Typophile

Fonts for Windows 2007

Saku

I have designed a custom type family for a client. It´s an OTF family with 6 weights plus their italics. All has been well so far, and the fonts have worked well in both Mac and Windows. However, now that they install the fonts to PCs using Office 2007 programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) there are problems that, I guess, are caused by the naming of the fonts: the fonts are not visible on the pull-down menus or they appear there with strange names. Is there something specific to this generation of Windows? I really am not an expert on this, and would appreciate any help for finding solutions or hints as to where seek for help!
Thanks, Saku.

Mark Simonson

Windows has a limit on the number of styles in a font family. You can only have plain, italic, bold, bold italic. Any more than that and the fonts will not be available in standard Windows apps. (You will be able to use them in Adobe apps and some others.) Basically, you need to break your family into smaller sub-families that fit this limitation.

Adam Twardoch has written a guide on how to do this on the FontLab Forum:

http://forum.fontlab.com/fontlab-studio-tips-and-tricks/font-family-nami...

Saku

Thanks, Mark!
I heard Adam talk about this at ATypI 08 in St Petersburg, but I wasn´t this far myself back then. The guide you linked to looks clear and comprehensive, and hopefully I can solve the problems now. Cheers, Saku.

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