"Font Name" display/Quick Search is inconsistent [Closed]

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nabsltd
Posts: 132
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2016 12:35 am

"Font Name" display/Quick Search is inconsistent [Closed]

Post by nabsltd »

In MainType 8.0.0.1135 (64-bit):

First, what I am describing happens a lot. The two attached files are just examples that can be imported into MainType to verify the issue.

The two attached font files (glyphs replaced with placeholders to avoid copyright issues) both seem to have the exact same configuration for the font properties (as displayed by FontCreator):
  • Font family has spaces in the name
  • Font Subfamily is "Bold"
  • "Extended" names are empty
  • "Full Font Name" has spaces
  • "PostScript Name" has no spaces
The only difference I can see is that the expanded ("Exp") version does not have any custom naming field information, but the other file does not have an entry there for English, so it should not make a difference.

The problem is that these two fonts are displayed with "Font Names" of "Agency FB Bold" and "AgencyFBExp-Bold", even though the displayed "Family" matches the information in the files for both ("Agency FB" and "Agency FB Exp"). This leads to several issues:
  • Sorting by font name separates fonts that often should be together
  • All Windows programs display these fonts with spaces in the names (i.e., "Agency FB" and "Agency FB Exp"), so MainType isn't helping me figure out if I picked the right font to install.
  • Quick Search is more painful, since you have to search for "Agency FB" to find the one font, and "AgencyFB" to find the other. The only way to display both fonts is to search for just "Agency". For fonts with common name parts (like Garamond, Bodoni, etc.), this means you end up with a lot of matches that you don't really want to see.
  • I could just hide the "Font Name" column, and then the "Family" plus "Style" columns will tell me what Windows will see, but then I can't search correctly, since Quick Search only searches on "Font Name".
So, unless somebody can point out why these two files with very similar information absolutely should have the font name display in a completely different way, this is a bug. And, if it isn't a bug, please post a modified "Empty Agency FB Exp-Bold.otf" file where MainType will display the font name correctly (i.e., with spaces, like other Windows programs display it).
Attachments
Empty Agency FB-Bold.otf
(23.87 KiB) Downloaded 488 times
Empty Agency FB Exp-Bold.otf
(9.78 KiB) Downloaded 473 times
Erwin Denissen
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Re: "Font Name" display/Quick Search is inconsistent

Post by Erwin Denissen »

This happens with fonts that contain CFF based outlines. It is by design.

You can search by font family, just click the search icon:
searchbyfamily.png
searchbyfamily.png (12.55 KiB) Viewed 6518 times
Erwin Denissen
High-Logic
Proven Font Technology
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