Ill-behaved Cambria font
Dick Margulis
sorts in "Cambria & Cambria Math (TrueType)" to use it in a book I'm
doing that has a lot of random math and science stuff tossed in (that
is, it's not really a math or science book; the author just likes
tossing equations from various disciplines into his writing). So now the
design is approved and I'm committed, but I'm running into some
difficulties (InDesign CS3 on Windows XP Professional).
The main thing that's causing me grief is the ligatures. In a proper
OpenType font, InDesign automatically finds and inserts ligatures (if
you tick that box), knows what they're composed of, and breaks words at
line endings, if necessary, in the middle of a ligature pair or triplet,
without breaking a sweat. With Cambria, though, it being a TrueType but
not OpenType font, InDesign highlights lowercase f in places where it
thinks maybe there should be a ligature, but it doesn't insert the
ligature. Further, if you select an ff pair, it will successfully
navigate to the ff ligature in the glyphs palette. If you select any
other letter combination that ought to be a ligature, the glyphs palette
will ignore the selection.
All this wouldn't be so bad, because find and replace takes care of
inserting the ligatures. But when they're inserted manually like this,
InDesign has no clue and refuses to break the word, resulting in
less-than-ideal H&J.
Apparently the italic and bold are OpenType (according to their icons in
the Fonts folder), but they behave the same way as the roman.
The version of these fonts I'm using is 1.02, copyright 2006 Microsoft.
The roman (with math) is 1065 KB. The bold is 325 KB. The bold italic
is 319 KB. The italic is version 1.01 and is 329 KB.
Anyone know if there are more recent versions and whether these behave
better?
Yeah, I know. I should have investigated further before committing. Too
late for that now. I'm looking for practical suggestions for dealing
with this font rather than comments on my boneheaded choice to use it.
Thanks,
Dick
Erwin Denissen
Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout
features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font
Collection (cambria.ttc). This is allowed according to the specs, but
maybe InDesign doesn't like it.
Erwin Denissen
Dick Margulis
>
> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout
> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font
> Collection (cambria.ttc). This is allowed according to the specs, but
> maybe InDesign doesn't like it.
>
> Erwin Denissen
Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may
do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that
or any other OpenType-aware page layout app likes what it sees there. In
other words, did the producers of Cambria test it in an application or
did they just rely on their own interpretation of the spec? I'm just
curious, as there's nothing I can do about it in the present case.
(I did test the new version, by the way, and it exhibited the same
behavior.)
Armadillo
>> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font
> Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may
> do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that
Works fine in my Vista with both CS4 and CS3.
It must be something in your configuration.
Jukka
PS Just wonder why Cambria? It is just hideous and with short ITC-like ascenders and descenders do not work too well in body text. CS3 includes far better choices.
Character
Although they do contain OT features, Cambria.ttx does NOT display
(Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of
the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and
Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.
Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that
identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of
the Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of
FontLab, and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.
-Character
Dick Margulis
>>> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout
>>> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font
>
>> Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may
>> do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that
>
> Works fine in my Vista with both CS4 and CS3.
>
> It must be something in your configuration.
>
> Jukka
>
Hmm. I don't think so. If I keep everything the same and just switch to
a different font, everything works normally.
Try this test.
1. Edit > Preferences > Composition. Ensure that "Substitute Glyphs" is
checked.
2. Define a paragraph style using Cambria Regular. Ensure that the
ligatures box is checked.
3. With that paragraph style selected, start a new paragraph. Override
the font choice (in the toolbar) to Adobe Jenson Pro (or any other Adobe
Pro font, but that's the one I just tested), and type the following
three words: different, difficult, artificial.
The ff, ffi, and fi will be highlighted in yellow. If you select one of
the highlights, the glyphs palette will jump to the selected ligature.
4. With the cursor in the paragraph, Alt+click the style name in the
Paragraph Styles palette to revert the paragraph to Cambria.
