I have a number of fonts I’ve collected over the years usually in separate packages that are not set up in proper families. I’ve been going through several of the fonts and editing just the properties of the font so they’ll group properly as a font family in windows 7. When I do so though they always seem to lose something, most commonly the postscript outlines they original had seem to disappear as well as how the spacing between capital and lowercase letters. They usually look jagged and unpleasant to the eye on my display afterwards. I have two images provided to show a before and after. Could someone explain to me what I am doing incorrectly to have the fonts marred this way just by editing their family properties?
This one is the original font when I preview it on windows;
Here is the font after I’ve made edits to the properties;
I think any loss of onscreen quality would be due to the loss of hinting, not due to loss of postscript outlines. Hinting is indicated by a capital H at the ruler intersection in the Glyph Edit Window.
BTW: If you take screen shots in PNG format, the quality will be better and the size will be smaller. It would be better to see any differences between the hinting. I attached your images to the forum for you so that they load faster and don’t disappear later.
hmm…okay I’ve not worked with hinting yet I’ve only made a couple of test fonts to try things out myself. Is there a way I can edit the identification without the loss of hinting?
That does not appear to be the issue but I did adjust a few things that solved the spacing issues. When I went into the font export setting It was set as follows;
Glyph Names: Yes
OpenType Features: Default Script
Kerning: KERN and GPOS
Hinting: Keep Original
I changed OpenType Features and Kerning to “No” and the spacing stays as it was when I export the font but it still looks fairly jagged. I could be wrong but those settings would be replacing the existing information that was in the font to begin with when I export it correct?
Then you would lose any OpenType features and kerning in the font. If it has no OpenType features, then there’s nothing to lose by not choosing “Default.” Check the OpenType Layout Feature Editor first to see what features the font has. Retaining hinting is also recommended.
In earlier versions, one could just save the font as TTF without exporting, and tables would be preserved. Now it’s possible to add OpenType features, but it’s also possible to remove them. Just changing the name fields is difficult if you don’t know about these details.
FontCreator really needs an option to Save As TTF (or OTF).
Nexus Serif Bold has a lot of OpenType Features, so don’t use the “No” options.
However, you should probably not be editing this font anyway. I doubt if the license allows it.
I guess I’m a little confused on why it would look closer to correct by turning those to no then? If you look at the images I added in my first post at font size 60 you can see the difference in spacing between the capital T and the lower case H in the very first word. With those options set to “No” the spacing stays correct after I export it.
I don’t know about the license either but I know the families are all messed up and don’t work right because of how they named them. I do try to keep the versions and all other information the same besides that and my use of the fonts is in purely private if expensive hobby (I had to pay a fair bit for a lot of these fonts). Though the Nexus Serif was just one I picked for a sample of what’s happening, it doesn’t seem to matter what font do this to they all have their spacing messed up and turn jagged. There must be something that’s getting changed when font creator decompiles the font.
When I look in the OpenType layout features it gives me this;
\
Decompiled from “NexusSerif-RegularSC Regular” on 18-04-2014 at 17:53:19
Font does not contain a GSUB table
In this editor you can manually add OpenType Layout Features using an easy to learn
and use scripting language.
Please make sure you set the “Include OpenType Layout Features” to “Custom script”
in the font export settings dialog.
For an explanation of the syntax please read the Syntax Help under the Help menu (F1)
For examples, ready to use scripts and how to make more complex features please go to
Would it be possible to provide you with a few before and after fonts? Maybe you can figure out what is happening to them when I change their font identification properties. I’ve one font that loses it’s numbers and punctuation marks when I edit the font, most just turn out spaced differently or rather jagged in appearance afterwards. I’d leave them alone but it’s very frustrating when I’ve several hundred fonts in my font list because the families won’t group properly.
The font contains outlines with semi-horizontal curves, which in this case means, badly designed… nothing we can do about that. However hinting can do magic, so please enable autohinting, and let us know your results.
Please send them to me, so I can take a closer look.
