Fonts and styles

How Dorico deals with text fonts is not completely clear to me.

  1. When I use a font installed on my system with only one style and one weight (let say “regular”) and if I use the Dorico “Style” feature, Dorico is able to create (fake) on its own three other styles: italic, bold and bold italic although these font styles are not installed.
    Dorico shows the different styles on the screen and can output the result into PDF.
    Why is it so?

  2. Staying with the case described above, can I be sure that when I choose “regular” in Dorico the installed font will be used?
    Or could it be that Dorico also creates (fakes) its own “regular” version of the font?

  3. With some fonts, if I have a regular and an italic version, depending on how the fonts are named, it can happen that Dorico does not recognize the italic version.
    With some fonts it works, with some others it does not work.
    This happens for example with “Swiss 721 Condensed BT” and “Swiss 721 Italic Condensed BT”
    If I choose this font and uses the italic version (with the style feature) Dorico shows an italic font on the screen but it outputs a regular version to PDF.

I am able to solve this renaming each style version of a font with a distinct Family Name and without trying to rely on a Sub Family name.
For example I give the regular style the Family Name “SwissRegular” and I give the italic style the Family Name “SwissItalic”.
Then in Dorico I select for example “SwissItalic” but I select the Dorico style regular.

Besides of this solution, is there another way to make sure that Dorico recognizes and uses the installed styles of a font and does not “re-create” a style?

  1. It seems that this is a Windows specific thing that most apps (except Adobe apps) can only recognize 4 styles: regular, bold, italic and bold italic.
    But how should the font styles be named correctly for Dorico to recognize them?

I covered a number of these issues in my reply to Dan Kreider’s question here.

Naming fonts such that they are correctly grouped on Windows is (to be blunt) a nightmare. I suggest you take a look at Adam Twardoch’s advice in this thread on Typophile.