In the editing process several of the glyphs in my font have lost their Macintosh mappings, I’m not able to assign the mapping using the byte encoding table because their glyph index is greater than 255. The Macintosh mappings are listed on the NUL glyph.
If I cut and paste the glyphs it causes big problems, because they are diacritics used by many composites, all of which become simple glyphs again if I try to move the accents to an earleir position so that I can remap them.
Does it matter? Will my fonts work on the Mac OS?
I’m not sure if this might cause any problems on a Mac, but I might be able to help you with the mappings. You could try to sort the font (Font → Sort Glyphs), then reapply the Macintosh platform as described below.
Right now the easiest way to restore the Macintosh platform is to remove it and then add it again. Select Platform Manager from the Format menu. Select the Macintosh Roman platform and press the Delete button. Now add it again through the Add button. Select the Platform and the Specific Platform Encoding. In the group box below select either Copy from Microsoft Unicode BMP only or Generate from PostScript names. Press the Ok button to confirm the new platform. The new platform still needs to have naming fields. To add valid naming fields, select AutoNaming from the Tools menu. Click Next and then Click Finish.
That’s the way I’ve been trying to do it, but because some characters have lost their Macintosh mappings, they get sorted to positions beyond the first 255 glyphs, so deleting and adding the Macintosh Roman Platform doesn’t help because Font Creator doesn’t add Macintosh mappings for glyphs beyond Glyph Index 255.
I think one needs different sort options or some way of moving composites without losing their composition data.
Bhikkhu Pesala,
Can you send a copy of your font directly to me? I’ll see if I can find a solution to the problem.
I just had a chance to preview the new Vista fonts and I noticed they have Macintosh Roman mapping with format “Trimmed table mapping”. That format solves the “first 256 glyphs” limit.
Thanks. It would seem to be the best solution for Unicode fonts. No idea how to apply it yet though. Though I can choose the option, the mapping is not retained.