Building a Hebrew only Font readable for PC users

Gil Givoni

Hey,

First time here, didn't see a similar post about this topic:
I'm having difficulties creating a Hebrew font (No Latin characters at all) - While it seems to work just fine on Macs, PC users experience a warning notice: "Missing Glyph Protection had occurred. The new font could not be applied to all selected text. Please use Ctrl+Alt to override".
Then, when using Pro Graphic programmes - Our Hebrew font simply cannot be used with PC (crossed squares appear instead of the font).

It seems that Office needs at least some latin in the font to recognize it. It needs more than A-z, The letters from the Codepage 1252 can do the trick - However, is there is a way to build a hebrew only font?

I'm using Glyphs BTW.

Thanks alot!

Gil Givoni

Christian Thalmann

Why not just have these glyphs, and leave them empty?

Gil Givoni

@Christian Thalmann‌

That's what we've been doing - and there are no problems with Mac Users, but all of our PC users experience the same problem (X-ed squares instead of characters).
Goerg (Glyphs developer) was the one that brought me to attention that Office needs Latin in order to recognise the font - and perhaps there is a similar problem with other graphic apps and programs on PCs.

I was wondering if this problem occurs with other non-Latin languages and what were the walk-arounds used.


g

Christian Thalmann

Ah, true, I seem to recall that Word somehow re-calculates the height of a font by measuring out the ascender of the /d, for example. I can see how that would cause problems with an empty glyph.

Could you copy in a minimal set of glyphs from an open-source font?

Gil Givoni

Copying in - Yes - minimal, probably not;
It seems that Windows-1252 (or CP-1252) is the "minimum" required for it to work.
But it doesn't explain why Adobe programs (namely InDesign) don't recognise the font and display the X-ed squares.

Thoughts or ideas?

SiDaniels

See http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ProductionGuidelines.mspx

Cheers, Si

Georg Seifert

Si, thanks for this link. Section 6.1 seems to be the info we need but it is not entirely true. I just tried it and Office does not need any glyph from CP1252 or the list in 6.1. It only needs the codepage bit set. The rendering of the font menu names does not work in this case (you need at least the glyphs that are in the name), but the hebrew part of the font works fine.

I found a nice little bug? about makeOTF in the process. If you have a font that contains /ecircumflex, makeOTF will set the bit for CP1252.

SiDaniels

The list on that page includes stuff that Office needs for "show formatting" as well as lists and bulleted lists. Thanks, Si

Georg Seifert

I should be clarify the problem a bit. If you install a font without CP1252 in the system, it will show up in the font menu of Word. The family name is drawn with a standard font and there is some hebrew characters next to the name. If you select some hebrew text in the document and apply the font, it will not stick and still use the font that the text used before.

If you set the CP1252 bit in the OS/2 table, the font family name in the font menu is rendered with boxes and no hebrew shows up but you can apply the font and see the glyphs from the font. So the only "problem" with this setting is the preview in the font menu (Bullet list work fine, only the paragraph sign is required, otherwise you get a notdef).

I tested this in Office 2003 so this might be fixed already in newer versions.

SiDaniels

Another "problem" is that this font would not conform to the OT spec. If the CP1252 bit is set then all the CP1252 characters should be mapped according to the spec.

Georg Seifert

I know that the font is not valid like this. I was trying to understand how Office works.