Font menu order in OSX

Paul van der Laan
Paul van der Laan Posts: 242
in Technique and Theory
Is there any logic to the font menu order in the native OSX font panel? Only families that consist of R/I/B/BI styles appear to be sorted logically, but in all other cases the menu is one big mess... (And yes – I have defined the proper weight values in the font info.)

Comments

  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 81
    Paul, how you generate your fonts? If you do it directly from FLS, I remember Luc had some solution for this problem (something with >x< added and removed from the names). Not sure, but I think I saw it on a FontLab forum.
  • Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh
    Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh Posts: 539
    I think you're referring to this : http://forum.fontlab.com/index.php?topic=8588.0 : which appears to be a workaround for the stupid way OpenType naming guidelines want us to treat "Regular" style names.
  • Ermin Međedović
    Ermin Međedović Posts: 81
    Exactly, thnx Jasckson.
  • Paul van der Laan
    Paul van der Laan Posts: 242
    Thanks, that post by Luc[as] could be helpful indeed.
  • Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh
    Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh Posts: 539
    If you want to use the "Regularx" hack to override OT naming, I think it's easier and more reliable to do it outside of Fontlab. My method:

    1. Generate the font with style name "Regularx"
    2. TTX it
    3. find-replace "Regularx" with "Regular"
    4. un-TTX it

    (I stopped doing this a while ago, since it is against the OT naming standards. Standards are good, even if I don't agree with them.)
  • Jan Willem Wennekes
    Jan Willem Wennekes Posts: 148
    Is that post on the fontlab forum still available somewhere? Running into the same issues but the link doesn't seem to work?
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 515
    Our forum server is currently down, we're working on it.
  • Jan Willem Wennekes
    Jan Willem Wennekes Posts: 148
    Ok, let's wait for that then. In the meantime here is a screenshot of what I am experiencing. Like Paul I've set the weights but the order is kind of messed up here...
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,208
    edited November 2013
    Same thing in TextEdit.
    I wonder why it’s so hard for Apple to get it right—after all, there are two listing conventions in fonts: name and numbers, and the number method (from 100–1000) perfectly describes the foundry’s prefered sequence. Why wouldn’t they use that?
  • Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer
    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer Posts: 157
    FWIW, I have found that a plethora of factors influence the ordering in OS X menus. E.g. I found that OS X also looks at your italic angle. If there is only the slightest slant to the right, it will be marked as Italic, and reordered. No matter if the style linking info says it is an upright.

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