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Keith_Gilbert
Keith_Gilbert
Level 3
March 28, 2016
Solved

Using a custom icon font in a card

  • March 28, 2016
  • 5 replies
  • 2556 views

I've created a custom font that consists of 15 simple icons. Each icon is mapped to a single character position. For example, typing an "A" produces the first icon, typing a "B" produces the second icon, etc. The font is an OpenType font, and it works correctly in all my desktop apps. I'd like to use this font on a card.

I've uploaded OTF files for both this custom font as well as another OTF text font (Prelo) in Content & Layouts > Fonts.

I have a card that contains 2 Text Area fields: Description and Title. Description uses my custom font, and Title uses the Prelo font.

In the collections that are mapped to this card, I have an "A", "B", or "C" in the Description field, and my actual collection title in the Title field. So I would expect that this would cause an icon to appear on the first line of the card, followed by the collection title displayed in Prelo on the second line.

But the icon font doesn't display the icon. It only displays a capital A, B, or C. The card title using the Prelo font appears correctly.

Is this not possible? I would expect the icon font to work correctly, since the system doesn't have any way of knowing that the "A" looks different than a regular A, the B looks different than a B, etc.

By the way, I've tried viewing this in both my custom Preflight app as well as my custom development app on iOS and Android.

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    Best answer by Keith_Gilbert

    I got this to work, but 2 things I learned, in case anyone else has the same problem:

    1. The font I was using was a custom font that I created that only had a single character (a capital "A") that I had created for testing. Until I filled out the font with the characters A-Z and a-z, the font gave a strange error message when trying to use the font in a card.

    2. As Nathan said, you have to rebuild the application after adding a font. I had forgotten this.

    FWIW, I used the excellent "Indyfont" script for InDesign to quickly create an OpenType font that contained the 15 special icon characters that we needed. Took no time at all to create the font. See Indiscripts :: IndyFont

    5 replies

    Colin_Fleming
    Colin_Fleming
    Level 6
    March 28, 2016

    Hey Keith;

    I just tried using a wingding font to mimic what you describe, it worked fine. Maybe the problem is in your font?

    If you send it my way I'm willing to try an independent test.

    Colin

    N
    Adobe Employee
    nathanm206Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    March 28, 2016

    Keith, are you certain that you rebuilt the application after you added the fonts to the project? That is a requirement because the fonts must be embedded in the application.

    Also not that in Preflight custom fonts won't load. That is a current limitation since fonts must be embedded.

    Keith_Gilbert
    Keith_GilbertAuthorAccepted solution
    Level 3
    March 29, 2016

    I got this to work, but 2 things I learned, in case anyone else has the same problem:

    1. The font I was using was a custom font that I created that only had a single character (a capital "A") that I had created for testing. Until I filled out the font with the characters A-Z and a-z, the font gave a strange error message when trying to use the font in a card.

    2. As Nathan said, you have to rebuild the application after adding a font. I had forgotten this.

    FWIW, I used the excellent "Indyfont" script for InDesign to quickly create an OpenType font that contained the 15 special icon characters that we needed. Took no time at all to create the font. See Indiscripts :: IndyFont

    A
    ambitappa773737
    Level 3
    March 31, 2016

    ‌we are doing the same thing, but haven't been able to figure out how to get the font to display in the layout template. It is showing up in the test app, but would be nice if we could preview it in the layout template. Any advice? We get an error in the layout template next to the font name that basically says "there is an error, but it will display in the app"

    Keith_Gilbert
    Keith_GilbertAuthor
    Level 3
    March 31, 2016

    Ah. We had the same problem, if I used a custom font that contained only a few characters. Once I made sure the custom font contained A..Z and a..z, the error in the layout template disappeared.

    Our custom font had only 15 icons in it in the A-O character positions. I just padded out the rest of the font with roman characters N-Z and a-z, and then everything worked fine. It appears that the layout template needs a minimum character set of some sort to function and display properly.

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