Differently named italic family name

Aaron Bell
Aaron Bell Posts: 93
edited November 2020 in Font Technology
In a current project, I'm wondering if it is possible to use a different family name for the italic / oblique of a typeface while preserving style linking.

For example:
'TEST Mono'
'TEST Oblique'

Why not name it 'TEST Mono Oblique'? Well, humor me. :smile:

From what I can tell from the Microsoft name table specification, I believe the answer is a definitive NO, but I wanted to verify with y'all to make sure I'm not missing something. 

Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,929
    AFAIK, Name ID 1 (family name) is how apps know the fonts are in the same style-linked family. Without that, you got nothin’. Maybe there is a little fancy footwork possible with the alternate family name fields like name ID 16 and whatever the WWS family name ID is. But they need something in common else there is no style linking possible.
  • Aaron Bell
    Aaron Bell Posts: 93
    Thanks Thomas! Yeah, that was my thought as well.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,277
    You should be able to use 'Mono' as an alternative for the 'Regular' name, so:

    Family name = TEST
    Full names = TEST Mono, TEST Oblique
    PS names = TEST-Mono, TEST-Oblique

    This would be akin to the Brill naming, in which I used Roman instead of Regular.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 636
    The real problem arises with families like Blado and Poliphilus or Jenson and Arrighi where different styles originally had entirely different names

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