There are several issues overlaid in this case: I will attempt to answer them separately:
> My publisher has said that he has is not getting a "missing fonts" dialog box when opening the file (and has never gotten such a message).
This will be because, at some point in the past, your publisher has checked the box "Don't show this again" in the "Missing Fonts" pop-up. To reset this check-box, your publisher should open Sibelius "Preferences" -> "Other" -> "Warning Messages" and click "Show All Messages". After doing that, the publisher should open your score file afresh, to see the list of missing fonts.
> When my publisher opened the Word document (on his Mac), the fonts appeared exactly as they should have appeared (we saw the same thing.)
This is no longer a valid test of font portability across platforms, as Microsoft Office products now embed fonts in documents from the originating computer (just like PDFs do). So anyone can open those documents, and they will be displayed as the originator intended, regardless of what fonts are installed locally.
A more valid test of font portability is to try viewing a document in an application that does NOT embed fonts in documents: Sibelius is one such application.
> The font we're currently having issues with is Menca (which is an OpenType font, so my understanding is that it should be easily shared between a Windows computer and a Mac computer.)
Menca is an example of a font which provides more than the four "standard" styles of Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, that are recognised by Windows.
Windows and macOS have different ways of dealing with that situation, and pay prime attention to different forms of the internal names within a font. For a font to work cross-platform, it must comply with certain consistency requirements within the OTF specification, so that the various forms of internal name are consistent when combined in the different ways of macOS and of Windows.
I have tested all the Menca fonts with an OTF consistency check test. The following fonts FAIL the required OTF name consistency checks:
- MENCA BLACK
- MENCA MEDIUM ITALIC
- MENCA MEDIUM
Because of these internal inconsistencies in naming, those fonts will not work cross-platform.
> when my publisher opens the Sibelius file, the dedication line (which is supposed to appear in Menca Thin Italic) is Roman
This appears to be a problem in the Sibelius handling of cross-platform font renaming. The "JW attempt" score sent from Windows has the font for style "Dedication" set to Windows Font Family "Menca Thin" Font Style "Italic", but this has been translated to Mac Font "Menca" Font Style "Thin". The final "Italic" has been lost.
> the composer name (manually changed to Menca Medium) appears as "Menca" rather than "Menca Medium".
This has happened because your publisher did not get a chance to choose the correct font in the "Missing Fonts" dialogue, where the default style will be "Regular" (a style which Menca does not supply).
> Any idea either how to fix this or who to reach out to try to resolve this issue?
Frankly, if you are trying to use Sibelius cross-platform, my advice would be to use only fonts that offer styles Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, only. These are known to work cross-platform.
If you must use fonts that offer other styles, then avoid "Menca", as it has internal OTF naming inconsistencies that create cross-platform difficulties.
And I cannot see a solution to the "xxxx Thin Italic" problem in the translation of Text Style font configurations from Windows to macOS. This looks like a Sibelius issue which an end-user cannot work around, and I suspect that it will affect all such fonts, not just Menca. I will look into this further, but I do not have enough time to do so for most of the rest of this week.
--
Sibelius 2023.6/7.5.1/7.1.3/6.2/5.2.5, PhotoScore Ult 2020.1, Windows 10 64-bit 16GB. Desktop, and Microsoft Surface Book. |
Font Help - Mac/Windows - Joshua Wiczer, 29 Nov 12:54AM
Re: Font Help - Mac/Windows - Robin Walker, 29 Nov 01:54PM
Lo Vashamayim Hi (test2).sib
Screenshot 2023-12-07 à 12.15.56.png