Hi,
I got so excited when I heard about the new
Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 version which supports SVG multi-color fonts.
But when I try to check this new feature, some of the fonts get
upside down! These fonts, (some of them are my own designs and some others) they work everywhere: Mozilla FireFox, FontLab Pad, FontCreator, Mac TextEdit,... I have sent them to other people, and they work correctly.
But here this is what happens in PS CC 17:
Black and white fonts are fine:

Multi-color version becomes something like this!

Also this is another one that I did for a font designer:

And this is the famous
Bixa Color:

What seems to be the problem, here?
Comments
Interesting thing is, PS has some color fonts and they work just fine.
Anything I can do to fix this?
Compare the SVG code of the working fonts with the flipped (with TTX).
Can anybody confirm this issue in PS CC 2017? I think I am the only one
A great way to do this and improve performance and file size is to run your glyphs through an SVG optimiser. They will calculate the coordinates that would result from the transform and hard-code them in the SVG. [1]
Bixa Color and Bungee have been fixed like that. Bixa can now be downloaded as proper OTF: https://bixacolor.com. (@Shahab Siavash You must've converted the old WOFF to OTF to try it out in Photoshop, right?)
[1] An older version of that script is here: https://github.com/djrrb/Bungee/blob/master/scripts/fixsvg.py It'll fix the upside-down problem and do some minor optimisations, feel free to use that and ping me if you have any questions
Personally I think, it should be fixed by Adobe, because other apps are doing just fine.
Yeah! Guilty! I have tested Bixa and Bungee and they are working great, now.
Thanks again. But still, like the other time, if you remember, I can't run python. I'm just a graphic designer
This should definitely be fixed in the tools that produce these fonts.
Oh! I thought your tweets were about the bugs on PS CC 2017. And they are going to fix them.
So, now that the fonts work everywhere but PS, if we fix the transform, they still work on other apps and web, as well as the PS?
Thanks
@Thomas Phinney (et al), would it be correct to say that layout applications should *ignore* transform directives in the font's SVG? That would fix my issue but I feel it's a bit of a dirty thing to do so would like confirmation before making it happen.
I am not sure I am eager to encourage developers to make fonts broken in more places, until said fonts have been updated.
@Simon Cozens That bug used to be in the build tool that Emoji One uses (scfbuild, see https://github.com/RoelN/LapisLegit/issues/19) and has been fixed. Maybe re-run your test with a new download of Emoji One?
Regarding SVG transforms: they are valid and should be honored, if they're used in the SVG document — in other words, on elements inside it. But what TransType et al did was sticking that transform on the SVG document — in other words, on the <svg> tag itself. This is invalid for SVG1.1 (and the obscure and little-used SVG1.2 that somehow is the version TransType uses), but will be valid in SVG2 but isn't implemented in browsers yet.
The way the script in the Bungee repo fixes this is by removing the transform from the SVG element, and moving it to a generic group element inside the SVG, which is perfectly valid for SVG versions currently in use.
I agree fonts with invalid transforms should break, especially since the transform fix is super easy to do!
We are currently doing a major upgrade to our font generation library as part of our FontLab VI work. We intend to publish a new TransType once the major work is done and FontLab VI is out the door.
Is there an estimate for TransType?
I don't have an estimate for TransType 5. After FontLab VI ships, for sure. But I hope we can find a workaround for you until then.
Thanks,
T