Fonts won't upload to Myfonts - vertical metrics issues?

David Kerkhoff
David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
in Font Technology
Hello - and sorry for what seems to be a very stupid question.
I have been making fonts for a couple of years now and I have uploaded most of my 500+ fonts to the sites of various resellers. Sales were good, so right now it is my full time job.
Some time ago, Myfonts/Monotype released a new font uploader, which I still call Prosper (after its test name). In fact, I was one of the people who were asked to try out this new gizmo to weed out any bugs and glitches. 

So far so good. There were bugs, there were glitches, but in the end a workable uploader was presented.

I am not a tech-person and most of the typographic terms are beyond me. I learned the ins and outs of Fontlab Studio (5) myself, with the help of some tutorials which you can find on the web. It was a lot of trial and error and I cannot count the many moments of sheer frustration, but in the end Fontlab Studio and I tolerated each other. I still don't know exactly what I am doing, but at least Fontlab Studio lets me export fonts that work. And I never get complaints, nor are my fonts rejected.

Again, so far so good.

BUT (here it comes): Myfonts Prosper, in the last week or so, has been rejecting ALL of my new fonts for reasons I cannot understand. Apparently there seems to be an issue with my vertical metrics, which results in clipping (???). See? I told you, I am not a tech person.

This is what Prosper says: 

"We've tested your fonts to ensure that when used on Windows, the acsenders and descenders will not appear clipped or cut off. It is good practice to ensure that your vertical metrics also accomodate your diacritics."



This is what I have: typoAscender at 750 and TypoDescender at -250 (=1000 UPM). I always thought that these values were not that important, but it seems this is where the heart of the problem lies.

Please forgive my lack of knowledge, but if anyone can help me solve this, I would be very grateful!

So, my question is:

1. What IS the problem?
2. How can I fix it?
3. Should I change my settings?
4. What should I change them to?
5. Should I just pack up and leave?

Thanks. I am very frustrated right now, so you're not catching me at the most opportune of times.
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Comments

  • Khaled Hosny
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 289
    If the issue is clipping, then you need to make sure WinAscent and WubDescent accommodate your ascenders and descenders plus any accents, since these values is what Windows use for clipping.
  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
    Hey Khaled, Thanks for that. And, me being illiterate, how to go about that?
  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
    Khaled,
    So I just increased the number for WinAscent (it was 1029, I made it 1200). Saved under a different name, exported as OTF and uploaded to Myfonts.

    drum roll

    it works. At least, Prosper accepts it!
    But that really can't be the way to do it. I mean, it is cheating - sort of.

  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17

  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
    Yep, it works. Just redid one of the fonts that was rejected and it passed all barriers.
    It does seem silly to just punch in a higher number and you're home free...

    Thanks for that insight, Khaled!!


  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
    Haha! I thought I was in for a bit of heavy reading, but then I saw the 'to be regarded as outdated: head to the last page' stamp to the left. ;-) Thanks a lot Jens!
  • Khaled Hosny
    Khaled Hosny Posts: 289
    It isn’t cheating. Windows will read these numbers from the font and use it to decide the height and depth of the rectangle that it will use to draw the glyphs in, and any part of your glyphs outside of these numbers will be cut-off. You need to calculate the number based on your highest and deepest glyphs.
  • Aaron Bell
    Aaron Bell Posts: 93
    Usually the winAscent and winDescent values should be auto-set by the export process. Or at least press the "Recalculate" button. 

    The problem with just increasing the values arbitrarily is that applications like Word rely on those values to determine not only cut off, but also default line height. So increasing it randomly means your type will have really large line gaps. 
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    Does this tool take into account what’s in the font? Because I’m not setting vertical metrics to give ridiculous line spacing for western European languages just so Pinyin and Vietnamese don’t get clipped when those users are used to bumping up the line spacing anyway.
  • Ralph Smith
    Ralph Smith Posts: 30
    Had the same problem and reached out to MyFonts. I uploaded fonts and they were fine but had to restart the process and then they were rejected. I could upload a single font with no problem but when I added fonts to the family they were rejected.

