<title>Scribus Font Tools (2)

## Scribus Font Tools (2)

### The Font Preview

Another useful tool in Scribus is the Font Preview, which is actually more capable than its title suggests. It is only available when a document is open, via Extras > Font Preview:

As you can see, the dialog shows a list of all available fonts. Selecting a font will result in a preview in the lower part of the dialog. You can always change the font size and the sample text of the preview and later switch the settings back to the default values.

With many fonts installed, the “Quick Search” feature comes in handy, as it allows you to search for fonts, e.g. for those from a certain foundry (Adobe, Bitstream etc.) or for font styles (e.g. Italic). The only caveat is that Scribus only searches in the list of font names, so if a font’s style is “Condensed”, but the word “Condensed” isn’t part of the font’s name, searching for “Condensed” won’t list it.

Another useful feature of the Font Preview is the option “Show Extended Font Information”, which not only shows the same information as the “Available Fonts” tab in the Document Setup, but also provides a quick access to its features.

### Fonts in Depth

Fonts are often where the trouble starts and ends in Desktop Publishing. They are one of the major reasons for serious problems in pre-press. A rough guess is that 50% of the font-related Scribus bug reports are problems with the fonts themselves. Moreover, a typical question asked by Scribus users is: “Scribus won’t use font X, but application Y and Z use it just fine. Why is this?”

Fundamentally, Scribus is extremely picky when it comes to fonts. Every time Scribus is being launched it does a “self-defense” test to see if the available fonts have usable encodings, are scalable and have a correctly embedded PostScript name. Then, loading a document, Scribus applies a more extensive check of the requested fonts to ensure that all the glyphs within a font can be accessed. If the glyphs cannot be read correctly, then usage of that particular font is disabled by Scribus. This is a feature, not a bug! There may be few applications, if any, that are less tolerant of fonts with defects than Scribus. Preventing the use of possibly defective fonts is, without question, essential for reliable output. While this may cause some annoyances or confusion for end users, rest assured that it avoids many potential problems down the road – like a PDF which crashes the imagesetting machine or refuses to output the file when you are printing 200,000 magazine covers. That, in the real world can cost hundreds, thousands or millions, depending on your local currency.

If you wonder why an installed font doesn’t show up in a Scribus font dialog, you can start Scribus from the command line, where you may see something like this:

>     Font /usr/local/share/fonts/URW/p052023l.pfb is broken, discarding it

It’s also important to note that Scribus does not create so-called “faux” Bold or Italic fonts. These are the bane of pre-press folks and have been known to cause issues when printing commercially, as they can result in degraded text quality. Thus, Scribus will not create an Italic version of a font if you really do not have an Italic font file for a given font family. Some page layout applications and word processors have chosen to offer this as a “feature”. The Scribus development team has made a conscious decision not to enable this.

#### Supported Font Formats

There’s no shortage of font file formats in modern computing, from bitmap fonts (which are still being used by the command line prompts of all current operating systems, or – at least partially – by the TeX typesetting system and its derivatives) to so-called web fonts – fonts that need not be available on your computer, but are being linked to just like images on websites. In professional printing, however, only three kinds of fonts have played a role. These are: PostScript, TrueType and OpenType fonts.

- PostScript fonts were an important part of the Desktop Publishing revolution. They use the PostScript programming language and have been a standard in professional printing for years. While most modern printing houses have moved their typesetting workflows to OpenType in recent years, Postcript fonts can still be reliably used. There are, however, a few downsides to this old font format: First, PostScript font files cannot be exchanged between operating systems, as every OS requires different PostScript font files (and a PostScript font always consists of two files). Second, PostScript fonts are limited to 256 glyphs per file, which is not enough by modern standards. To use additional glyphs, you need another font that provides these glyphs. Scribus can use almost all PostScript fonts, the exception being CID (Asian) font files. Moreover Scribus can use PostScript fonts in a platform-agnostic way. For example you can use a Mac PostScript font (dfont) on Linux or OS/2 in Scribus, even though the operating system itself (or rather its internal font subsystem) does not support the format.
- TrueType fonts were introduced by Microsoft and Apple in the nineties after Adobe refused to publish the PostScript Type 1 font specification. Thanks to the freely available TrueType specification the web has been flooded with low-quality fonts (see below), which resulted in a healthy dose of mistrust towards TrueType fonts in the printing community. However, it should be emphasized that this skepticism only had to do with the source of many TrueType fonts. Technically, a carefully crafted and tested TrueType font will work without issues in a professional print workflow, so if you use one of the fonts that are being shipped with products from Microsoft or Apple or if you buy a TrueType font from a foundry like Bitstream or Linotype, you shouldn’t expect any problems. TrueType fonts provide several advantages over PostScript fonts: First, a TrueType font consists of a single file, which will work “as is” on every modern operating system. Second, a TrueType font can contain more than 60,000 glyphs.
- OpenType was the result of a cooperation between Adobe and Microsoft who both wanted to end to the “font format war” between the two vendors. Basically, an OpenType font combines the properties of TrueType and PostScript fonts and provides some additional features. Technically an OpenType font uses a TrueType “container”, which has the advantage of having a font available as a single file. Inside the container both PostScript and TrueType curves can be used to draw the glyphs. It’s even possible to mix both. Like TrueType, OpenType files can contain a large number of glyphs. OpenType fonts also offer some features that are interesting for professional typesetters, such as automated ligatures or alternate glyphs. While Scribus can use OpenType fonts without issues, it can’t use these professional OpenType features yet. Today most fonts that are being sold are OpenType fonts, even if they use a TrueType file extension (*.ttf). As rule of thumb, modern fonts with a TrueType extension (e.g. those shipped with the Windows operating system) use TrueType technology internally, whereas fonts with an OpenType extension (*.otf) use PostScript.

### Trustworthy Fonts

High quality fonts are essential for reliable output, no matter which platform. It’s not an indication of snobbery if pre-press professionals are highly skeptical of freely downloaded shareware or freeware fonts. Experience has shown that many freeware fonts do not follow normal font specifications. Issues like improper encoding, a missing or incorrectly formatted PostScript name, broken curves in individual glyphs and other defects are not uncommon to many of those. Making good and reliable fonts for a professional printing environment is not easy and requires extensive QA testing. An example: Verdana from the MS web font collection took almost a year to create.

You can find a list of trustworthy fonts and font resources on the Scribus Wiki. This list continues be updated more or less regularly.