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August 20

How to download Symbola font version 14.0?

https://dn-works.com/ufas/ I can't find the download button. I am a Green Bee (talk) 10:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's because you're a green bee. The first pdf on the page says "Fonts and documents are attached in the corresponding pdf files". This is hardly a convenient way to distribute them, and I wouldn't know how to extract fonts from pdf files, but those folks at Stack Overflow suggest several ways.

In fact this online tool for extracting fonts did the job very conveniently. What you get is 55 fonts with meaningless names like ABAAAA+Symbola.ttf, ACAAAA+Symbola.ttf, etc., in a zip file.

On the other hand, Windows says each file is "not a valid font file", although Fontforge can open them. (It can also extract then in the first place.) I told Fontforge to "generate fonts" and produce a ttf file, which resulted in something valid according to Windows, but it seemed messed up, with a lot of the glyphs missing when re-opened in Fontforge. I wonder if all the 50 or so files are supposed to be one big font file somehow? Maybe somebody should contact DimitriosDouro1 on Twitter and ask him what on earth the idea even is here.

I successfully extracted (via Fontforge and then "generate fonts" of type Truetype) the one called KBAAAA+Symbola.ttf, which contains a lot of Byzantine musical symbols, so that's something. Card Zero (talk) 11:37, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@I am a Green Bee When you open the PDF in Firefox and look in the attachments tab, you see an OTF. I have uploaded it here: [1]. Just saying, it explained this here. – Berrely • ^T∕_C 16:39, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that's what I quoted from above, but "explained" is putting it strongly. So, pdf files can have "attachments"? I can't see them in Vivaldi. Card Zero (talk) 16:51, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Card Zero yeah it's something I just learnt. I opened the PDF and noticed it in the tab. Seems to be an overly-complex method to be honest. – Berrely • ^T∕_C 17:23, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very weird download method, I've never heard of it before. Invisible in Safari, although it loads in Firefox. You might want to read this blog post by Anna Judson, which I've now finally got round to citing on Wikipedia, which mentions these fonts and the designer. It expresses the concern "the fonts are not licensed for any form of publication, academic or commercial [so best] if you only want these fonts for personal/teaching use", and suggests also trying the Noto fonts for that reason.
Personally, I find Noto Symbols can be very useful, and install it on all computers I use. Two font sets, Noto Sans Symbols for more common characters (this family has multiple weights) and this for more obscure ones (only one weight). Doesn't cover everything though, in particular I wish it has more arrow characters and chemistry symbols. Blythwood (talk) 20:31, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's normal to embed fonts in PDF. The PDF standard only specifies a handful of fonts that should be available to every PDF reader. For other fonts, you either have to gamble that the reader has the fonts installed (not very safe; even common Windows fonts like Arial are unlikely to be found on non-Windows computers), or you can embed the fonts in the PDF. Usually only the characters that are actually used in the document get embedded. If there are many symbol fonts of which only a few characters are used, that can save a lot of space.

It's not normal to distribute fonts in this way. A legal loophole? PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:00, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

embedding a font, as you say, makes it available for use the PDF, but it isn't readily saved (hence all the complicated extractors discussed above).

attaching a file is different - the PDF format allows arbitrary files (of any type) to be attached to documents. These are readily saved (that's the intention of them).

Of the files on the site I am a Green Bee lists, the Preview PDF has (fragments of) each font embedded, but it has no attachments. All the others have both the fonts embedded (using PDF's own font embedding mechanism) and the relevant OTF file attached.

So they're using the PDF as both an illustration and a distribution mechanism. It's quite clever, but as this thread shows, file attachment in PDFs is sufficiently unusual that it's more likely to be confusing than helpful. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:49, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]