    MyFonts said to me on Friday -

    We’ve recently made some changes to the validator

    We are going to make some of the red errors into warnings so that the fonts can make it through for review while we evaluate how we’re testing each of these important characteristics! ...    I will follow up with you once this change has been made
  • Aaron Bell
    Aaron Bell Posts: 93
    @James Puckett You should set the WinAscent and WinDescent values as they should be set to avoid clipping for apps that care about that, and then turn on the 'useTypoMetrics' flag, which instructs apps to use the normal metrics (as in the sTypo metrics) rather than the Win metrics. 
  • Dusan Jelesijevic
    Dusan Jelesijevic Posts: 66
    edited October 2019
    I'm having same issue since this morning. Lost all day trying all possible methods and calculations and ended up with same solution as @David Kerkhoff – to cheat and enter fake values. And I also didn't want to upload fonts on that way.

    Got same answer from MyFonts.

    As I understood it, this "issue" will be still issue, just not as red one (declining one), but as yellow one (that informs you that there might be problems with it once).
  • David Kerkhoff
    David Kerkhoff Posts: 17
    Well, forget about that. I changed the WinAscent and WinDescent values according to the PDF @Jens Kutilek suggested. It gets me nowhere. I get red crosses all the way and the only way to solve this is to punch in fake values.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 377
    Since winAscent and winDescent will actually affect your fonts’ rendering (clipping!) in some environments I strongly suggest against your approach to punch in fake values just to make MyFont’s validator happy. I haven't used their updated tool yet, but I'd imagine that a message like the one given in their validator hints that they check the extrema of glyph paths in the font and when they overshoot winAscent or winDescent this emits a (maybe a bit overzealous) error message.
  • Adam Ladd
    Adam Ladd Posts: 263
    I actually ran into this just now as well, but my issue was due to a mistake I needed to correct because I didn't account for the fact that with this family I was extrapolating the heaviest weight instance (not ideal) and my vertical metrics didn't account for it (i.e. my boldest master characters were a little smaller in unit size, by just a few points). Once I bumped/rounded my values up by 10 more units for both ascent and descent, then it captured that weight as well and passed the tests. 
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 300
    There are numerous outdated guidelines and documents floating around.

    Our tutorial about these metrics should be up-to-date:

    If you see room for improvements, let us know!
  • k.l.
    k.l. Posts: 109
    edited October 2019
    Certain guidelines may be declared outdated and/or may have an updated postscriptum, yet: what worked in the past should still work now and in future, provided that software developers do not adjust their rasterizers' and layout engines' behavior. Of course, for any guideline to be of any use, type designers need to measure their glyphs' ascenders and descenders correctly ...
  • K Pease
    K Pease Posts: 182
    edited October 2019
    I still do all my work in FontLab 5 for Windows. How can I set the "use typo metrics" flag, if I can?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    Unless it is a feature in the Windows version but not Mac ... I think you can’t.
  • Mike Wenzloff
    Mike Wenzloff Posts: 106
    Likely possible in OTMaster.

    I use High-Logic's FontCreator. It has the flag, but I don't have any idea whether it would affect the Prosper issue or not.

     
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    My favorite lightweight option, if one needs that feature but your main font editor does not support it, would be to use TTX to dump to text, adding/editing the single line specifying the switch, and recompiling the font.
    https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 723
    edited October 2019
    My favorite lightweight option, […], would be to use TTX to dump to text, […]
    Likely possible in OTMaster.
    Perhaps not really lightweight, but OTM can indeed be used for conveniently applying such changes.
    DTL OTMaster Consistency Checker
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    edited December 2019
    Thomas Phinney said:
    Unless it is a feature in the Windows version but not Mac ... I think you can’t.


    Didn't test it, but it's there. Oh sorry, you were asking about FL 5.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    Yes, FontLab VI and 7 do this nicely. But they were on 5.

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