Weird export issue

Andrea T.
Andrea T. Posts: 40
in Font Technology
Hello everybody,

i want to submit to you an issue that actually is driving me mad. I spent a lot of time trying to solve it without results.

After all design process with fontlab (letter design, metrics, kerning, autohinting) i have now a complete font family of 9 weights (plus their italic version) that seems to work well with a simple fontlab exportation, both TTF and OTF. At this point i want to export with TRANS TYPE 4 ( TTF, OTF, Web font TT) in order to obtain a cross platform package. 

The problem become visible now: after the Trans Type exportation if i try to use the font (with illustrator for example) i found missing glyphs like /I or /K or /B in some weights but not in other (example: missing in light version but not in the regular version)

Which kind of problem is this? 

Is the fontlab file that is corrupt? or it's a problem with transtype ? (i have made TT exportation many other time without encounter any problem), or is an hinting problem?

(I know i can export with fontlab without using Trans type but i really want to know  why this is happening!)
I appreciate any advice you can give me. 
Many thanks for your attention!

[Additional Information:
1. made a set ps direction to all glyphs and remove overlap
2. i didn't decompose every glyphs 
3. i made a autohinting, autoreplace then i set standard stems and auto zones]


PS Sorry for my english  :)
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Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    Hey Andrea,

    Sorry to hear you are having trouble!

    What version of FontLab are you using? What exact version of TransType 4?

    I doubt we can debug this without access to the fonts. It is more likely the problem is in the source fonts and not in TransType, but I can’t say anything for sure without looking at the actual files: the ones that went into TransType and the ones that came out.

    You could submit a support ticket at https://support.fontlab.com to look into the issue, and attach your fonts (perhaps in a Zip file).
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 937
    edited December 2017
    Are the missing glyphs actually absent from the TransType-generated fonts? Or are they just not appearing when typed?

    If it’s the latter, then I wonder if the source files have correct encoding assigned to all glyphs. Is it possible that FontLab was assigning codepoints from glyph names during generation, but that TransType does not?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    No, I am pretty sure that wouldn't be it (I don't think FL does that, and if it did, so would TransType). But then again, as mentioned, I think we really need to see the fonts to know what the problem is. I’ll happily post back here afterwards about what the resolution was—but we haven’t seen anything more from Andrea as yet.
  • Andrea T.
    Andrea T. Posts: 40
    Many thanks for your help. 

    I read again the post i wrote and i forgot to mention a really important information about this issue (i'm really, really sorry). Actually the problem happen when i try to export .otf with trans type. The TTF files works fine.

    @Thomas Phinney _ I have Trans Type 4.0.1, and Fontlab 5.1.5. I have just upgrade to fontlab VI but i have to study it a little bit more to feel safe to use it for exportation :)

    i will post the files on support fontlab website. Do you need VFB files or just the OTF before and after transtype?


    @Kent Lew_ The glyphs are not absent they just not appearing when typed.



  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 937
    That does sound like some kind of encoding issue, then. Not sure why it would be limited to OTF-format output. But I’m sure the FL team will figure it out once they have sources in hand.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    @Andrea T.
    Ideally, both the VFB source and OTF output. Perhaps one or the other would be sufficient, but this will reduce the need for more back-and-forth.
  • Andrea T.
    Andrea T. Posts: 40
    @Thomas Phinney 

    hi Thomas,

    Sorry for my late answer, but i solved the problem simply making export with Fontlab VI. 
    Thank you very much for your interest, i appreciate.

    FL VI It's great in the export step an improvement from the previous version.
    Well, actually some other differences are quite bit traumatic :) but some other features are really awesome.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 632
    edited January 2018
    I’ve run into this issue before on occasion, and it seems to have to do with the interaction of hinting and contour start points, though I’ve never fully figured out what’s going on.

    Simply changing the start points on the affected glyphs usually solves the problem (though sometimes you have to try several different start points before it works). Removing hinting also solves the problem though this of course is a much less ideal solution.

    André

    [NB the above applies to FL5, but I assume a similar issue might be affecting TransType since AFAIK they use the same font generation code].

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