I find myself in a situation where a new tool allows me to more easily manage my organization’s font library.
The tool in question can analyze fonts and identify duplicates via their postscript name and other internal metrics, in addition to the shape of the glyphs themselves.
In the midst of cleaning up duplicate fonts I’m finding that we have some fonts that are identified as duplicates because their postscript names are the same but are not actually duplicates at all - the glyphs are all completely different.
Does anyone know of any easy to use, free tools that allow the user to import / open a font and change only the postscript name? I’ve tried glyphr studio online but without success.
The fonts are probably marked as duplicates because two fonts with the same PostScript name cannot be activated at the same time, at least on macOS. Therefore one is a duplicate of the other, based on meta data, not based on appearance.
You could try FontForge to edit the PostScript name of a font. It’s free, but not very easy to use. I’m definitely no expert, but here are the steps I’ve written down to edit the PostScript name using FontForge:
Open the font in FontForge
Choose Element > Font Info
Rename the ‘Fontname’ field to something else (e.g. ‘FontName2’), this is the identifier for activated fonts
Change the ‘Family Name’ and ‘Name for Humans’ as well, so you can differentiate between your own version and the system variant in font pickers (not necessary, just makes it easier to differentiate)
Choose ‘TTF Names’ from the sidebar
Change ‘Preferred Family’ to the same value as ‘Family Name’ in PS Names (see step 4)
Press OK
Choose File > Generate Fonts…
Set the type to TrueType (or OpenType CFF if the font you’re converting uses CFF outlines)
Press Generate (continue on warnings)
Make sure the font license allows you to edit the file. Some licenses do not allow any edits.