Custom fonts not displaying correctly on iOS

Question

I'm trying to get a set of Neo Sans Pro fonts working on the iPhone. I have four weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Bold as OTF files (NeoSansPro-Light.otf, -Regular.otf etc). The files are included in the build, and registered in the info.plist.

Calling [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:@"Neo Sans Pro"] returns an array with 4 entries e.g. "NeoSansPro-Light".

I can retrieve font objects for each of these strings using UIFont fontWithName:size:.

However, when I draw text with them, the Light, Regular and Medium versions all draw exactly the same, and look like the Light version. The Bold version draws differently.

According to Font Book, each font file does contain different glyphs.

I'm completely stumped - any clues what I need to do?

[Added] Some more investigation:

 NSArray *fonts = [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:@"Neo Sans Pro"];

    for (NSString *fname in fonts) {
        UIFont *font = [UIFont fontWithName:fname size:12.0];
        NSLog(@"name: %@ font: %@", fname, font);
    }

Running this code gives the following log output:

 name: NeoSansPro-Light font: <UICFFont: 0x66304a0> font-family: "Neo Sans Pro"; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-size: 12px
 name: NeoSansPro-Regular font: <UICFFont: 0x66304a0> font-family: "Neo Sans Pro"; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-size: 12px
 name: NeoSansPro-Medium font: <UICFFont: 0x66304a0> font-family: "Neo Sans Pro"; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-size: 12px
 name: NeoSansPro-Bold font: <UICFFont: 0xaa06070> font-family: "Neo Sans Pro"; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-size: 12px

So the three fonts that display the same really are the same. But there's four font weights and four fonts in the build.

Answer 1

Looks like this is the same problem as here: Including multiple fonts of the same family in an iPad application

It seems the iOS font architecture gets confused if there are multiple fonts in the same font family, and won't hand back the right font. The solution is to manually edit the font family information (using something like Font Forge to different values.

E.g. For the Neo Sans Pro Light font, set the Font family (in the PSNames and TTF Names) to "NSP Light". Do similarly for Neo Sans Pro Regular -> NSP Regular etc.

You can then refer to the font by the original name e.g. "NeoSansPro-Light"

Ugly, but it works.