Safe naming scheme to avoid typefaces not showing up in applications menus

Claudio Piccinini
Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
in Font Technology
I am posting this here even if it might be a FontLab VI related question because I am not sure whether it’s a naming problem or a glitch.
I am currently planning a naming scheme for a family I am designing and I started with two weights, one aimed at textsetting in small sizes (8-10pt) and another aimed at mid-range titling (about 36pt).
When I created the files I used the scheme I post below. For the titling version I used "TL" and for the text one "TX". But when I test the fonts in Pages only one shows up.
Eventually I will be adding condensed and compressed versions, for which I wished to follow a scheme like:
- Typeface Compressed TL Regular
- Typeface Compressed TL Bold
etc.

Do you have any idea on why they do not show up? Sorry for the newbie question but often I am still fairly unfamiliar with even the basic technical issues. 
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Comments

  • Rafael Saraiva
    Rafael Saraiva Posts: 33
    Typeface Compressed TL Regular is fine. However, if you plan to add the Extrabold, it should be a 'problem' since names should ideally not be longer than 31 characters. Try also to think about the Italics addition later on... With that in mind, you might want to abbreviate 'Compressed' and 'Condensed', e.g. Cond 
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Thanks, but this does not solve my current problem, i.e. having Pages (or other applications?) not showing the two ("Typeface TX" and "Typeface TL"). :-(
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 647
    I would like to point out that you will have to educate your customers what "TX" and "TL" mean because they do not have standard meanings in the type world.
  • Rafael Saraiva
    Rafael Saraiva Posts: 33
    edited October 2019
    sorry Claudio. Well, I'm not using FL6 so, can't be of much help... Being Pages an app for the Macintosh, my guess is that you'd need to cover the ID's related to tha name table / mac names (ID=18?).  
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    George Thomas said:
    I would like to point out that you will have to educate your customers what "TX" and "TL" mean because they do not have standard meanings in the type world.
    Yes, of course. This naming logic is my choice, and will be explained in the PDF and documentation.

    @Rafael: Thanks, but I have the impression it’s not a Fontlab problem, rather of how I named them, or the name table (of which I am completely ignorant). Waiting for some help… :-(
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Update: It seems this might just be a bug or something related to Pages: by selecting the fonts from the system menu (Command-T) they show, and until they have been used once, they also appear in Pages wysiwyg menu.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 380
    Might be an issue with font caches, also.

    Why not stick with more or less established terms like "Text", "Subhead", "Heading", "Titling" and "Display" instead of the arbitrary abbreviations?
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Johannes Neumeier said:
    Might be an issue with font caches, also.

    Why not stick with more or less established terms like "Text", "Subhead", "Heading", "Titling" and "Display" instead of the arbitrary abbreviations?
    Hi Johannes, thanks for the comment. :)
    The abbreviations are not arbitrary, at least in my intention. I have toyed for years with the idea of abbreviations because they are shorter. Clearly they are not explanatory as full names would be.
    Nonetheless, "Heading", "Headline", "Titling" and "Display" seem also to be used in a somewhat arbitrary way, so I am checking the meaning of the words across languages to see what satisfies me.
    The recent discussion about terminology for the basic weights ("Regular" vs. "Normal" or "Book") is indeed very interesting.
  • Rafael Saraiva
    Rafael Saraiva Posts: 33
    @Claudio Piccinini have you updated to macOS Catalina?
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Rafael Saraiva said:
    @Claudio Piccinini have you updated to macOS Catalina?
    No (has this to do with my question?). My machine is a still pretty kicking 2009 tower model, so I am stuck with El Capitan. :)
    But I do have a MacBook which probably supports it, I wish to keep the OSs as much consistent as possible through devices, though.

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