Yes italic, no regular

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1

Okay! I just started working on an antique-style text font, with both a regular and italic version – I’ve just barely gotten started with creating the full alphabets for each, but in order to complete those sets I have to “fake” a few characters (because the 16th century source I’m using as a basis doesn’t make use of the entire alphabet), and figured I’d do so using bits and pieces from the glyphs that I do have.

So with my two fonts as they are, I went and installed them. When I fire up MainType, I can see both of the fonts there, but then when I fire up Photoshop all I see is the italic version.

Another curious thing, I installed the italic version first, and then went to install the regular. And y’know in FC, when you’ve installed your font and it gives you that “Enjoy!” message? Well, after installing my regular font, that “Enjoy!” is displayed in my italic font, not the regular.

I seem to recall that I had to set up individual “font identification” in the properties somewhere – is that what the issue is here, that they’re both the same? – but for the life of me I can’t find anything like that anywhere. in any of the tabs there.

In any case, any ideas what’s going on here??? :open_mouth:

2

This post in the FAQ explains how to do it for all versions.

If you have the Standard or Professional edition, a Transform script can change regular to italic and modify the relevant fields automatically.

If you don’t want to slant any glyphs, just select the space character, then run the script. Otherwise, select only those glyphs that need to be oblique, then run the script.
Italic Transform.png

3

LOL, Bhikkhu, I don’t think you read my question – I’m not trying to create an italic font from my regular, I already have both.

I could explain my problem again, but I don’t know how to explain it any better than I did in my original post here. :laughing:

4

The regular and italic versions need to have some fields in common and some fields have to be different.

Equal:
Font Family
Width
Weight
Bold Checkbox

Different:
Font Subfamily
Italic Angle
Italic Checkbox
Full Font Name
Unique Font Identifier
PostScript Name

In your case leave all Additional Naming fields on the Extended tab empty.

Also check if the Custom tab has correct naming fields. No such naming fields is okay.

The user manual also covers this topic about font family styles and settings:

5

Ah, thanks, Erwin! Stupid me, I had that checkbox for “Generate the following naming fields automatically (recommended)” checked off, so everything was grayed out and I guess I didn’t notice it – and now I do see that “Unique Font Identifier” field, too, of course (that I’d seen before).

I’m just waking up here (I have odd sleeping hours), but I’m sure that will resolve things for me. I’ll pop back if I run into any further problems, but I’m sure your reply has the answer I need.

Thanks again! :slight_smile:

6

Some of the characters we have today just didn’t exist in the 16th century! and some existed in a form which wouldn’t be recognised by someone familiar with todays alphabet. :open_mouth:

7

It should never be an issue if you let is automatically generate those fields. If it does proof to be an issue, then it must be a bug on our side. So do keep us up to date.

8

Well, in this case, I only really have two books for source material that made use of this 16th century font (that I’ve been able to find, anyway), and only one of those two was really useful for gleaning characters from – the other one is okay, too, but it has much fewer sentences in that font, and nothing that isn’t already found in the one “main” book I’ve been using.

I have been able to glean the entire lowercase set for both the regular and italic, but I’m missing a bunch of the uppercase glyphs – unless I can find another source from the same printer, using the same font, and which does have those characters, then I’m going to have to fake those uppercase characters. Kind-of a bummer to not have those be “authentic,” but hopefully I’ll be able to pull off something that at least looks right.

and some existed in a form which wouldn’t be recognised by someone familiar with todays alphabet. > :open_mouth:

Actually, now that you mention it, I was going to post this as another thread here (and I may still do that, if only to draw better attention to it – and since I’m not getting off-topic to my original post here), but there are a couple characters that have me utterly stumped as to what they are, and/or what they mean.

Check out this screenshot…
umbenib9 stiloqz.jpg
There’s two odd things in there. In the first line, the second-last word looks like “umbenib9” (where the “9” is superscript). That only seems to occur once in this book, and I also encountered it in another (third) book by this same printer, in an entirely different font (that my blackletter “Wickednesse” font is based on), where it also appeared only once. I thought it was some sort of printing error or something, but now I’m thinking that it was intentional, and does have some sort of meaning – in both cases that it appeared it was in the context of a bit of Latin text.

The second odd thing there is in the second line, also the second-last word. What’s that last character? Is that a “qz” ligature? Here’s one other instance from that same book where that character/ligature appears…
Vigiliqz labore.jpg
I know hardly anything about Latin – just a teeny bit – never mind historical Latin. I can’t see any practical purpose for creating special glyphs (in my PUA) for those two things, as I doubt modern users of my font would ever have any use for them (that superscript “9” could be easily faked as exactly that, of course), but if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity it would be nice to know what they actually mean, of course.

Any ideas, perchance?

9

Oh, interesting, Erwin. Well, I still haven’t changed anything in my font properties for either font, so here are screenshots of how I had them set up before (and still), and which apparently was giving me some sort of conflict somehow after I install them, where only the italic appears in Photoshop (while both fonts appear in MainType), and also when I installed the regular, the “Enjoy!” message that you get after it installs was in the italic font, not the regular.

