Fonts without formatting issue

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Shalbatana

Hi,
I have some fonts that don't let me bold, italicize, etc. They are .PS if I remember correctly. I have been able to make them do this in other programs.

Any way I can get this to work in scribus?

Great program by the way. I'm having a grand time with it.

(Win XP sp3, Scribus V 1.3.3.14 in case you're wondering)

John_Jason_Jordan

Quote from: Shalbatana on August 07, 2011, 11:05:29 PMI have some fonts that don't let me bold, italicize, etc. They are .PS if I remember correctly. I have been able to make them do this in other programs. Any way I can get this to work in scribus?

Let me guess. The other programs where you can bold and/or italicize the font are MS Office or OpenOffice.org. Those programs will fake a bold or italic version of a font if the actual bold or italic font is missing. A good way to test this is to italicize the letter a. A true italic a will look completely different from the regular a. If the program is faking an italic a it will look like a slanted regular a.

Scribus will never fake a font. If the only font file you have is the regular version of the font, then that is all that Scribus will let you use. There are good reasons for this. If Scribus had faked a font you would assume that the font file was present. But if you use Collect for Output and send the package to a print shop, they will not be able to print the bold or italic text properly.

Check your font files. I'll bet you have only one file for this font, not four.

And also (changing the subject) I would recommend you use Scribus 1.4.0 Release Candidate 5. Scribus 1.4.0 is about to be released and RC5 is extremely stable and usable. Most long-time Scribus users are using RC5 for production work now. Just bear in mind that 1.3.3.14 cannot open a 1.4.0 file, so make a copy or do a Save As before opening existing work in 1.4.0. That way you'll have the original 1.3.3.14 file intact.
Linguistics on Linux!

Shalbatana

LIFO: I will upgrade ASAP. It was my first time experience with Scribus and wanted to learn with as little hassle as possible.

First things last:
That's what I figured. Actually I was able to do it in Photoshop and even Quark as well,  but I still think it's a font type missing issue.

That said, I was actually asking for a workaround. The things I do are "fan-made" supplements for an out of production game based on a TV show. They will never enter production. They are for PDF release only, and will only be printed if the end user desires it, on his home printer. So (hopefully I don't offend anyone by saying this) font print-perfection is not an issue for me.

I could use different fonts, but the ones I wanted to use are relevant to the topic [show]. I need the the alternate font types so because I want my books to match the styles used in the original game books as closely as possible.

So if there's a workaround you could tell me I would most appreciated.

If there isn't, then I'd suggest possibly adding it as a future option that font faking could be turned on at the user's discretion, perhaps with big warnings. But print is not my trade, and I understand this might be a big no no for some.

John_Jason_Jordan

Quote from: Shalbatana on August 10, 2011, 05:35:57 PMSo if there's a workaround you could tell me I would most appreciated.

The only workaround I can think of would be to set the italics / bold text in a program that will fake the missing fonts, then print to file. This will create a .ps (Postscript) file where the text will be turned into vector graphic images. You can place the image in Scribus, then copy and paste into the text as an inline graphic.

Another workaround would be to create the missing fonts. You can do this with Fontforge, a free font editing tool. This would not be as much work as it sounds, as you can open the existing font in Fontforge and then apply slanting and/or bolding globally to all the glyphs.

Before doing that I would install Fontmatrix (although if I recall correctly the Windows version is still in beta). Fontmatrix is a free program that will tell you what fonts are really installed, and also display information about the font such as licenses and permissions.
Linguistics on Linux!

a.l.e

afaict, no chance to get fake bold and italic in scribus.

it's something that (good) printshop really really don't like!

what you could do, is to open the font with fontforge and find a way to create a bold and an italic version of it.

no idea if there is a script you can use...

good luck
a.l.e

Shalbatana

I can handle that. Actually good news I think.

Thanks kindly!

Shalbatana

#6
Okay just as a follow up.... this was a nightmare. I'm not blaming anyone in any way, but man, this was a fight.

The project no longer offers builds, which means you have to compile for yourself. As someone who knows only the basics of Linux I was stumped at every turn. As someone who figured out a lot about Linux along the way, I was still highly perplexed and annoyed at how inacurate (or perhaps outdated) all the "how to's" were, and how vague a lot of the information is. CGYWIN is a great.....and disasterous incarnation.

Anyway, enough ranting. I just wanted to point out to anyone reading this three things:

1) This is currently the only way to do this for free. Otherwise you can either pay for a font editing tool, or edit each character one at a time. I could not find one free (windows) font editor that let you modify groups of glyphs at once.


2) If you want to do the same thing I needed...forget trying to compile your own. It's easier to find an old computer and install Linux. Then run Fontforge natively from there. Bring the fonts back to the PC when you're done.

3) After I finally got the program running (by combining the information from 4 how-to's) I opened a font and italicized with ease. I then saved it under a new name. However when I tried to install, I got a corrupt font error. ...so the moral is learn more about fonts and font formats before attempting this.

I'm off now....to read up on fonts and font formats. ;)


PS. JJJ - you were so right, the new version is miles ahead of 1.3. It solved most of my other issues save one. But that is another post.

Nermander

There really is no need for a separate computer to run linux nowadays, even Microsoft are offering virtualization software for free. So using a virtual machine is a better solution.