I have 12 custom fonts to revise. They all contain glyphs that represent geological symbols. In FontCreator 14, I’ve been able to make the change but when I export the font, OGSMisc.ttf becomes OGSmiscellaneousfeatures-SYMBOL.ttf. I rename it back to OGSMisc.ttf, uninstall it from the /Windows/Fonts folder and copy the revised one to the folder, the process uninstalls then reinstalls the font.
However, ArcMap, for some reason, “forgets” the mapping of all of the 29 glyphs to their ArcMap styles (ArcMap switches the 29 styles to the WingDings font) so I have to rebuild all of them.
What is the difference between the original TTF and the edited TTF that makes this happen? How can I export the revised TTF without any issues as if nothing happened?
The revised font should normally work, and simply renaming the font file back to OGSMisc.ttf is usually fine, because most software relies on the font names stored inside the font itself, not the file name.
My first guess is that ArcMap may have trouble with fonts exported with more modern OpenType data, especially if it is older software.
Please try this first in FontCreator:
Options → Font → uncheck “Exclude legacy data”
Then export the font again and test it in ArcMap.
If that still does not solve it, please send me both the original working font and the edited font that causes the issue. I can then compare them and look for the differences that may be triggering this behavior.
Everytime I install the original font, the symbols are fine. Everytime I install my modified font, ArcMap style definition doesn’t recognize it and chooses a different font but the correct Unicode value. Although, I can force ArcMap to use the correct font but that means the work/changes I do on 12 fonts require remapping many many styles.
The original problem that I’m trying to solve is that we’re switching to QGIS and 12 symbols aren’t showing up. I’ve deduced that the original developer of our (internal) fonts placed these 12 symbols at the .notdef position. ArcMap seems to be fine with this so my solution is to create another glyph space at the end and make a copy of the .notdef glyph in the new space (a duplicate yes but my group is fine with that). The revised font is accepted by QGIS, I just remap the style that references the glyph in the .notdef position (which QGIS can’t access) to the new position and all is good. The other styles that reference other glyphs in that same font aren’t bothered by the revision so I don’t need to change them. We still have to use ArcMap for at least another 6 months so the revised font must be accepted by ArcMap.
That seemed to work. The time stamp of the font is today and ArcMap works well with it. This is the original font exported with the Additional Naming Fields unchecked. That option seems to have no effect on whether or not ArcMap can work with it.
Something else cropped up though. In trying to revise the font, the revision failed. I created a new glyph at the end (position 62) and gave it a name. Then I opened the .notdef character, selected it, copied it, then pasted the copy at position 62. Save the project and exported to ttf.
I then dragged the new ttf into FontCreator and the new font with the new glyph at 62 doesn’t have a new glyph at 62. The time stamp of the new ttf is correct right to the minute but the new glyph doesn’t appear.
Just to be certain, I re-enabled the Additional Naming Fields, exported the font, installed it, ArcMap didn’t like it. I disabled the Additional Naming Fields, exported the font, installed it, ArcMap likes it.
So the Additional Naming Fields unchecked is the way to go.