User Guide

but won’t print large sizes at all to my Linotronic (or
any other imagesetter). Why won’t it print and what can
I do about it?
There is a limitation in Adobe PostScript Level 1 that limits
the number of “turn points” in a PostScript character.
Turn points are required when PostScript images any
curved line because the PostScript imaging system really
can’t do curved lines at all, it just fakes them with lots of
very short straight lines all lined up at angles to one
another. Each time there’s a new little straight line, you
have a turn point. PostScript level 1 font characters can’t
have more than 1500 of these per character, and when you
image a character on a 300 dpi printer like a LaserWriter,
not as many turn points are generated because fewer are
needed to define a curve at this low resolution. Thus the
LaserWriter will print the character because its low
resolution avoids exceeding the 1500 turn point limit, while
the imagesetter with its higher resolution exceeds the limit.
Similarly, the number of turns required to image the curve
at 12 points is far fewer than the number required at 120
points. The solution to this problem is either to make a
Type 3 font with internal composites (as described in
Chapter 1) or to make a Type 1 font with the character
broken out into parts in various characters so that the first
few parts have zero width and the last part has the actual
width of the entire logo. To get the whole logo, simply type
the character strings, each of which will pile on top of the
last one, until the final character in the series finally moves
the cursor to the right to give the character its true width.
My .ttf font shows open rectangles in the character slots
instead of the characters. What went wrong and how
can I fix it?
If this is happening with signatures or symbols (logos,
icons, and picts) your character is probably too complex for
the TrueType rasterizer. You can get around this by either
simplifying the object, or splitting it into multiple keystrokes
(e.g., AB instead of A) to access the image. For a
signature, place “John” in the J slot and “Smith” in S. If the
last name is too long, such
as “Supercalafragilisticexpialadocious,” you’ll need to split
that too. This could take a bit of experimenting until you get
it working. If ALL of the characters appear as rectangles
Fontographer User's Manual
B: Answers to commonly asked questions Page #5