Is there any harm done if I use a hyphen in a font name?

Chris Lozos
Chris Lozos Posts: 1,460
in Type Design Technique & Theory
Will it break anything if I do?

Comments

  • Bhikkhu Pesala
    Bhikkhu Pesala Posts: 210
    I have loads of fonts with hyphens in their names, so I guess the answer is "No." 
  • Grzegorz Luk (gluk)
    Grzegorz Luk (gluk) Posts: 163
    edited February 2017
    I  named my one font "DigitaltS-Lime" and found that some programs (for example Scribus) treat part after hyphen as a style name ("Lime").

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,489
    A hyphen has a specific meaning within a font's PostScript name ID, so having a hyphen elsewhere in the name can be a problem: you'd have to omit it from the PS name, and could end up with that name being displayed in some situations, as 'gluk' noted. 
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,460
    Gluk, how did it work withe InD or Illustrator?
  • Grzegorz Luk (gluk)
    Grzegorz Luk (gluk) Posts: 163
    Chris Lozos said:
    Gluk, how did it work withe InD or Illustrator?
    I not tested - DigitaltS-Lime is OpenTypeSVG font, InDesign and Illustrator don't support SVGinOT technology.
    But with failback one color glyphs should work in both programs.
    Font with free OFLicense is available here: DigitaltS-fruits

  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 313
    gluk said:
    I  named my one font "DigitaltS-Lime" and found that some programs (for example Scribus) treat part after hyphen as a style name ("Lime").
    It looks like a problem in your font, as your font has font family DigitaltS-Lime and font subfamily Lime.

  • Grzegorz Luk (gluk)
    Grzegorz Luk (gluk) Posts: 163
    Erwin Denissen said:
    It looks like a problem in your font, [...]

    Thank You @Erwin Denissen, I know exactly where is (small) problem in my font. Simply in auto-generated names Fontforge used as subfamily part after hyphen and not as usual weight name "Medium" (when FontName and FamilyName are equal).
    As far as I know only some programs use SubFamily name.
    I show it as example for some harm, is someone use hyphen in font name :)
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,460
    Thanks, everyone!

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