FontBook makes warning when installing a large font

morten

Hello,

I have made a really large font with some spray-effects. The Otf font-size is 4,2 MB. 

When I use FontBook to install the fontfile, a warning appears: Dont use this font, 1 fatal error was found. (System approval don't like the font!)

If I install the font, ignoring the warning, it works fine and without any problems. 

So: How can I prevent that FontBook gives that warning? Thanks in advance for helping.

Regards,

Morten

PabloImpallari

That warning is perfectly valid.
Large fonts usually freeze or hang-up computers.

What you can do?
Remove points and small contours in your font to make it smaller (although it may remain too large to avoid the warning... so you may have to live with it).
Here is a Fontlab python macro that may help: https://github.com/impallari/Impallari-Fontlab-Macros/blob/master/IMP Production/Cleanup tracings Current.py

You can also remove some of the less used glyphs and only keep the basic a-z A-Z 0-9 and minimal punctuation.

James Puckett

If you use Glyphs then there’s a script to retract handles in Rainer’s github repository. That will do wonders for file size, but review your outlines and fix large curves.

morten

Thank you for your kind assistance! I have made a search in Rainers scripts – what's the exact name of the 'clean-up-script'?

James Puckett

Paths > Retract BCPs. 

After that process the paths with Illustrator’s reduce paths tool or Simon Cozen’s Supertool for Glyphs. Before you do all this copy your paths to the background so you can compare the two and fix any big curves that go missing.

Vassil Kateliev

Great find.. now that leads to the question, how do we define a typeface as big. 4 Mb is certainly very big, I would not even begin to discuss that,... but what about 500kb to 1.5Mb. Any experience with such sizes (and etc.) that you like to share - guidelines or best practices...

Now, why am I asking that... I am also currently struggling with a particular type design with rough contours (many nodes) and thin horizontal engraving lines (even more nodes) that rest inside the glyph's flesh... and it is a big 950+ glyphs typeface (many alternates, swashes and etc.) that I managed to fit in just under 1.2Mb for the heaviest weight - more flesh, more engraving lines and respectively bigger file-size....

...but I do not seem to like "the idea" of such big file-size for typefaces, so I am really wondering what to do to reduce it. Just to clarify that outlines are already all lines and no curves and they are optimized to even inhumanly possible scale, so my only option is to... start deleting glyphs.. and possibly splitting to font styles - FontName Alternates, FontName Swashes.. a messy family thing that I also do not like. The particular font design, is also without hinting (any suggestions about that), which is semi-tolerable with OTF visualisation on Windows, but a Nightmare with TTF

... so is that 1.1 Mb big and what best practices can you share from your experience.

Example of Regular weight:

Arthur Reinders Folmer

From my experience, the size of the file is (usually) not the biggest problem. You may get some warnings in programs such as fontbook, but if the glyphs themselves are not overly complicated (ranging towards 2000 points) it will load and work fine. (at least within toleration)

I ran into the real problems with extremely complicated glyphs (ranging from 5k points to 9k). These files manage to lock up your machine for a few minutes while installing/previewing and add a hefty waiting time in programs such as CC and Office. Even with only a set of Latin caps & lower case.

Myself: I think 1,1mb is no issue at all. Typefaces such as Trixie HD and Chartwell work perfectly fine at a far higher size. Of course: optimisation counts, but I think that ends if you have to add drawbacks to your design.

For practices with font consisting of complicated glyphs: I usually nowadays divide the design. While in the past I combined complicated design elements in one file, I now divide them over multiple layering styles. This gives the user more control over the typeface (to be able to fill the type for instance with shading or other effects). This way you also divide your details/point count over multiple files. However, I can see that wouldn't work with the type featured above. (and it also depends on the market you are targeting)

For hinting extremely complicated typefaces: I don't think it's that worthwhile unless you run into issues while proofing. With such a high detail, the hints would rarely have the effect you want, but of course this depends on the design. Perhaps non-hinting it will even add to the charm. What you can do however is make a lower detail version for small sizes which is more hint-friendly.

Of course the question is as well: Do you want your font supported as a TTF?