search

jpt / barlow

Barlow: a straight-sided sans-serif superfamily
https://tribby.com/fonts/barlow
SIL Open Font License 1.1
730 stars 39 forks source link

German öäü not working in Google Doc / Sheets #104

Open MatelsoMan opened 3 days ago

MatelsoMan commented 3 days ago

Hi,

We love the font but are experiencing issues like the one mentioned here: https://github.com/jpt/barlow/issues/47

Unfortunately, we’re using Google Workspace and can't update or modify anything within their system. I just wanted to check if we need to switch to a different font or if there might be any other solutions.

Apologies if this is outside of your scope, as it seems like Google may have just picked up your open license font. I'm not really well-versed in this, just an IT guy trying to make things work again.

But it’s a great font nonetheless!

kenmcd commented 22 hours ago

This is probably from nested components (in TTF fonts). Some printer drivers cannot handle nested components. And you get accents placed in odd places - like the images in that other issue.

The ä is made of two components - a and the combining dieresis ̈ (dieresiscomb). And the combining dieresis is made of two components - two combining dot accents ̇ (dotaccentcom). So you have components inside other components. Or nested components.

One work-around is to use the OTF fonts, because OTF fonts do not use components. But since you are using Google Workspace, you are stuck with the Google Fonts (GF) fonts, which are all TTFs, and their current versions have this issue. The bad news is until the font developer here updates the fonts, and removes the nested components - and then GF updates their fonts - you are kinda stuck.

Or use a different printer... have seen this with HP and Konica printers. You could try updating the printer drivers. But I think this issue is actually from some old code in the hardware, not the driver.

Note: nested components are allowed according to OpenType standards, but in the real world old embedded printer code cannot handle it.

jpt commented 21 hours ago

yeah, it's both within and outside my scope. the good news is that Glyphs now has a custom parameter for removing nested components, which means this behavior either is (or will be) supported in fontmake, which Google now requires its fonts to be built with. so it will make its way in, it's just hard to say exactly when. I can add the custom parameter to the 1.5 branch to make sure it is in the next batch of changes that make their way to Google, at least