Font Properties - Regular.jpg
Font Properties - Regular.jpg640×548 90.9 KB

Font Properties - Italic.jpg
Font Properties - Italic.jpg640×548 91.8 KB

If I did something wrong there, I don’t know what it was??? Other than not checking the “italic” checkbox – is that all it was, that was causing the problem? I only just noticed that just now, actually – I did get the “angle” for the italic in there, though.

Oh, speaking of that “angle” thingie, just how accurate does that have to be? This font is so wacky, so almost “amateurish” for when it was made, I did find that the angle varies from character to character, from about 16 degrees to over 20 – so I picked 18 to basically average it out. I don’t know how important that “angle” thing is, how it’s made use of.

10

Italic checkbox!

11

Indeed that was it (as I surmised just as I posted my previous reply, when noticed that unchecked checkbox) – at least, to an extent that was it.

Now, when it installs, the “Enjoy!” comes out as it should, each displaying in the font I’ve just installed, and I can see both fonts showing up in MainType, too (as they did before), but I still have a weird problem when I go to do something with them in Photoshop.

In there, where I select the font I choose “Alde,” but then for the font style I only see “Italic,” which is grayed-out and I can’t change it. But then when I go to use the type tool in a blank document, the font that comes out isn’t italic, but the regular. :unamused:

12

You must have confused it. Magbe a reboot helps. Otherwse clearing the font cache might help.

13

Did both – same problem is still there. :frowning:

14

To be sure it isn’t an issue with the fonts, do change the font family name, and then see if that family works fine.

If it works fine, then the issue is not on our side :wink:

15

“-ib9” at the end of a word is “-ibus”, the dative or ablative plural of a third declension noun or adjective.

“-q3” at the end of a word is “-que”, a suffixed “and”.

“faueāt” is “faveant”.

However, I am not going to attempt a translation.

16

I’m bewildered as to why, but oddly enough that did the trick! Changed both font family names to “Test,” then tried them out in Photoshop and everything worked fine. So then I changed them back to “Alde” – as they were named before – and again everything worked fine.

I don’t get it, but that did the trick, and that’s all that matters, I guess – thanks again, Erwin! :wink:

17

Oh, how interesting! I love learning little typographic anomalies from that period like this – great stuff! :slight_smile:

“faueāt” is “faveant”.

Yes, that one I knew – it’s quite common in texts from that period to see vowels with a macron accent signifying an omitted “m” or “n.” I have no idea why they did that – and only sometimes, it seems rather haphazard whenever they do, and doesn’t seem to have to do with trying to reduce line-length or anything like that (to make things “fit” better or whatever). I’ve figured out almost all the other typographic mysteries from that period, but that’s one that escapes me – it’s on my bucket list, I just hope I figure that one out (too) before I die. :wink:

However, I am not going to attempt a translation.

I haven’t checked, but I bet Google Translator can probably do it (personally, I don’t care, it’s not what the text says that interests me here, but the font that it’s written in). :wink:

18

The superscript 9 is a letter in it’s own right, try unicode codepoint A770 (modifier letter us).

Some things which might be of interest to you are ‘Latin Paleography’ which is available for free download at http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/jmag0042/palefont.html and another interesting site is http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/map.htm.

If you want to do a historical font then you might want to include a selection of the MUFI characters, that way it becomes useful to medievalists.

19

Ugh. More research. Just what I need! :open_mouth: For the last few days I’ve done no work on any of my fonts, but rather have been researching the 16th-century printer who designed the metal type that my fonts are based on, just to find out more about him and his various works. And now this, on top of that. :unamused:

Actually, I’m not complaining – quite the contrary! I’m sure this will be quite fascinating to read up on this stuff via those links you gave. Thanks! I’m getting no work on my fonts done, but what the heck, I guess this is all part of my “apprenticeship.”

Thank you (once again), O Master PJ. :wink:

20

Follow-up…

I started reading the stuff there on those links you gave, PJ, and y’know what? I think I might back-burner doing anything more in-depth like that with my fonts. It is very interesting, though! And that does sound like a great idea, to make my fonts more usable for historical contexts like that – but I’m not sure if I’ll personally ever have such a need, though. I’ve got three fonts on the go at the moment – my blackletter “Wickednesse” font, plus a roman and italic font, all based on original the same 16th century source – and for my own purposes I was going to use them in ebooks that I make (and revise some that I already have published) and to totally re-do my website, too. And I’m really getting itchy feet about doing those other non-font projects, and getting these fonts done are rather holding everything up for me, so I think I’ll just concentrate on getting the basics finished up for now – I can always go back later on, down the road, and come out with a “version 2” of them, if/when I do get re-enthused about doing so.

So again, thank you! I’m gonna put that all aside for now, but I really do appreciate those links (etc.) and I can well foresee going back and making my fonts bigger-and-better some day – just not right now, though. Cheers! :slight_smile: