I was swayed by the huge selection of math pi and various other oddball
sorts in "Cambria & Cambria Math (TrueType)" to use it in a book I'm
doing that has a lot of random math and science stuff tossed in (that
is, it's not really a math or science book; the author just likes
tossing equations from various disciplines into his writing). So now the 
design is approved and I'm committed, but I'm running into some 
difficulties (InDesign CS3 on Windows XP Professional).

The main thing that's causing me grief is the ligatures. In a proper
OpenType font, InDesign automatically finds and inserts ligatures (if
you tick that box), knows what they're composed of, and breaks words at
line endings, if necessary, in the middle of a ligature pair or triplet,
without breaking a sweat. With Cambria, though, it being a TrueType but
not OpenType font, InDesign highlights lowercase f in places where it
thinks maybe there should be a ligature, but it doesn't insert the
ligature. Further, if you select an ff pair, it will successfully
navigate to the ff ligature in the glyphs palette. If you select any
other letter combination that ought to be a ligature, the glyphs palette
will ignore the selection.

All this wouldn't be so bad, because find and replace takes care of
inserting the ligatures. But when they're inserted manually like this,
InDesign has no clue and refuses to break the word, resulting in
less-than-ideal H&J.

Apparently the italic and bold are OpenType (according to their icons in 
the Fonts folder), but they behave the same way as the roman.

The version of these fonts I'm using is 1.02, copyright 2006 Microsoft.
The roman (with math) is 1065 KB. The  bold is 325 KB. The bold italic
is 319 KB. The italic is version 1.01 and is 329 KB.

Anyone know if there are more recent versions and whether these behave
better?

Yeah, I know. I should have investigated further before committing. Too
late for that now. I'm looking for practical suggestions for dealing 
with this font rather than comments on my boneheaded choice to use it.

Thanks,

Dick

Dick Margulis wrote:
> I was swayed by the huge selection of math pi and various other oddball
> sorts in "Cambria & Cambria Math (TrueType)" to use it in a book I'm
> doing that has a lot of random math and science stuff tossed in (that
> is, it's not really a math or science book; the author just likes
> tossing equations from various disciplines into his writing). So now the 
> design is approved and I'm committed, but I'm running into some 
> difficulties (InDesign CS3 on Windows XP Professional).
> 
> The main thing that's causing me grief is the ligatures. In a proper
> OpenType font, InDesign automatically finds and inserts ligatures (if
> you tick that box), knows what they're composed of, and breaks words at
> line endings, if necessary, in the middle of a ligature pair or triplet,
> without breaking a sweat. With Cambria, though, it being a TrueType but
> not OpenType font, InDesign highlights lowercase f in places where it
> thinks maybe there should be a ligature, but it doesn't insert the
> ligature. Further, if you select an ff pair, it will successfully
> navigate to the ff ligature in the glyphs palette. If you select any
> other letter combination that ought to be a ligature, the glyphs palette
> will ignore the selection.
> 
> All this wouldn't be so bad, because find and replace takes care of
> inserting the ligatures. But when they're inserted manually like this,
> InDesign has no clue and refuses to break the word, resulting in
> less-than-ideal H&J.
> 
> Apparently the italic and bold are OpenType (according to their icons in 
> the Fonts folder), but they behave the same way as the roman.
> 
> The version of these fonts I'm using is 1.02, copyright 2006 Microsoft.
> The roman (with math) is 1065 KB. The  bold is 325 KB. The bold italic
> is 319 KB. The italic is version 1.01 and is 329 KB.
> 
> Anyone know if there are more recent versions and whether these behave
> better?
> 
> Yeah, I know. I should have investigated further before committing. Too
> late for that now. I'm looking for practical suggestions for dealing 
> with this font rather than comments on my boneheaded choice to use it.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dick

Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout 
features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font 
Collection (cambria.ttc). This is allowed according to the specs, but 
maybe InDesign doesn't like it.

Erwin Denissen

Erwin Denissen wrote:

> 
> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout 
> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font 
> Collection (cambria.ttc). This is allowed according to the specs, but 
> maybe InDesign doesn't like it.
> 
> Erwin Denissen

Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may 
do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that 
or any other OpenType-aware page layout app likes what it sees there. In 
other words, did the producers of Cambria test it in an application or 
did they just rely on their own interpretation of the spec? I'm just 
curious, as there's nothing I can do about it in the present case.

