I have been a registered user of FCP for some time now. The program is really amazing, thanks.
Now I got a problem here. I am editing and remapping a font for my private use and for learning. The glyphs in the original were mapped according to old Russian codepages, which was a mess. After some remapping and adding+mapping some new glyphs, the test window now started to display Arial instead of the actual font, and the dropdown box there (which, for other fonts, shows ANSI, Western etc.) is empty although the existing characters are now quite correctly mapped (at least I think so) and in Settings, the respective Unicode and codepage ranges have been defined manually according to glyph presence.
Other fonts show correctly in the test window and the font I am editing also shows in the preview window. I am using Windows 98SE. Reboot did not help.
This also leads to another question. What exactly should be mapped to the first (usually three glyphs) before 32 (space) ? I got a vague idea that the first one should be the missing glyphs to be replaced with a special character. But what about the other two?
You basic problem should be answered by someone else, but the trivial question I can handle:
TrueType outline fonts should have the following four glyphs at the glyph ID indicated. These were listed in Apple’s original TrueType specification. These glyphs are recommended to allow for the same version of the font to work on both Windows and Macintosh. (I can’t get the following to be in three columns… sorry.)
Glyph IDGlyph nameUnicode value
0 .notdef undefined (blank on Microsoft/Unicode)
1 .null U+0000 (decimal 0)
2 CR U+000D (decimal 13)
3 space U+0020 (decimal 32)
Rather than manually defining the Unicode/codepage ranges as you said, if you were to use the “Calculate” process (Format/Settings/Ranges) would that make a difference? I have found it changes what I thought were correct values.
No, it did not make a difference as to the test font command. Test font still appears in Arial.
When I calculate codepages (Version 1), no codepages will be enabled. According to the manual, a codepage is only enabled there when all its characters are present as glyphs. In my case, it is not so. Many characters are missing and I am yet planning to add them. The basic characters needed for English text are still present, though, so the font is even now usable.
Therefore I am using manual codepage ranges because I know in which codepages the font should be basically usable presently.
In Unicode, the calculation gives exactly the same ranges as I put in manually.
I have thoroughly tested checking different codepages or just one codepage or no codepages, but that has not enabled the test font window with the real font.
As far as I know it did display the font correctly on my system.
Can you send me the preview file (fcppreview.txt located in the Font Creator Program install folder) and include a screenshot that shows the Test Font window?
The test font window showed Arial instead of the real font because of a modification I had made in the Naming section of the font. I had added an “Estonian - Estonia” section in addition to “English - United States” under Microsoft Unicode BMP in the “Language” box.
Even without any entries, this section seems to hinder the test font window. As soon as it is removed, everything becomes normal.