Now only the ff, the second f in difficult, and the f in artificial will
be highlighted in yellow. If you zoom in, you'll see that the ligatures
are not in use. If you select the ff, the glyphs palette will jump to
the ff ligature, even though that's not the glyph being used on the
page. If you select the ffi or fi, it will not jump anywhere. Further,
if you manually substitute the ligatures, the words will not hyphenate.
And if you spell check the text, the spell checker will stop on each
word where a ligature is substituted.
Again, this is ID CS3 on Windows XP Pro. If your system behaves
differently, I'd like to hear about it.
> PS Just wonder why Cambria? It is just hideous and with short ITC-like ascenders and descenders do not work too well in body text. CS3 includes far better choices.
Like I said, it was a dumb mistake. It will never happen again. However,
the author also has short, ITC-like ascenders, so it's a good match ;-)
Erwin Denissen
> (Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of
> the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and
> Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.
>
> Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that
> identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of the
> Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of FontLab,
> and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.
>
> -Character
FontCreator has no problems with opening the font files.
The ttc does include a DSIG table, but applies to the TrueType
Collection. So as soon as the individual fonts are extracted the DSIG
table is lost.
In my opinion the way Windows makes a distinction between plain TrueType
fonts and TrueType based OpenType fonts (e.g. based on the existence of
a DSIG table) is pretty much worthless, as that table is not required
for OpenType fonts.
Erwin Denissen
Character
>> Although they do contain OT features, Cambria.ttx does NOT display
>> (Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of
>> the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and
>> Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.
>>
>> Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that
>> identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of
>> the Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of
>> FontLab, and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.
>>
>> -Character
>
> FontCreator has no problems with opening the font files.
Yes, I know. I've opened them in FC, but since it's neither T1 nor OT
aware, it didn't help much in looking 'inside' the fonts from that aspect.
I tried converting to T1 and to T1-OT with TransType, but the
resulting font files couldn't be opened with anything.
> The ttc does include a DSIG table, but applies to the TrueType
> Collection. So as soon as the individual fonts are extracted the DSIG
> table is lost.
That explains a lot.
>
> In my opinion the way Windows makes a distinction between plain TrueType
> fonts and TrueType based OpenType fonts (e.g. based on the existence of
> a DSIG table) is pretty much worthless, as that table is not required
> for OpenType fonts.
Worse than worthless, because it also defines some fonts as being
opentype when they have no opentype tables at all (except maybe an OT
kerning table)
And what is the advantage (to MS or Monotype or Tiro or Ascender -
certainly not to the user) of combining Cambria Math and Cambria into
a TTC?
- Character
Erwin Denissen
> aware, it didn't help much in looking 'inside' the fonts from that
aspect.
Although FontCreator doesn't fully support all tables, you can still see
which supported and unsupported tables are included.
> And what is the advantage (to MS or Monotype or Tiro or Ascender -
> certainly not to the user) of combining Cambria Math and Cambria into a
> TTC?
I don't know, but in this case it saves you about 1 MB of file space.
Erwin Denissen
Armadillo
> Now only the ff, the second f in difficult, and the f in artificial will
> be highlighted in yellow.
The same here.
> If you zoom in, you'll see that the ligatures
> are not in use.
fi and ff ligatures are in use ffi not.
> If you select the ff, the glyphs palette will jump to
> the ff ligature, even though that's not the glyph being used on the
> page. If you select the ffi or fi, it will not jump anywhere. Further,
The same here.
> Again, this is ID CS3 on Windows XP Pro. If your system behaves
> differently, I'd like to hear about it.
In CS4, however, only fi is in use. The difference between fi pair and fi ligature is very small in the ligature ascender of f is just slightly shorter.
> Like I said, it was a dumb mistake. It will never happen again. However,
> the author also has short, ITC-like ascenders, so it's a good match ;-)
This is exactly how G.G. Lange once described Max Miedinger. I guess he don't like short ascenders and descenders of Helvetica.
Jukka