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Correct display of font characters in font programs

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:29 pm
by Shanafeg
Many of my fonts don't have a full character set. Yet when I display them in Main Type or Windows Fontview, Windows substitutes characters in its default font for the ones that are missing. The result is a false display of what's actually in the font, since the substituted characters obviously can't be used in a document. (See the attached screen dump from Fontview). Is there something I can do either to the fonts themselves or Windows to prevent this? I'm currently running Win 7 64 bit, and didn't have the problem with the same fonts with Win XP.

Re: Correct display of font characters in font programs

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:41 pm
by Bhikkhu Pesala
In MainType, if you enable the Font Preview, it will be obvious which letters are missing from the font. This Butterfly font contains only capitals A-E
Font  Preview.png
Font Preview.png (8.23 KiB) Viewed 10484 times

Re: Correct display of font characters in font programs

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2017 3:49 am
by Shanafeg
I'm wanting to find a way for those non-existing letters to not be displayed at all. I've noticed that some of my fonts really do only display what's actually there, rather than substituting letters for blank character slots (see the attached screen dump for Ann Stone). Again, how do I modify either the font or the Windows 7 default settings to prevent these letter substitutions?

Re: Correct display of font characters in font programs

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:38 am
by Erwin Denissen
The font fallback mechanism is actually a feature, so I'm not sure if you should work around it.

You could add "blank" characters, or better include outlines for missing characters.