Beyond the 4-style mode

Ray Larabie
Ray Larabie Posts: 1,481
in Font Technology
I’m in the middle of modernizing a few families and would love to hear how others are handling this.

For years I’ve stuck to the classic 4-style model (Regular / Italic / Bold / Bold Italic) at the legacy family level, but I’m now moving toward larger families (adding weights like SemiBold, etc.) using typographic family naming (nameID 16/17). From what I can tell, this is the modern approach and works well in Adobe apps and current environments…but it does technically violate the old “max 4 fonts per family name (nameID 1)” rule, which some checks (e.g. FontBakery) still flag. So, I’m curious:

Are you comfortable exceeding the 4-style limit in production families?

Do you rely fully on nameID 16/17 now, or still structure around legacy constraints?

What are you using to validate family naming and style linking these days? (TransType and FontBakery reports it as an error.)

Have you run into any issues with Monotype, Adobe, or other distributors when doing this?

I still have customers using older applications, so I’m trying to balance modern structure with graceful fallback. Would really appreciate hearing how others are handling this in practice.
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,628
    Name IDs 1 and 2 still need to be limited to the max four-style groupings, which is why IDs 16 and 17 exist.

    So what you would have for a family that includes a Semibold weight, for example, is two style grouping families and one typographic family:

    Foobar Regular
    ID1 = Foobar
    ID2 = Regular
    ID4 = Foobar [Regular]
    ID6 = Foobar-Regular
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Regular

    Foobar Italic
    ID1 = Foobar
    ID2 = Italic
    ID4 = Foobar Italic
    ID6 = Foobar-Italic
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Italic

    Foobar Semibold
    ID1 = Foobar Semibold
    ID2 = Regular
    ID4 = Foobar Semibold [Regular]
    ID6 = FoobarSemibold-Regular
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Semibold

    Foobar Semibold Italic
    ID1 = Foobar Semibold
    ID2 = Italic
    ID4 = Foobar Semibold Italic
    ID6 = FoobarSemibold-Italic
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Semibold Italic

    Foobar Bold
    ID1 = Foobar
    ID2 = Bold
    ID4 = Foobar Bold
    ID6 = Foobar-Bold
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Bold

    Foobar Bold Italic
    ID1 = Foobar
    ID2 = Bold Italic
    ID4 = Foobar BoldItalic
    ID6 = Foobar-BoldItalic
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Bold Italic

    If your families get more complex, with additional weights and styles, the important thing to remember is that name IDs 1 and 2, and derived IDs 4 and 6, should be reflect legacy 4-style groupings, and IDs 16 and 17 should reflect how you want families grouped in menus and accessible in modern apps and markup.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,481
    edited 4:49AM
    Thanks, @John Hudson. That's what I figured. I'm just trying all kinds of stuff to get past Monotype's "style linking" warnings. There's seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. It passes TransType, a FontBakery family test, and works fine in apps.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,337
    It’s tempting to designate Medium as the Bold of Light, but not a good idea!
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,628
    FYI, I have seen some fonts in which ID6 is not derived from ID1+ID2, and so far as I am aware these work fine, e.g.

    Foobar Semibold
    ID1 = Foobar Semibold
    ID2 = Regular
    ID4 = Foobar Semibold
    ID6 = Foobar-Semibold
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Semibold

    Foobar Semibold Italic
    ID1 = Foobar Semibold
    ID2 = Italic
    ID4 = Foobar Semibold Italic
    ID6 = Foobar-SemiboldItalic
    ID16 = Foobar
    ID17 = Semibold Italic

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