# Font Salvage and Repair **URL:** \ **Category:** FontCreator - Tutorials and Solutions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/font-salvage-and-repair/1462 "2006-10-18T17:48:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/u/Dave_Crosby)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/font-salvage-and-repair/1462/1 "2006-10-18T17:48:14Z")
Shortly after purchasing FontCreator back in **2004** , in addition to problems in fonts I had made, I noticed that parts of a purchased font I liked just didn’t look right to me! I opened it with FC and sure enough, some glyphs had the black and white spaces messed up. I cleverly (pat on back) discovered that all I had to do was to reverse a few contours here and there and all’s reet! If you have been out trolling the net for free fonts you probably have snagged some fonts that are alien to your operating system, misfits to your needs, or are corrupt, crippled, or damaged in some way. Some won’t even open “no matter wot!” **Why is that?** **1. Requirements for font design has changed** many times since the first computer was designed. There have been many font building programs designed by people with a variety of ideas about how fonts should work. There are Atari fonts, Apple fonts, Commodore fonts, Grundy fonts, Osborne fonts, IBM fonts, MS fonts, Raster fonts, Vector fonts, PostScript Type one, PostScript Type two, TrueType, Open Type(TT), Open Type(PS), and others. For an interesting look at old computers check out: > **[Steve's Computer Collection](http://oldcomputers.net/)** > > The museum of old, rare, vintage, antique computers ![](https://forum.high-logic.com/uploads/default/original/2X/0/0a950f8b1cbf271fba648f4daa901c4c8bcdb0a5.jpeg) Rockwell AIM 65 **2. Fonts have been made by a variety of people** with various abilities and skill levels. **3. Then those original fonts have been stolen, copied, and redesigned** trying to update them to ever newer computer platforms, and messed up in many ways. THEN you download them. **What to do?** Trash them or try to fix them? **Don’t trash that font!** With FontCreator you have the tools, and with a little practice, will soon have the knowledge on how to revive them. However, Making changes to **Hinted Fonts** will remove the hinting from any glyph you make changes to, usually making them look worse on the screen, but the improvement will appear in the printed form. [Font sizes... - FontCreator - Support - High-Logic Forum](http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1563) Hinting Information. Look up information on **Grayscale** for a viable alternative. [http://www.high-logic.com/fcpfaq.html#Q7](http://www.high-logic.com/fcpfaq.html#Q7) > **[Welcome to Scanahand 9](https://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator/manual15/)** > > Introduction Scanahand allows you to generate a font without the need to know all of the technical details involved. All you need is a printer, a scanner, and a black marker or... > [@grayscaling](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/grayscaling/1301/1): > > On the FAQ page, you write : “Another solution [for bad quality at small font sizes] is grayscale support. To enable it select Grayscale from the Format menu. Delete all entries. Now add a new entry and set “Grayscale rendering”.” I tried entering some new gasps, but without any success ; nothing has changed. The font I made is based upon Times New Roman, so I tried entering the same limits as in the original font, but even that doesn’t have any effect. Can you give me any advice on what limit… Problems with already Installed Fonts can be found with the **FiFoFo** (Fix Font Folder) High-Logic Application. They must be un-installed and moved to a different folder to be repaired. I understand FiFoFo is being upgraded. That will be a great addition!{August 2012 NOTE: Still in Progress? May be a part of the newest version of Main Type!} ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FiFoFo-1.gif) I’ve cleaned up a lot of my installed fonts (there were over 40 badly crippled fonts with red X’s. The yellow question marks mean there are errors, but they will function. You get green check arrows in front of the name when they are OK) in my list. As you can see, I still have a way to go. **I think the single biggest problem is file names.** If someone gives a common name to their font, and you install it into your Windows Font Folder, Your good font is gone! First use Font Creator autoName feature to assign new filenames and save yourself a big hassle. Even **many Professional Fonts that you paid Professional Money for** (a **Dick Pape** line) are far from perfect. **So you just got a new font.