Typophile

Font Name Craziness

ErickTheArchitect

I'm having weird things happen with a font name.

I've dabbled with Fontographer over the years to create some architectural fonts for my business (I'm an architect, if that's not obvious). I created a font "ErickTheArchitect 9" in Fontographer, and when it was ready to deploy I saved it as MikitenArch, to match my firm's web address.

I've used the font for 2-3 years with no problems. All of a sudden a few months ago the font showed up missing in some software, getting something else substituted. In other places it reverted somehow back to "ErickTheArchitect 9". In FontBook I've only got ErickTheArchitect 9. Other people in my office continue to use MikitenArch just fine. But I seem to be seeing more and more places where my computer won't accept it.

I looked every place I can think of, but nowhere was there any ErickTheArchitect 9 name in my Fontographer file. I re-created the font from Fontographer anyway, but to no avail. I delete ETA9, add MikitenArch, it shows up in FontBook, but ultimately changes back again.

Now I've got CAD software that's spitting out drawings with substituted fonts, and I've got to get to the bottom of it, so I'm looking for any suggestions.

Craig Eliason

I'm not good at troubleshooting these things, but sounds like a caching issue. Could you clear your font cache?

Ray Larabie

Did you try without the numeral in the name? I used to put numerals in some of my font names and they had all sorts of problems in various Mac apps.

ErickTheArchitect

Thanks for the comments. Maybe that was an initial error, having a numeral in the name. But Now I want to use the "MikitenArch" font only.

New Info: It turns out that my employees saw the font names change on their computers, too, but didn't mention it to me - a couple of months ago! They've all been using Erick The Architect 9.

I cleared my font cache and the MikitenArch has stuck for three computer startups. But since they all had ETA9, I had one of them export it. Here's what happened:

1. Export Folder named Erick the Architect 9
2. Font file named MikitenArch!
3. Double-clicked to install, and it came up as Erick The Architect 9
4. I clicked Install, and it installed as Erick The Architect 9, but both it and MikitenArch (still installed) show that there are duplicates installed!
5. I disabled MikitenArch in FontBook, and Erick The Architect 9 shows up where it's supposed to in my CAD software.

For now this is working and I can output, but I need to understand what's going on here to avoid anomalies in the future.

Could there be a Font ID I can save that's separate from the Font Name?

Any other suggestions are welcome.

kentlew

Did you make any substantial system upgrade a few months ago that might have precipitated the transformation?

Sounds like there are some font name id fields that obviously still have the working title in them. For some reason your systems started referencing one of those instead.

There are many more id fields in a font than older versions of Fontographer give you access to. (Don’t know about the latest v5.) I don’t recall how or if it populates them all upon generation.

Is your font a TTF or PS T1 format?

You should probably find someone with a copy of FontLab who can crack open your font and rewrite all the font name id fields and regenerate for you.

Ray Larabie

The numeral thing is a big deal. I used to get similar bug reports and one day I realized that all the fonts with that problem had numerals in the name. No numerals allowed in font names.

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