Cross platform naming convention

Jeff Peters
Jeff Peters Posts: 36
edited April 2019 in Technique and Theory
What is the best up-to-date naming practice – if you want cross platform functionality, one big family, without style linking (which nowadays is obsolete anyway, right?) Thank you.

Comments

  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,739
    edited April 2019
    I wouldn't say style linking is obsolete. People are going to click those big B and I buttons wherever they are offered, or use the keyboard shortcuts and menu commands.

    One current practice is to restrict regular/bold style linking to the regular and bold weights, and not pair up other weights (for example light and semibold or thin and extrabold) as used to be common practice. The idea is that regular and bold are the only pair that you can expect people to guess that the shortcuts would work for.

    Pairing a roman of any weight with its italic is still a good idea.
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 302
    This tutorial explains how to correctly make a big font family, and provides an example with settings to make a typeface with 10 fonts:
    https://www.high-logic.com/font-editor/fontcreator/tutorials/font-family-settings


  • Jeff Peters
    Jeff Peters Posts: 36
    Thanks, both of you!
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    Here is another tutorial: https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/naming
  • Jeff Peters
    Jeff Peters Posts: 36
    Thanks Georg. One more question: in style linking – if I don’t have a regular style, is it ok to have say the medium as regular instead, for style linking to work? And if so, do I need to assign regular weight (400) to the medium, or can it still be 500?
  • Artur Schmal
    Artur Schmal Posts: 74
    Jeff Peters said:
    Thanks Georg. One more question: in style linking – if I don’t have a regular style, is it ok to have say the medium as regular instead, for style linking to work? And if so, do I need to assign regular weight (400) to the medium, or can it still be 500?
    As far as I know you can style link any weight to any weight regardless of weight value.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    Artur Schmal said:
    As far as I know you can style link any weight to any weight regardless of weight value.
    I think Windows doesn't like that, and has complex and idiosyncratic dependencies when interpreting the family structure, which can result in fonts not showing up in the font folder and/or menus.
  • Artur Schmal
    Artur Schmal Posts: 74
    edited April 2019
    It's not something I do with my families, but there I remember there are Adobe families that map Light to SemiBold or something similar. They will appear under their short family name in the font menu on Windows and work with the I and B buttons.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,436
    edited April 2019
    Check the font menu in PowerPoint in Windows if you monkey with the linking. It's fussy about the existence of Regular.
  • Micha Mirck
    Micha Mirck Posts: 23
    This (Elsner&Flake) version of Swift is still working in Windows 10 / Word. The Small Caps was the BoldItalic version of the regular.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,739
    It's not something I do with my families, but there I remember there are Adobe families that map Light to SemiBold or something similar. They will appear under their short family name in the font menu on Windows and work with the I and B buttons.

    Not recommended anymore, except for styles called Regular and Bold.

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