** May I suggest that before you instal it, open it with FC and save it (Save As) in a different file folder named … oh, say … Repaired Fonts. You may wish to slightly alter the font name (-a, b, c or -1, 2, 3) with each major change so you do not get them mixed up. This will allow you to revert to a previous version in case of a major chaotic result. You probably should save versions -1, -2, -3 etc., then REALLY save the version you like the best. Usually, all you need to do is open a font with FC, select Font/ **Validate** /Next. Un-check any boxes you want to do manually. If you wish (good idea!) Check the box to have FC make ALL the repairs. The remaining problems (if any!) will be listed in the report that is generated. **Validate Glyph** (the button with the red **!** in it) within the glyph window gives a detailed report for that glyph. Just go to the glyph, and fix it. Then go to the next glyph listed. **In no time at all you will have a top of the line font.** ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FFVal-1.jpg) ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FFGlyphVal-1.gif) ALWAYS RENAME THE FONT AND/OR SAVE IT IN ANOTHER FOLDER BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES! Some problems you will find are: **I. The fonts that will not even load**. MainType describes them as . Dick Pape calls them **Dead Fonts.** Often all you have to do is open them with FC, go to Tools/ Autonaming. Save the results and try it again. 98 times out of a hundred, this will solve the problem. For the other 2% you will need a Hex/Text Editor. Sometimes a faulty “Self Loading” lead has been attached that needs to be stripped off. As I don’t know beans about this, I send the fonts to Erwin to be resolved. Perhaps he can explain his process? EDIT NOTE: Erwin informs me: > I once got a zip file with three fonts that failed to work. I removed the first 128 bytes from the font files, and that was all it took to fix them. > > I once solved a problem font by removing the VDMX table and entering some valid values (I used the calculate button) for the Win Ascent and Win Descent values. VDMX table? See: > **[How to Change the Space Between Two Lines of Text](https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1564)** > > To change the vertical space between lines of text, you need to change the height of the glyphs. This can be done by changing the top and bottom bearing lines. To do this select Settings from the Format menu to open the Font Settings window and... **See? Fixing Fonts is a piece of cake!** **II. Platform Errors.** Unicode, Symbol, Microsoft, Macintosh, When they are wrong, … There is trouble right here in River City! > **[Changing Platforms Without Losing Maps](https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1572)** > > When an alphabetic font has been assigned to Microsoft Symbol platform it is time for a change. While FC gives a direct conversion from the Microsoft Symbol platform to Microsoft Unicode BMP only, some maps may be lost as FC cautions us. A... You will find more about Platforms and other Font Fixing Info in this thread: > [@Fixing Problem and Broken Files](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/fixing-problem-and-broken-files/1259/1): > > FC and MT have come in handy reorganizing my font library. I look forward to creating some fonts of my own down the road. I have encountered a number of problem files and would appreciate any advice on the best methods for dealing with them in FC/MT. Sorry, I didn’t make careful notes as I went. My actual questions are highlighted. Alphabetic files with symbol = true So far, I’ve encountered three types. The majority are easily fixed in FC with the Format Platform Manager and Format Settings… **III. Mis mapped glyphs.** There is a protocol of where glyphs must be to be recognized as a specific control code or character glyph. To repair this, right click on the glyph from the font overview window, and select Properties. ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FFMap-1.jpg) Or, if there are lots of mapping problems, you can select Format/ Mapping and quickly fix them all. ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FFMap-2.jpg) For more information go to: > **[Welcome to Scanahand 9](https://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator/manual15/)** > > Introduction Scanahand allows you to generate a font without the need to know all of the technical details involved. All you need is a printer, a scanner, and a black marker or... And do a search for Mapping. This manual is also part of your FC application. You can print it out if you wish. **IV. Damaged Glyphs.** I’ve found four kinds of problems here. **A. Misaligned on and off curve points.