Cross-posted to:

https://forum.glyphsapp.com/t/overly-strict-font-name-max-length-recommendation-in-naming-tutorial/10164

27 seems good due to the msie9 bug you discovered, and Jeff's comment on win7 installation.

Minimizing the delta between ttf and cff is good to enable end user conversion between them

@davelab6 Sorry, where/what was Jeff's comment on win7? Based on answers in the GlyphsApp forum, installation on Windows does seem to be the hardest limitation.

27 could work, though it might still be more strict than we need. Do you expect there to be cases where the nameID 4 is used for in a @font-face font-family CSS declaration?

Looking at an example of CSS from Gfonts, the family name of nameID 1 (e.g. "Encode Sans Semi Condensed") is used in font-family, and the style (e.g. "ExtraBold") is simply gotten with font-weight: 800. So, that particular font should work well even in IE9, though it would most likely fail to be installed on older versions of Windows.

Related: we might want to start adding "Name Table Entries" as custom params to GlyphsApp sources, as described at https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/naming. (Maybe others are already doing this).

If anyone comes across this issue, I've made a simple Python script that can be triggered from the command line to abbreviate name IDs 4 & 6 to avoid issues with installation.

As an example, it will take the file EncodeSansSemiCondensed-ExtraLight.ttf, which has a full name of Encode Sans SemiCondensed ExtraLight, and:

• abbreviate nameID 4 to Encode Sans SemiCond ExLght (27 chars)
• abbreviate nameID 6 to EncodeSansSemiCond-ExLght (25 chars)

Here's the helper script:
https://github.com/thundernixon/Encode-Sans/blob/c5eb4d08985e860abf8f7bceb6ce198604992714/scripts/helpers/shorten-nameID-4-6.py (This version is as of Nov 26, 2018 – you may also want to check if it's been updated with any fixes).

It can be run with a command like:

python SCRIPT/PATH/shorten-nameID-4-6.py FONT/PATH/font.otf

...where you update the script path, as well as the path you're passing in with a TTF/OTF file or a folder of TTF/OTF files. Of course, this is probably most useful when added to a build shell script, in a step following FontMake font generation.

This currently works from a dictionary of style names I chose to shorten in Encode Sans, but if you have other style names, you should add them in the script:

abbreviations = {
    "Condensed": "Cond",
    "Expanded": "Expd",
    "Extra": "Ex",
    "Light": "Lght",
    "Regular": "Reg",
    "Medium": "Med"
}

If you try it and face any issues or make any improvements, let me know!

@davelab6 Kind of ... their method is the reverse of what I would expect.

Per the simple naming tutorial, you do two things:

1. Abbreviate the Family Name and the Style Names
2. Add custom params preferredFamilyName & preferredSubfamilyName, which will be used where possible

Looking at the more in-depth naming tutorial, I see that it is also possible to add a specific custom parameter postscriptFontName to meet the 29-character limit.

For nameID 4, you must use the custom parameter Name Table Entry twice:

• 4 3; Encode Sans Cond ExLght (Windows English Full Name)
• 4 1; Encode Sans Cond ExLght(Mac English Full Name)

@felipe this is probably a pretty quick change. I say we change the limit from 20 to 27 characters, as per discussion above.

27 is still on the very strict side, but if we want to raise it later, we can circle back.

thanks, @thundernixon
I'll make that change later today.

oh! I said I would do it but ended up not doing it. I am sorry! Will try to do it now :-)

A few things here:

a) The above GitHub junk is a really good example of why we should not reference issue URLs in a report. :-)
b) @vv-monsalve has recently been doing a lot of testing of the limits of font names. She can summarise her answers, but I think the current value of 27 causes problems.
c) At any rate, we believe that elided subfamily names ("Regular") should not count in the total, but other subfamily names should. (Edit: This is #4104)

After performing extensive installation and use tests for fonts with different name ID 4 length these would be the main findings:

• The definitive limit for name ID 4 in static fonts would be 32 characters. Beyond that, there are shaping issues for some accented letters in MS Word on Win10 and Win11.
  

• Now, when it comes to variable fonts, the limit is still the same, but it's not directly linked to a single name field. This makes things more complicated. In such cases, the limit is applied to a combination of the nameID1 and the instance name found in the stat table. This is equivalent to the nameID4 found in static fonts.

  That is, for a variable font with the following name IDs:

  • name ID 4: My Font Extra Condensed Regular = 31 characters
  • name ID 1: My Font Extra Condensed = 23 characters
  • STAT instance name: ExtraLight = 10 characters

  The name ID 4 is only 31 characters long, which would be fine. However, when name ID 1 is combined with the instance name in the stat table, the resulting length is 34 characters. Which is causing issues with the shaping. The image above shows an ExtraLight instance, but the same problem occurred with e.g. a Thin instance when the name ID 1 was too long.

So, for a consistent approach, the check should use name ID4 on static fonts and the concatenation of nameID1 + instance names on the stat table for VFs.

Small update/edit. After another test abbreviating the instance name, I can confirm:

• The limit is applied to a combination of the nameID1 and the instance name found in the fvar table.

Combining the information here and in #4104, I think we should make the test do the following:

• nameID4 (without RIBBI) > 31: WARN: problems with dropdown menu in old versions of Word
• nameID 6 > 27: WARN : problems with mac and postscript printers
• name ID 1 + fvar instance name > 31 : WARN : problems with Windows

• nameID4 (without RIBBI) > 31: WARN: problems with dropdown menu in old versions of Word

• name ID 1 + fvar instance name > 31 : WARN : problems with Windows

Please note that the actual limit would be ≤ 32. And I think it should have a FAIL result if it goes up that value.