Problem using fonts on Word (Windows)

André Simard

I finished my Bronsimard typeface family on 12 fonts (6 roman, 6 italic). For testing I installed it on my Mac Mojave system. I did the same on Windows 10 to see how Bronsimard goes on both system. See my two image. On Mac is perfect I get my 12 fonts, however on Windows I get only 5 roman fonts. Is there something I did wrong? Need your advice and help. Thanks in advance.

Dislay on Mac system (Mojave 10.14)





On Windows system

Erwin Denissen

It is most likely due to incorrect family related fields like Width, Weight, or flags like Bold, Italic, or even Panose data.

See this topic about making fonts work like a family:

https://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator/manual11/fonttype.html

George Thomas

Also, just for clarity, you don't have 12 weights; you have 12 fonts in 6 weights; Roman and Italic.

André Simard

George Thomas said:

Also, just for clarity, you don't have 12 weights; you have 12 fonts in 6 weights; Roman and Italic.

Right: 12 fonts in 6 weights; Roman and Italic. (My mistake)

Mark Simonson

Windows doesn't normally show bold or italic members of a family in a font menu, just the "plain" member of a family or subfamily. If you've set some styles to be bold or italic of other styles. In order to choose them, you choose the plain style and then use the bold or italic buttons or commands to get the style you want.

That's probably what's going on here, or partly what's going on.

Thomas Phinney

Yes, as Mark says, this looks like "normal" Windows behavior—if your italics are style-linked to their uprights, and your bold is style-linked to your regular.

That would be a pretty normal/common way to structure your family, as well.

Erwin Denissen

Yes, Mark is most likely right. To be sure your fonts act like one family, do open Windows fonts folder to see if they are all grouped inside the same "Bronsimard" family folder.

André Simard

Mark Simonson  said:

Windows doesn't normally show bold or italic members of a family in a font menu, just the "plain" member of a family or subfamily. If you've set some styles to be bold or italic of other styles. In order to choose them, you choose the plain style and then use the bold or italic buttons or commands to get the style you want.

That's probably what's going on here, or partly what's going on.

Thomas Phinney said

Yes, as Mark says, this looks like "normal" Windows behavior—if your italics are style-linked to their uprights, and your bold is style-linked to your regular. 

That would be a pretty normal/common way to structure your family, as well.

Thanks for your answer, It's more clear how Windows behavior is. Do I have to create a Font Family folder on Windows machine to group the 12 fonts?

Mark Simonson

You can if you like to keep your font folder organized (also true on MacOS), but as far as I know it makes no difference in terms of font activation or how the fonts appear in applications.

Erwin Denissen

Those sub folders in Windows fonts folder are virtual folders which can't be organized. If you have your fonts in one such folder then is proofs you have set the intenral font settings and properties correctly. If not, then do read the instructions in the link I provided earlier.

Adam Jagosz

Create a font folder in Windows? Nuh-huh, how would you do that? There isn't even such thing as drag'n'dropping a folder into the X:/Windows/Fonts "folder" (it is just as virtual as the family sub-folders).

Btw the way font installation is set up on Windows is a mess. Oftentimes I would have issues when installing consecutive versions of developed fonts for testing, e.g., missing entries in the Fonts "folder", i.e., a font is still installed and can be used by the system but cannot be uninstalled easily. What happens when you drop a font in there: the system copies the file, changes its name sometimes, and adds an entry to the system registry. Probably more. Many steps. Sometimes things must go wrong.

Thomas Phinney

This reminds me that I meant to write this up before. How to swap from one font version to another safely and reliably. Mac and Windows both: http://www.thomasphinney.com/2018/11/changing-font-versions/

Mark Simonson

Thanks for the clarifications about the Windows font folder. I don't use Windows much except for testing fonts, and it seemed like it worked similarly to the Mac font folders, but apparently not exactly.

André Simard

Thomas Phinney said:

This reminds me that I meant to write this up before. How to swap from one font version to another safely and reliably. Mac and Windows both: http://www.thomasphinney.com/2018/11/changing-font-versions/

I will read it carefully. 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

André Simard

James Montalbano said:

@Thomas Phinney I just use FontNuke and all is well.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21536/fontnuke

Is somebody else use this app?

Adam Jagosz

That's very thorough, Thomas! In the lines of “better safe than sorry”. I never do all that, which is probably the source of my (occasional, though) problems.

Here are my quick'n'dirty ways on Windows 10: MS Word (Office 360) catches up new versions of fonts right away, without restarting the app. For testing in Adobe CC (at least InDesign), you might consider using the dedicated Adobe Fonts folder (e.g., C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CC 2015\Fonts) instead of relying on the system. This way you don't need to restart the apps either—they should pick up the new fonts in this folder, unlike the system fonts. You need to give your fonts different names if you plan on installing them both ways—Adobe will honor system fonts first, and will get stuck on the wrong version.

For anyone developing on Windows (not many of us, I guess): You can use a batch script to (a) copy your fonts to a specific folder (like the Adobe Fonts folder) or (b) call a Powershell script that installs the fonts in Windows, as a final step in your build script if you use one. Always one thing to do less. I prefer (a) because Windows will ask you about replacing the font and you can't suppress that in the script. (Probably you could write a Powershell script to uninstall the font first; I found one online but it didn't work for me and I didn't feel like trying to make it work.) Right now I test mostly in the browser, so I just have the script copy the fonts into a folder my html template uses (which is btw largely inspired by Pablo Impallari's tester). Then just Ctrl+F5 to reload the page and clear the cache and that's it. I even cooked up some Javascript to reload the fonts without page reload and it seems to work, but sometimes I get the impression it fails. I guess, work in progress.

Thomas Phinney

My problem with FontNuke was that it was Mac-only and requires a reboot—and back in days of old, that was time-consuming. Nowadays Macs can restart pretty darn quickly, though.

I have updated my post with a link to that, and a few more things....

Belleve Invis

André Simard said:

Mark Simonson  said:

Windows doesn't normally show bold or italic members of a family in a font menu, just the "plain" member of a family or subfamily. If you've set some styles to be bold or italic of other styles. In order to choose them, you choose the plain style and then use the bold or italic buttons or commands to get the style you want.

That's probably what's going on here, or partly what's going on.

Thomas Phinney said

Yes, as Mark says, this looks like "normal" Windows behavior—if your italics are style-linked to their uprights, and your bold is style-linked to your regular. 

That would be a pretty normal/common way to structure your family, as well.

Thanks for your answer, It's more clear how Windows behavior is. Do I have to create a Font Family folder on Windows machine to group the 12 fonts?

You can't make Word recognize that.
Office used legacy name entries to index fonts (for compatibility, of course) and it only supports 4 subfamilies: regular, bold, italic, bolditalic.
Some other applications (like control panel or the "font settings" in UWP settings) use more "modern" names (or WWS names).

André Simard

Thank @Belleve Invis to clarify that.

André Simard

Thomas Phinney said:

I have updated my post with a link to that, and a few more things....

Thank Thomas! It's helpful.