Font names aren't aligning between SVG and TTF files?

Question

I downloaded a "Fredoka One" font here: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Fredoka+One?selection.family=Fredoka+One

and installed the TTF file on my system (ie mv FredoakOne-Regular.ttf ~/.fonts/, and fc-cache -f -v).

$ fc-list | grep -i "fredoka"
/home/myUser/.fonts/FredokaOne-Regular.ttf: Fredoka One:style=Regular

and my SVG file references the Fredoka One font like so:

font-family="'FredokaOne-Regular'"

Thus, when I view the SVG file in a browser, it doesn't render the font.

But when I change my SVG file to reference the file like this instead:

font-family="'Fredoka One'"

Then the font renders properly. Why aren't the names matching? How did this happen? Am I missing something?

FYI I received the SVG files from a designer who created/exported them in Illustrator, using MacOS.

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If I can somehow alias the name FredokaOne-Regular to point to my Fredoka One font name, would that be a reasonable solution? If so, how?

Answer 1

It seems that Adobe Illustrator uses the "PostScript name" field from within the font – not the more common "Family name" field. This seems to be common within macOS with its heavily PostScript-influenced graphics system and might make sense for e.g. PDF outputs, but is quite different from what everything else uses.

(Note: Both names are embedded inside the file and have nothing to do with the .ttf file name itself.)

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If you want to create font aliases, you can do so through fontconfig. Create a file such as ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/50-aliases.conf with contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
    <alias binding="same">
        <family>FredokaOne-Regular</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Fredoka One</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>    
</fontconfig>

(The binding="same" option tells fontconfig that this is exactly the same font rather than a fallback alternative, but I honestly don't know what, if any, effect it has on the font selection.)

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You seem to be confusing family names and file names.

In this case, "FredokaOne-Regular" is not the family name. It is merely the file name, and almost no software actually cares about the file name. It could as well be named "Fredoka~1.ttf" or "FREDOK1R.TTF" or "H234567.TTF" (as font files often are) and that still wouldn't affect a thing.

Instead, software almost always expects you to specify the name that is embedded inside the file itself. As fontconfig's fc-cache (or fc-query) shows, the embedded family name is "Fredoka One", so that's what you're supposed to specify.

(Note how even Google's webfont CSS, which imports randomly-named files such as "k3kUo8kEI-tA1RRcTZGmTlHGCac.woff2" from the CDN, also specifies "Fredoka One" as the family name.)