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Fre­quently Asked Questions

You have ques­tions; we have answers. Check ‘em out here:

Q: Why won’t my old Adobe oblique font con­vert? The reg­u­lar ver­sion con­verted fine.

A: In some of the old Adobe fonts the oblique ver­sions were pro­grammed rather than drawn. I.e. when­ever the oblique style was called for the com­puter would take the reg­u­lar ver­sion and cre­ate a slanted vari­a­tion of it on the fly. So even though it looks like there is an oblique style, there are, in fact, no glyphs to con­vert. Hence no con­ver­sion is pos­si­ble.
Workaround: Pop the old font into Type­Tool and quickly make your own oblique ver­sion. Here’s the video.

Q: What fonts can be converted?

A: Opens/​Imports: Win Type 1 (.pfb), ASCII/​Unix Type 1 (.pfa), True­Type /​Open­Type TT (.ttf), Open­Type PS (.otf), EPS, BMP, TIFF, Font­Lab 2.5 (.vfa), Font­Lab 3.x, Font­Lab 4.x, Font­Lab Stu­dio 5 (.vfb). Mac ver­sion also opens Mac Type 1 (FFIL/LWFN/.suit) and Mac True­Type (FFIL/.dfont).

Generates/Exports:Win Type 1 (.pfb), ASCII/​Unix Type 1 (.pfa), True­Type /​Open­Type TT (.ttf), Open­Type PS (.otf), EPS, BMP, TIFF, Font­Lab 3.x, Font­Lab 4.x, Font­Lab Stu­dio 5 (.vfb). Mac ver­sion also gen­er­ates Mac Type 1 (FFIL/LWFN/.suit) and Mac True­Type (FFIL/.dfont). Note: Edit­ing of advanced typo­graphic Open­Type Lay­out fea­tures is not possible.

Q: Why doesn’t TransType “see” the Mac font I’m try­ing to convert?

A: Resource forks on the native Mac file sys­tem are not vis­i­ble. I.e. they are embed­ded in the nor­mal file.When you copy this Mac file onto PC-​formatted media it arrives in a sub-​folder that Win­dows can’t see. So even though it’s there, you can’t see it. Solu­tion: Com­press the Mac font into a MacBi­nary (.bin) file before bring­ing it over to the Win­dows PC. The Mac OS has a util­ity for doing this.

Q: Why don’t my Uni­code char­ac­ters work after conversion?

A: The naming/​encoding of Uni­code char­ac­ters is a tricky thing. It’s not sim­ple enough that we can teach Uni­code in just a cou­ple para­graphs. If you have a work­ing font and you con­vert it with­out touch­ing the Uni­code char­ac­ters then every­thing should work fine. If you must change the Uni­code then study up and make sure you know what you’re doing. And if you run into prob­lems please send us a sup­port ticket.

Q: How do you make a font family?

A: This requires a video (com­ing soon)