For layered fonts, what is the most common and preferrable naming scheme?
- Foobar-Regular, Foobar-Bold, Foobar-RegularShadow, Foobar-BoldShadow
- Foobar-Regular, Foobar-Bold, FoobarShadow-Regular, FoobarShadow-Bold
The latter requires manual manipulation of the font files after export or several exporting runs with changing names in between (at least in FontLab).
I was going to ask FontLab to make a change to support the second scheme, but I wanted to gain some support here first.
Comments
And just to clarify, I am assuming the font is set up as follows (taking only Fubar-RegularShadow)
Family Name: Fubar Shadow
Style Name: Regular
PS Font Name: FubarShadow-Regular
Preferred Family Name: Fubar
Preferred Style Name: Regular Shadow
Style Name: Regular
PS Font Name: Fubar-RegularShadow
Preferred Family Name: Fubar
Preferred Style Name: Regular Shadow
André
[EDIT: just to clarify, there shouldn't be anything wrong with your postscript name. I'm just wondering if that might be what is causing issues for the GIMP.]
Which is none of the above.
It would be nice if FL made it easier to manually override the names, just in general.
Then again, I would also be sympathetic to the argument that this particular problem looks to be a GIMP bug, and should be fixed on that side of the fence.
What about them? I would name them all just as you said, though. Basically, one leaves "Regular" out of the name, unless that is the only style.
I have not heard about this particular issue, in any app that can handle a wide range of font names and is neither limited to WWS, nor to traditional four-member families. That said, of course there are more apps like this. Any given bug you can imagine, exists, and exists in more than one app. The question is, which app bugs—if any—do you bother to work around in your fonts? For me, the answer depends on both how painful the workaround is (in terms of breaking standards and/or work to accomplish), and how important the app is (in general or for the particular font).
Some apps expose the PostScript Font Name to users. This is more common among higher-end graphics and publishing apps, and among open source apps.