** Move the vertical and horizontal guidelines into position to pinpoint the error location and the problem is usually quite obvious. Use Q/W to step from point to point, and manually or use the arrow keys to move an existing point to the proper location, then delete all the overlapping points. Move Extreme points to where they are no longer red. You may need to add a point or two to keep the original shape. See Circle Secrets & Warning Points: > [@Circle Secrets & Warning Points](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/circle-secrets-warning-points/572/1): > > Circle Secrets You can always drag a circle from the samples on the left side of the screen into a glyph editing window, but where is the fun in that? Edit Note: The new Circle tool in V5.5 is wonderswell! There are so many possibilities when you know the variations you can get by making your circles from scratch. 1. Open a new Glyph Edit Window, 2. Select Insert Contour, then rough-draw a circle moving in a clockwise direction (For Monitor Rasterizers and Printer Mappers to work properly, t… **B. Tangled points on contours,** referred to as knots. This usually happens when glyphs are run through a transforming process that forced points to overlap each other. **C. Reversed Contours.** Go to Contour mode, click on the contour (or use Q/W to step through them to get the one you want) and click on Edit/Change Direction, or Right Click and select Change Direction. Notice Erwin almost always gives us at least two options for fixing stuff. **D. Overlapping Contours.** Sometimes all you need to do is select one of the offending contours and move it slightly. Often the best solution is to select the offenders and click on the **Get Union of Contours Button.** (in the upper right hand corner of the Tool Bar) Also: [2 step Clean-up for Scanned-in glyphs](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/2-step-clean-up-for-scanned-in-glyphs/1093/1) ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/FFVal-2.gif) Remember, to reproduce your font, your computer and printer have to calculate the location of each of those points in each glyph. Every redundant point, point on top of point, backtracked point (so the interpreter no longer knows which direction the contour is going) slows them down. With some fonts I’ve looked into, it is amazing they are able to be interpreted at all! **Composite glyphs** (grayed out diamond and triangle symbols on tool bar) are virtual copies of other glyphs that often overlap, and are **not** problems. If you want to make changes to a composite glyph: 1. Edit/Make Simple. It is no longer a composite. 2. Select all – Edit/Select All (or Ctrl-A). 3. Edit/Join Contours/Union. The Validation shows all errors resolved. 4. Press the Validate Glyph button to make sure there are no more problems before advancing to the next glyph. **V. Missing Glyphs.** Many fonts contain only the caps. They should be PANOSED as 46 whatever. > [@PANOSE Your Fonts](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/panose-your-fonts/911/1): > > PANOSE your fonts bulb Now that you’ve built your new font, Why not give it some extra luster? Do you ever get frustrated searching through your collection for just the right font? Do you need/want a sorting or classification scheme for your font collection? There have been many machinations proposed. It is easy to end up with too few, or too many font buckets in schemes, so instead of searching through 10,000 fonts, you end up searching through 20,000 buckets. Surprise! There is a sort… Often the caps have been copied exactly to the lower case mapped glyph windows. If not, It is simple to add the needed glyph windows: > [@Insert Characters Feature](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/insert-characters-feature/1166/1): > > Introduction The Insert Characters feature was new in Font Creator 5.0, and is included only in the Professional Edition or the 30-day free trial edition. It helps you to quickly add correctly mapped glyphs to your font by selecting from character sets. In the font overview screen, select Characters from the insert menu to display the following dialogue box. Insert Latin1.png The characters with a green background already exist in the font, while the ones with a white background only exist i… Then copy the glyphs (or drag from Sample) and paste them, then from the Font Overview window, select a glyph/shift/end glyph to select the whole range. Open Tools/Glyph transformer, and make the lowercase smaller than the uppercase. Transformer aid is offered at: > [@Working With Transformations](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/working-with-transformations/1153/1): > > In FontCreator 11.0, in Tools, Options, Advanced, “Copy Data Files to User Data Folder” now copies the Transform scripts to a folder along with Composite and Unicode data. Backup this folder if you create custom scripts. The originals will remain in the Program Files folder should you wish to restore them. The transform feature is useful for making new typestyles from existing fonts. It is not available in the Home Edition, but only in the Professional Edition or in the thirty-day Free Trial. P… **Yet another solution is to build the lowercase part by entering them as composits. Right click in the glyph edit window and select Add Composite Glyph Member. Right click again and select Glyph Member Properties to re-size them.