Multiple encoding not displayed in Character Map under XP

Vasudevan · Post by **Vasudevan** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 6:35 am

Hi:
I have sent a note to Erwin as well, but feel this would be useful to share with others as well.
I have a problem in creating fonts with multiple encodings. I have created a test font with two different mappings- Tamil and Devanagiri. This is a very simple file with not all glyphs defined. However when I install the font in windows XP, I get Tamil characters displayed correctly, but Devanagiri glyphs are replaced with .notdef (Tested with Character Map software and also Notepad. Word or Excel is OK) I can send the font file for reference. (This is a small
file). Your help would be much appreciated, since our development is held up due to this issue.
Thanks in advance for your help

Note: Funny thing is if I have Mangal.TTF installed, CharacterMap software replaces the three Devanagiri glyphs with the glyph from Mangal.ttf. So Windows knows that these mappings are Devanagiri but somehow ignores the glyphs!

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:44 am

Your font requires OpenType features like glyph substitution. The Font Creator Program doesn't support the GSUB table (that contains the glyph substitution features). Also some other tables are not supported.

You can make a TrueType font and then use Microsoft VOLT to add OpenType features.

Check out the Microsoft Typography web site for information on making OpenType fonts. There are free tools, some specs, and even some articles explaining how to use VOLT (Visual OpenType Layout tool).