Chosen font not being used by Paratext

Question

I have created and installed a new font (Unicode, complex script, Khmer) to be used with my project. I can choose the font for my project, but Paratext 9 (and 8) does not display the text in that font, but displays it in a totally different font. The font has OpenType and Graphite support and works fine in Word (OT), Notepad, LibreOffice (Graphite) and Firefox. Everything works as desired with all other fonts I have created in the past.

Does anyone know what could be wrong with the font or under what conditions Paratext refuses to use a certain font? I have no idea of what might be wrong.

GB,
anon015155

Answer 1

Hi anon015155,

One thing to check is the font-face css the Paratext produces for that font. Sometimes if a font has some non standard naming, Paratext doesn’t manage to generate the correct css.
To do this:

Open Project in Paratext.
In the Project pane, hold the SHIFT key and right click some where in the menu.
Then click “Open in System Browser”

A browser window should open, (If it a non graphite supporting browser, just copy the opened url and paste it into firefox.)

Does the browser window render the font as you expect?

If it doesn’t, one can use the browsers development tools (CTRL-SHIFT-I) to examine what font is being used, and check the generated @font-face.

If you would like someone to take a look at the issue, providing the following would be helpful:

1. The font
2. A sample word that can be pasted into a Paratext project.
3. A screen shot showing how the word should be rendered.

Comments

Dear hindlemail,

I don’t know how much time it is worth investing into this problem, though I would like to know why this happened. I have now been able to create a font that Paratext accepts by copying all font information from an older, working font to the new one in Fontlab (my font editor), and then editing the newly copied information as needed. I have not found any data that differ (or are unusual) between the two fonts that might have caused the problem. I have compared the OS/2 tables of the fonts (using ttx) and they only differ in one particular metric (x-height or something), so the problem must be with another table. Following the procedure you described I could see that in Firefox uses the font ‘Khmer OS’ instead of ‘Khmer Busra Bunong’, just like Paratext. This is apparently some kind of fallback default font. Once I swap the not working ‘Khmer Busra Bunong’ for the newer one everything works as desired (second picture, without yellow highlighting). Unfortunately this forum does not permit me to attach font files, so I have only attached images for now.

Thanks for your answers!

Blessings,
anon015155

Answer 2

My first thought was some OS/2 bits for codepage and Unicode ranges might not be set, but since Word uses the font, and I think it looks at those bits, I doubt that is the issue.

Answer 3

My next question is whether Paratext 9.0 normally makes use of separate italics and bold fonts or whether it always uses italics and bold generated from the regular font on the fly. In my case right now Paratext does not use the dedicated fonts. MS Word, LibreOffice and Notepad all use the dedicated fonts if they are present. If Paratext is supposed to do so as well, those fonts are currently not being accepted by Paratext. If Paratext never uses the dedicated fonts anyway, things seem to be all right now.

anon015155