latest version you now know works.

Good luck. Mike

[7seas]

Thanks Mike, I did not know that. I will instruct her on this. Thank you for all of your help!