Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Discuss FontCreator here, please do not post support requests, feature requests, or bug reports!
MikeW
Posts: 625
Joined: Mon May 20, 2013 2:51 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by MikeW »

I scrunch them together on the Family name field, but it is not necessary.

If I hit the Bold button I wouldn't expect the blackletter to be activated. But that's up to you!

You can (likely should) leave all other naming fields alone below the top two.

As regards the Sample text, I have no idea if there is even an application that uses it.
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

MikeW wrote: Sun Dec 09, 2018 5:14 pm I scrunch them together on the Family name field, but it is not necessary.
Is there an advantage to doing that? I know I've seen fonts with names like that -- multiple words all scrunched together. I always thought it was a mistake. Or else issues with filenames not having spaces because some operating systems or servers or whatever can't handle that (and where I've seen fonts with underscores in their names in the place of spaces, too).
If I hit the Bold button I wouldn't expect the blackletter to be activated. But that's up to you!
Hmm, yeah, probably better to just leave that one regular, too.
As regards the Sample text, I have no idea if there is even an application that uses it.
I guess it would do no harm to add in my silly sample text, eh? If someone comes across it, at least they might get a smile out of it -- or at least I'd get a smile out of it, believing that. :lol:
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

Wow, MikeW, this worked out perfectly! At least, installing my fonts with them named as per your suggestion(s), and then firing up Photoshop, I only see "Alde" listed in the font menu, and then all four of my fonts are listed in a separate drop-down menu -- couldn't have asked for better!

Leaves me wondering if I should put "Alde" in the typographic family in all-caps, so you see "ALDE" instead -- or would that be a little too "in your face"?

Of the hundreds of fonts on my system, I see some that have their names in uppercase -- I always just assumed that they were trying to draw attention to themselves, and in that sense found it a bit annoying. It would be nice, though, if fonts that are part of a family, (where, if you click on them, then you have additional options to choose from via another drop-down menu) would have that for their family name. That would indeed be helpful if everybody followed that thinking.

I don't know if that would help in my case, or just come across as arrogant and annoying or something, though. :roll:

Anyway, thank you for that help, Mike! Very happy with the results (at least in Photoshop -- haven't tried it in a word processor or anything yet, but if in there it just lists each font separately, that's okay, too). :)
MikeW
Posts: 625
Joined: Mon May 20, 2013 2:51 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by MikeW »

You're most welcome, Psymon!

Naming in all caps or sentence case--or any other way--is entirely up to you. With such a short word (Alde/ALDE), all caps wouldn't bother my designer side a bit. With longer words, especially multiple words, all caps does get a bit jarring. I personally like sentence case, though.

Mike
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

MikeW wrote: Mon Dec 10, 2018 2:55 pm Naming in all caps or sentence case--or any other way--is entirely up to you. With such a short word (Alde/ALDE), all caps wouldn't bother my designer side a bit. With longer words, especially multiple words, all caps does get a bit jarring. I personally like sentence case, though.
I just might do that with my font, not so much to be "in your face" with it, but even just for my own purposes -- I'm constantly going to it in software for my own projects, and so having the family name in all caps will help ME out. ;)

Re your preference for sentence case, do you mean that you would change the family name for Times New Roman (for example) to "Times new roman" instead? I think that would be kinda weird, to have font names (or family names) like that. :shock:
MikeW
Posts: 625
Joined: Mon May 20, 2013 2:51 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by MikeW »

Sorry, I meant Title Case...

Feel free when you create new work to post images of the works, maybe in the General section. I like such things and I think it goes to promoting FC.

Mike
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

MikeW wrote: Mon Dec 10, 2018 4:26 pm Sorry, I meant Title Case...
That makes better sense. ;)
Feel free when you create new work to post images of the works, maybe in the General section. I like such things and I think it goes to promoting FC.
For my Wickednesse font -- which I've now renamed Alde Blacke Magick, of course -- when I first "finished" it (later discovering that it was far from finished, of course), I did post a whole pile of images showing the entire character set, along with various text samples, too.

You can check that out here, if you're curious...

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6966

In many ways that particular font still looks very much the same -- just a LOT better! That is, I've added in a fair bunch of symbols, etc., and done lots more kerning and stuff. I also gave up on the Cyrillic characters because I'm utterly clueless for how it "looks," since I don't speak/write that language and just can't tell -- plus I also was totally making that up, and learned that 16th century Cyrillic looks hardly anything at all like modern cyrillic, so I was way off-base as far as any sort of historical accuracy.

I did keep the Greek in my blackletter font, though, because that often appears in early printed texts -- I'm seriously thinking that I should also do up a Greek character set for either my roman or italic font, or maybe even both. Ugh, that'll be rather a chore, though, especially since I'm clueless on Greek/Latin as well, and so it's hard for me to know what "looks good" for that as well (kerning-wise, or whatever-else-wise).

Anyway, if you haven't seen that page before, with that big overview of my blackletter font (in an earlier incarnation), you'll probably enjoy a peek at that. :)

Um, now that that early version is pretty much defunct, and it's going by another name and everything -- not to mention I've since created those three other fonts to go along with it, too -- I'm not sure if that whole, entire thread should be trashed? Or if I should add a note or something to it to that effect???
MikeW
Posts: 625
Joined: Mon May 20, 2013 2:51 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by MikeW »

Yep, I've not only watched your progress, but I did respond once in it near the end.

Mike
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

MikeW wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:39 am Yep, I've not only watched your progress, but I did respond once in it near the end.
I'm sure we've interacted before in the past, not just recently? I know I've seen your name come up here several times before (I just can't recall the context, off-hand). In any case, though, if you've been following my progress for all this time, then you deserve a gold star on your report card! My admiration for your patience and stamina (and thank you for the interest, too!). ;)
Psymon
Posts: 444
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:50 pm

Re: Naming (and font properties) for a font family

Post by Psymon »

Oh, gee, y'know what? Although that method of naming my fonts worked out great in Photoshop -- where you get "Alde" for a family name, and then a sub-menu listing all the various alternatives (i.e.my regular, italic, smallcaps, etc. fonts) -- I only noticed just now that in other software it doesn't quite work out so well.

For example, in my email program, if I was to try to write a message in any of my fonts -- and yes, I do realize that for email it's pointless to specify an odd font that the recipient of the message wouldn't have, but only as a little experiment here -- then in the drop-down list of fonts all I see is "Alde," and no additional option for picking which of the various fonts I actually want to use.

So that kinda sucks -- but in that light, I think I'll just go back to renaming them all so that they come out as separate fonts, not as part of a family.

Bummer, but I don't know what else to do -- at least with my somewhat odd "family" of fonts. :roll:
Post Reply