Typophile

using a different value in the name table

mtension

Hey there. I received a question about one of my fonts that I do not understand and hope someone here can help. This is the email I got:

Hello Michael,
First, I'd like to thank you very much for the great typefaces you
continue to share. It really is appreciated. Second, I'd like to let
you know about a problem I have encountered using 3Dumb, I believe it
relates to a Windows bug, that is having trouble reading the data in
your font file. I am trying to embed 3Dumb onto a site using CSS, the
technique works fine in the Safari browser, and Firefox on Mac, but in
Firefox on Windows, and IE the font isn't rendered.

Here is my test case:
http://christophermeyers.name/fonttest/

After reading this:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?query_format=specific&order=re...
my best guess is it has to do with the use of a numerical value in the
name table.

If you have any thoughts on this or would be able to re-release that
font using a different value in the name table, I would greatly
appreciate it.

Any idea what he is talking about or how to fix this? I use FontLab Studio.

Thanks.

Karsten Luecke

Tired late night thoughts:

Open FLS5's FontInfo, go through all pages, and whenever the name "3Dumb" appears, exchange it by "ThreeDumb". (Especially in the font name fields on the first FontInfo > Names and Copyright page.)

Perhaps you also need to change FontInfo > Names and Copyright > Embedding to "Embedding/Everything is allowed". Don't remember, but perhaps the font's current setting does not allow use with @font-face in Windows.

Jason Campbell

Maybe I'm missing something here. But as far as I understand, the font should not work with @font-face in IE. IE only uses EOT fonts with the @font-face call, and from the email I assume the user only has the OTF (or ttf) version of the font?

Jason C

Karsten Luecke

Hello Jason, the test site links to both .ttf and .eot, and according to the description the problem occurs in FF/Windows too which relies on .ttfs, so there is more to it than a missing or buggy .eot. Karsten

mtension

Thank you very much for responding I will try your suggestions and see if it works.

jdaggett

The problem is in the family/full names of your font, the family name is '3Dumb' with a capitalized 'D' and the fullname is '3dumb' with a lowercase 'd'. Believe it or not, this is enough to cause the t2embed library used to load fonts on Windows to burp. Firefox 3.5, Safari and IE all use this library but Safari falls back to rewriting the name table and using a low-level font loading API when the load using the t2embed library fails. Similar logic has been added for Firefox 3.6.

To avoid problems with the t2embed library on Windows:

1. Make sure the fullname includes a precise match of the family name (e.g. family = "Bountiful Bongo", fullname = "Bountiful Bongo Bold" and not fullname = "bountiful bongo bold" or fullname = "BountifulBongo Bold").

2. Make sure no name table record (including the license record) is longer than 2500 characters. Yes, this officially sucks...

For your font, the simple solution is rename '3dumb' to '3Dumb' in your name table records and everything should be groovy.

John Daggett
Mozilla Japan

Karsten Luecke

Thanks!

mtension

Thanks jdaggett, that is a very clear explanation. This was the first font I made, and obviously I was sloppy. I really appreciate your time.

mtension

jdaggett, your suggestion worked. Thanks for all of you for taking the time to help me out, I really appreciate it. All the best.

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