How to Check Name Table IDs in FontForge

The OpenType and TrueType name table stores essential metadata, such as font family names, style variants, copyright notices, and designer credits across various operating systems. Checking the compatibility of these Name Table IDs in FontForge ensures that your font renders, installs, and groups properly on Windows, macOS, and Linux without naming conflicts. This guide explains how to access, inspect, and validate these table IDs directly within FontForge.

1. Open the TTF Names Menu

  1. Launch FontForge and open your font file (.sfd, .ttf, or .otf).
  2. Go to the top menu and select Element > Font Info (or press Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+F on macOS).
  3. In the sidebar on the left side of the Font Info dialog, click on TTF Names.

2. Inspect Name Table Records

The TTF Names panel lists every string assigned to a specific Name Table ID alongside its target platform, encoding, and language.

To ensure cross-platform compatibility, verify the following primary IDs:

  • Name ID 1 (Family Name): Must match standard 4-style family groupings (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic).
  • Name ID 2 (Subfamily Name): Must be strictly limited to Regular, Italic, Bold, or Bold Italic for standard compatibility.
  • Name ID 4 (Full Name): Usually a combination of Family and Subfamily (e.g., "MyFont Bold").
  • Name ID 6 (PostScript Name): Must be composed strictly of ASCII characters with no spaces, limited to 63 characters.
  • Name ID 16 / 17 (Typographic Family / Subfamily): Required when a font family has more than four styles (e.g., Thin, Light, SemiBold, Black) to allow modern applications to group them together correctly while preserving legacy ID 1 and 2 behavior.

3. Check Platform and Language Matching

FontForge displays entries segregated by platform:

  • Macintosh (Platform ID 1): Typically uses Roman script and English language.
  • Windows (Platform ID 3): Typically uses Unicode BMP (Encoding 1) and English (United States) (Language 0x0409).

Ensure that corresponding Windows and Macintosh entries carry identical textual meanings to avoid erratic naming behavior when swapping between operating systems. If a string exists for Windows, the equivalent string should usually be present for Macintosh unless targeting modern OpenType-only environments where Windows/Unicode records take precedence.

4. Run Automated Font Validation

FontForge includes an automated validation tool that checks the name table against OpenType specification rules:

  1. Close the Font Info window.
  2. Navigate to Element > Validation > Validate.
  3. In the dialog, ensure that font-level checks are enabled and click OK.
  4. Review the results window. Any issues regarding invalid PostScript names (ID 6), missing required IDs, or duplicate entries in the name table will be flagged as warnings or errors.