(I did test the new version, by the way, and it exhibited the same 
behavior.)

>> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout
>> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font

> Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may
> do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that

Works fine in my Vista with both CS4 and CS3.

It must be something in your configuration.

Jukka

PS Just wonder why Cambria? It is just hideous and with short ITC-like ascenders and descenders do not work too well in body text. CS3 includes far better choices.

Erwin Denissen wrote:

> Dick Margulis wrote:
> 
>> I was swayed by the huge selection of math pi and various other oddball
>> sorts in "Cambria & Cambria Math (TrueType)" to use it in a book I'm
>> doing that has a lot of random math and science stuff tossed in (that
>> is, it's not really a math or science book; the author just likes
>> tossing equations from various disciplines into his writing). So now 
>> the design is approved and I'm committed, but I'm running into some 
>> difficulties (InDesign CS3 on Windows XP Professional).
>>
>> The main thing that's causing me grief is the ligatures. In a proper
>> OpenType font, InDesign automatically finds and inserts ligatures (if
>> you tick that box), knows what they're composed of, and breaks words at
>> line endings, if necessary, in the middle of a ligature pair or triplet,
>> without breaking a sweat. With Cambria, though, it being a TrueType but
>> not OpenType font, InDesign highlights lowercase f in places where it
>> thinks maybe there should be a ligature, but it doesn't insert the
>> ligature. Further, if you select an ff pair, it will successfully
>> navigate to the ff ligature in the glyphs palette. If you select any
>> other letter combination that ought to be a ligature, the glyphs palette
>> will ignore the selection.
>>
>> All this wouldn't be so bad, because find and replace takes care of
>> inserting the ligatures. But when they're inserted manually like this,
>> InDesign has no clue and refuses to break the word, resulting in
>> less-than-ideal H&J.
>>
>> Apparently the italic and bold are OpenType (according to their icons 
>> in the Fonts folder), but they behave the same way as the roman.
>>
>> The version of these fonts I'm using is 1.02, copyright 2006 Microsoft.
>> The roman (with math) is 1065 KB. The  bold is 325 KB. The bold italic
>> is 319 KB. The italic is version 1.01 and is 329 KB.
>>
>> Anyone know if there are more recent versions and whether these behave
>> better?
>>
>> Yeah, I know. I should have investigated further before committing. Too
>> late for that now. I'm looking for practical suggestions for dealing 
>> with this font rather than comments on my boneheaded choice to use it.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Dick
> 
> 
> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout 
> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font 
> Collection (cambria.ttc). This is allowed according to the specs, but 
> maybe InDesign doesn't like it.
> 
> Erwin Denissen

Although they do contain OT features,  Cambria.ttx does NOT display 
(Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of 
the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and 
Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.

Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that 
identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of 
the Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of 
FontLab, and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.

-Character

Armadillo wrote:
>>> Both Cambria & Cambria Math (version 5) do contain OpenType layout
>>> features and both OpenType fonts reside in the same TrueType Font
> 
>> Apparently InDesign does not like what it sees there. InDesign CS4 may
>> do a better job in this regard. The question then becomes whether that
> 
> Works fine in my Vista with both CS4 and CS3.
> 
> It must be something in your configuration.
> 
> Jukka
> 

Hmm. I don't think so. If I keep everything the same and just switch to 
a different font, everything works normally.

Try this test.

1. Edit > Preferences > Composition. Ensure that "Substitute Glyphs" is 
checked.

2. Define a paragraph style using Cambria Regular. Ensure that the 
ligatures box is checked.

3. With that paragraph style selected, start a new paragraph. Override 
the font choice (in the toolbar) to Adobe Jenson Pro (or any other Adobe 
Pro font, but that's the one I just tested), and type the following 
three words: different, difficult, artificial.

The ff, ffi, and fi will be highlighted in yellow. If you select one of 
the highlights, the glyphs palette will jump to the selected ligature.

4. With the cursor in the paragraph, Alt+click the style name in the 
Paragraph Styles palette to revert the paragraph to Cambria.

