Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

James Schend — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:33:27 GMT

laonianren: Sony Vegas shows the @ fonts even though they're "hidden" in Windows 7, so there must be something else going on there.

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Cesar — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 18:25:49 GMT

Funny, once I enable JavaScript here (Firefox 13.0.1 on Linux) it says I have "both the SimSun and @SimSun fonts installed" (fc-list says I do not have either). The first example is horizontal, the second example is identical to the first, the third example is identical to the first but the whole line is rotated (that is, everything is on its side). All three examples have Chinese or Japanese-looking characters, so Firefox probably picked some other CJK font for both SimSun and @SimSun.

The JavaScript-disabled example looks correct (first line horizontal, second line horizontal but most characters on their side, third line vertical with characters in the correct position).

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Alak — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 17:20:42 GMT

I really need to learn some Unicode. I have noticed parenthesis get flipped when writing right-to-left too. For example:

Hello :-), how are you?

And the same line with an U+202E 'RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE' character before:

‮Hello :-), how are you?

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Michael S. Kaplan — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 03:30:54 GMT

I was first, so I think maybe I win.

Though you win on typos corrected and politeness in talking about competitive products....

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Crescens2k — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:13:35 GMT

Complain to the Chrome development team because they are doing it wrong?

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Computer Repair Sacramento — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 23:16:08 GMT

Chrome doesn't appear to rotate the characters, only the whole line. The two characters are rotated 90 degrees from each other and the vertical line is simply rotated 90 degrees. Now what?

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Anonymous Coward — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:37:30 GMT

>hack to get rudimentary vertical font support in software that doesn't support vertical text

Actually, from what I can find on MSDN, for example at msdn.microsoft.com/.../cc194859.aspx, this is the standard way of implementing vertical text support: prefix the font name with @ and rotate it.

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Gabe — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 18:34:17 GMT

JamesJohnston: Generally speaking, suffixes are already used to distinguish between two similar fonts ("@MingLiU_HKSCS" vs. "@MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB"), so the problem of fixed-width text boxes is nothing new.

As for sorting, how do you implement your own sorting algorithm in Word or any of the innumerable programs that use the common font dialog?

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

xpclient — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:54:46 GMT

Wow didn't know this. Cool feature about printing.

re: Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

JamesJohnston — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:41:24 GMT

"I think it would be better to put the @ as a suffix. That way you could easily see if a font has a vertical variety, you could quickly switch between the two (because they're adjacent to each other in the font list)"

I don't think so. How are you supposed to see the @ suffix if you are viewing the font name in a space-constrained text box, combo box, or list box? For example, suppose the width of the control is so low that the end of the font name is truncated. You'll never know the suffix, and unless you know how the "@" fonts are sorted relative to the normal fonts, you'll never know which font you're picking.

Better to implement your own sorting algorithm for the fonts that moves the ones with the @ prefix adjacent to the normal fonts.