Make your font work in Adobe apps

Tutorial
Troubleshooting
by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

19 May 2022

Issues collected over the years

  • Vertical Metrics: lowercase d
  • Naming
    • static fonts: weight and width class, PS Names, typographic names, style linking
    • variable fonts: axis ordering, nameID 25, postscriptNameIDs, PS Names
  • Static font style linking:
    • follow the style linking explained in the Naming tutorial
  • OTVar style linking:
    • Regular at wght=400 must be variable font origin
    • Regular must be STAT.AxisValueArray.AxisValue format=1 (not 2)
    • Italic and Bold must have format=3
    • Axis order: no different STAT.DesignAxisRecord.Axis.AxisOrdering (must reflect actual axis order)
  • prefer CFF over TTF (esp. hinting)
  • space glyph must have non-zero width, otherwise GSUB features may fail