** **It may be easier to start a new font.** Make the old font the sample and drag the glyphs in one at a time. This way, you don’t have to worry about mapping everything. Change the sample font again to drag in numbers, punctuation, etc. Changing Sample Info: > [@Sample: great tool for Spies & Secret Codes](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/sample-great-tool-for-spies-secret-codes/1342/1): > > Pssst. Hey Buddy, FontCreator and Spies were made for each other. Tens of thousands of pictorial free fonts are flying around the World Wide Web. Most of them were made by simply pasting pictures into spaces where normal letters go. All a spy has to do is snag one of those fonts and use it to type in a message. The receiver merely has to highlight the message and change to any “regular” font for the original message to pop out. That is OK for beginners. A bit more creative is to use FontCrea… I’m sure many of you have found other techniques for fixing fonts. I’d love to see your ideas! ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/u/Dave_Crosby)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 1:14am UTC](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/font-salvage-and-repair/1462/2 "2006-10-22T01:14:35Z")
Erwin shared this information on handling problem fonts: > I’ve used PSPad, a freeware editor to look into font files. It opens > font files in HEX-Edit mode. This is necessary as it won’t work with a > standard text editor like notepad. > [PSPad - free unicode developer editor, handles near any syntax like HTML, PHP, XHTML, R, JavaScript, ASP, Perl, C and many other languages with HEX editor, multilanguage interface](http://www.pspad.com/en/) > > Some basics you need to know are: > > A valid TrueType font starts with hexadecimal > 00010000 > > A valid OpenType font with TrueType outlines also starts with > 00010000 > > And a CFF based OpenType font starts with > 4F54544F > > You can see the table names on the right of the screenshots. > > The first two fonts are fine. > When you take a closer look at the third screenshot, you’ll see why I decided to remove the first 128 bytes of aoncrg\_.ttf. > I selected the first 128 bytes and then clicked “Cut” from the “Edit” menu, to remove these bytes. > > I hope this clarifies the process for you \> 😉 ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/pspad_arial.gif) ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/pspad_caslon.gif) ![](http://forum.high-logic.com/postedimages/pspad_aon.gif) ---
**Author:** ![Bhikkhu\_Pesala](https://forum.high-logic.com/user_avatar/forum.high-logic.com/bhikkhu_pesala/32/9411_2.png) [@Bhikkhu\_Pesala](https://forum.high-logic.com/u/Bhikkhu_Pesala)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2007, 11:34am UTC](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/font-salvage-and-repair/1462/3 "2007-06-08T11:34:22Z")
**These Common Errors are Easy to Fix** **Clipped Glyphs** — Tops and/or bottoms of some glyphs don’t display or print. Format, Settings, Metrics, Maximum, Calculate. **Glyphs Don’t Display at All** Format, Settings, Ranges, Unicode Ranges, Calculate, and Code Pages, Calculate. **Unicode Ranges Empty** Format, Settings Ranges, Contents and Layout, Version 0 Change version to 3, and calculate Ranges and Code Pages **Font Subfamily Names** — Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic If used on a PC set to a different localle, the subfamily names don’t match the language. “Italic” should be “Italique” for French, but “Kursiv” for Sweden, and “Corsivo” for Italian. Format, Naming, Add Language, French (standard) France, and check “Include font subfamily name.” Repeat for other languages you think might be needed depending on the range of glyphs that your font includes. In Vietnamese italic is called “nghiêng.” ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@Dave\_Crosby](https://forum.high-logic.com/u/Dave_Crosby)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2012, 9:56am UTC](https://forum.high-logic.com/t/font-salvage-and-repair/1462/4 "2012-08-05T09:56:00Z")
Wow, 2006! I forgot I knew so much way back then (and have since forgotten), and never got around to thanking Bhikkhu Pesala for his excellent additions! Thanks BP!