Now only the ff, the second f in difficult, and the f in artificial will 
be highlighted in yellow. If you zoom in, you'll see that the ligatures 
are not in use. If you select the ff, the glyphs palette will jump to 
the ff ligature, even though that's not the glyph being used on the 
page. If you select the ffi or fi, it will not jump anywhere. Further, 
if you manually substitute the ligatures, the words will not hyphenate. 
And if you spell check the text, the spell checker will stop on each 
word where a ligature is substituted.

Again, this is ID CS3 on Windows XP Pro. If your system behaves 
differently, I'd like to hear about it.


> PS Just wonder why Cambria? It is just hideous and with short ITC-like ascenders and descenders do not work too well in body text. CS3 includes far better choices.

Like I said, it was a dumb mistake. It will never happen again. However, 
the author also has short, ITC-like ascenders, so it's a good match ;-)

> Although they do contain OT features,  Cambria.ttx does NOT display 
> (Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of 
> the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and 
> Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.
> 
> Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that 
> identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of the 
> Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of FontLab, 
> and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.
> 
> -Character

FontCreator has no problems with opening the font files.

The ttc does include a DSIG table, but applies to the TrueType 
Collection. So as soon as the individual fonts are extracted the DSIG 
table is lost.

In my opinion the way Windows makes a distinction between plain TrueType 
fonts and TrueType based OpenType fonts (e.g. based on the existence of 
a DSIG table) is pretty much worthless, as that table is not required 
for OpenType fonts.

Erwin Denissen

Erwin Denissen wrote:

>> Although they do contain OT features,  Cambria.ttx does NOT display 
>> (Open Type) when opened in Windows' font viewer. Neither do either of 
>> the extracted fonts (Cambria or Cambria Math). The Bold, Italic, and 
>> Bold Italic DO display as OpenType.
>>
>> Somewhere I read that it's the presence of a digital signature that 
>> identifies a .ttf file as being OpenType. I can't look inside any of 
>> the Cambria set because for some reason they all crash my copy of 
>> FontLab, and passing them through anything else I have destroys them.
>>
>> -Character
> 

> FontCreator has no problems with opening the font files.

Yes, I know. I've opened them in FC, but since it's neither T1 nor OT 
aware, it didn't help much in looking 'inside' the fonts from that aspect.

I tried converting to T1 and to T1-OT with TransType, but the 
resulting font files couldn't be opened with anything.


> The ttc does include a DSIG table, but applies to the TrueType 
> Collection. So as soon as the individual fonts are extracted the DSIG 
> table is lost.

That explains a lot.

> 
> In my opinion the way Windows makes a distinction between plain TrueType 
> fonts and TrueType based OpenType fonts (e.g. based on the existence of 
> a DSIG table) is pretty much worthless, as that table is not required 
> for OpenType fonts.

Worse than worthless, because it also defines some fonts as being 
opentype when they have no opentype tables at all (except maybe an OT 
kerning table)

And what is the advantage (to MS or Monotype or Tiro or Ascender - 
certainly not to the user) of combining Cambria Math and Cambria into 
a TTC?

  - Character

 > Yes, I know. I've opened them in FC, but since it's neither T1 nor OT
 > aware, it didn't help much in looking 'inside' the fonts from that 
aspect.

Although FontCreator doesn't fully support all tables, you can still see 
which supported and unsupported tables are included.

 > And what is the advantage (to MS or Monotype or Tiro or Ascender -
 > certainly not to the user) of combining Cambria Math and Cambria into a
 > TTC?

I don't know, but in this case it saves you about 1 MB of file space.

Erwin Denissen

> Now only the ff, the second f in difficult, and the f in artificial will
> be highlighted in yellow. 

The same here.

> If you zoom in, you'll see that the ligatures
> are not in use. 

fi and ff ligatures are in use ffi not.

> If you select the ff, the glyphs palette will jump to
> the ff ligature, even though that's not the glyph being used on the
> page. If you select the ffi or fi, it will not jump anywhere. Further,

The same here.

> Again, this is ID CS3 on Windows XP Pro. If your system behaves
> differently, I'd like to hear about it.

In CS4, however, only fi is in use. The difference between fi pair and fi ligature is very small in the ligature ascender of f is just slightly shorter.

> Like I said, it was a dumb mistake. It will never happen again. However,
> the author also has short, ITC-like ascenders, so it's a good match ;-)

This is exactly how G.G. Lange once described Max Miedinger. I guess he don't like short ascenders and descenders of Helvetica. 

Jukka