Postscript Names in Symbol Fonts

[Dick Pape]

I have encountered a problem that people who use FontLab complain that my Symbol fonts are invalid -- even the simple ones! That of course can't be true!!

The situation appears that in FontLab, Name mode, FC generated Symbol fonts show as "notdef". I think this is caused by not having Postscript names in them.

I've tested changing the Platform from Symbol to MS Unicode BMP. Generating Postscript Names and then resetting the platform to MS Symbol. These then display "properly" within FontLab.

While I don't want to debug FontLab because it's "the old technology", I have some FC questions:

1. Why are the glyph names blank on symbol fonts?
2. Is there a problem with auto-generating Postscript names for symbol glyphs? (Currently, these names can be entered manually.)

A direct advantage is that if the glyphs have PS names then key strokes are documented.

[Erwin Denissen]

I have encountered a problem that people who use FontLab complain that my Symbol fonts are invalid -- even the simple ones! That of course can't be true!!

It isn't at least not with FontLab Studio 5.0, as that assigns postscript names to all empty glyphs, e.g. .notdef.009 for glyph with glyph index 9. The specification does permit empty postscript names as well as duplicates, so that must have been a bug in older versions of FontLab.

The situation appears that in FontLab, Name mode, FC generated Symbol fonts show as "notdef". I think this is caused by not having Postscript names in them.

I've tested changing the Platform from Symbol to MS Unicode BMP. Generating Postscript Names and then resetting the platform to MS Symbol. These then display "properly" within FontLab.

While I don't want to debug FontLab because it's "the old technology", I have some FC questions:

1. Why are the glyph names blank on symbol fonts?

FontCreator has no way of knowing what a Symbol glyph is supposed to represent, thus all but the first four (static) glyphs have empty postscript names when you create a new Symbol font.

2. Is there a problem with auto-generating Postscript names for symbol glyphs? (Currently, these names can be entered manually.)

No.

A direct advantage is that if the glyphs have PS names then key strokes are documented.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, can you please clarify it?

[Dick Pape]

I believe my symbol fonts are only invalid in their minds because of the following:

1. Normal Symbol Font in FontLab 4.5

2. Same font in FontLab Name Mode. Characters disappear and names become notdef. This is the one that looks like an error:

3. Same font with PS Names added in Name Mode

The keyboard strokes needed to display a glyph are the PS Names, i.e.,
!"#$%&'()*+,-./012345 which also makes the font self-documented in any font viewer.

Is there a way to auto-add PS names to symbol fonts in FC without changing platforms? If not, then I can do it my way which takes about 20 seconds.

[Erwin Denissen]

Your font is a Symbol font, so it should contains glyphs which represent symbols, and those glyphs should have matching postscript names like ornament1, ornament2, etc.

So, no there is no automatic way of adding "Symbol Char" names.

[Dave Crosby]

How about just numbering them?

[William]

Your font is a Symbol font, so it should contains glyphs which represent symbols, and those glyphs should have matching postscript names like ornament1, ornament2, etc.

So, no there is no automatic way of adding "Symbol Char" names.

As I understand it, when using a Symbol font one keys ordinary keyboard characters, such as e and q, to cause the glyphs to be displayed on the screen.

So a first thought might be for a glyph to have a postscript name which corresponds to the keyboard key which needs to be pressed in order to display the glyph.

Yet other postscript names could be useful, such as, for a combination border, names such as upper_left, lower_left and so on.

Or one could have postscript names such as steam_locomotive, diesel_locomotive, empty_track, open_wagon and so on for glyphs showing railway items.

I am wondering what is the efect of having a postscript name other than e for the glyph which appears when one keys e on a keyboard. Is it perhaps something such as that if one produces a pdf and someone else accesses it using accessibility methods that the symbol will not be replaced by a lowercase e from a local font?

If someone makes a symbol font with his or her own postscript names for the glyphs, where are those postscript names used other than when a person is studying the font using FontCreator (or another font authoring package)? Do the postscript get embedded within a pdf? Would a printer (that is, a person who is a printer, not the machine called a printer) considering printing the document have access to those postscript names within the printing industry software which the printer were using?

William Overington

18 September 2008

[William]

I have now made a symbol font as I suggested in my previous post.

I produced the artwork designs using the Fontstruct facility at the http://fontstruct.fontshop.com webspace and slightly adjusted some of the points by one font unit using FontCreator 5.6 as part of the validation part of making the font, though I did not scale the artwork.

It is, as far as I remember, the first symbol font which I have published.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/RAILW001.TTF

The four glyphs in the font are accessible using a, b, c and d, though the postscript names are steam_locomotive, diesel_locomotive, empty_track and open_wagon respectively.

I have also produced a pdf using the font.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/r ... t_test.pdf

Maybe in time a search for railway_001_symbol_font_test.pdf at http://www.yahoo.com will allow a View as HTML option to be tried. Would that display as letters a through to d or will the postscript names block that from happening?

I do not, as yet, find any benefit in using a symbol font format rather than just mapping the glyphs to a, b, c and d in an ordinary font. Yet maybe I am missing something?

William Overington

18 September 2008

[Dick Pape]

If you checkout the standard WingDings symbol font you will see the setup.

In a fontviewer, the postscript name will show for each glyph == pencil, scissors, scissorscutting, readingglasses, etc. If you check the font in FC you will see the Macintosh Roman maps are the usual Exclamation Mark, Quotation mark, Number sign, etc. Those are the same as the key strokes used to access the symbol.

While it's not necessary to have the Macintosh Roman side mapped or the names visible to use the keystrokes with the PS names you have the documentation of the keystrokes.

I assign standard postscript names to my symbol fonts if I don't need the field for documentation.
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A search on a document that uses a symbol font will bring up the keystroke used to display the glyph (!@#$abcd) rather than the Postscript names.

I haven't played with all the situations, such as assigning your own PUA values (61472, 61473, etc), to see what happens. The font name display in MS Word changed and I lost the use of Insert Symbol when I deleted a glyph so there's something else going on also.
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Using the Symbol font format enables programs that use it, such as MS Word, to name the font as "Wingdings" and show sample of glyphs rather than just using the wingding symbols as the font name. I'm sure there are other reasons to be consistent with the standards.