Fonts they are a-changing

[Steve Rickaby]

At 17:09 -0800 21/2/07, Dov Isaacs wrote:

>Unless you standardize on a particular version of any font and enforce use of that version, you are being setup for disasters including missing text, wrong text, relayout, etc., especially when everything is supposed to come together for PDF file production, printing, or both.

Boy oh boy is Dov right [as usual]... as I found out to my cost recently when going x-platform with a Frutiger mix. Heap Bad Juju :-(

My 10c...

. You have a x-platform requirement with your Mac Illustrator. Big Warning Sign.

. You have a non-European font requirement with Japanese and Chinese. Big Warning Sign.

I am not qualified to comment here, but Paul Findon, sometimes on this group and always on the 'FrameMaker for OS X' group, works in Japanese in FrameMaker, I believe. I'm sure others on this group have relevant experience too.

. Embedding is an attribute of the specific font foundry's license terms. Usually you can, sometimes you can't. Take care, read the small print.

. 'Is Helvetica different from Helvetica Neue and Neue Helvetica?' Yes.

The Neue variants are a different font to the Helveticas. I believe that Neue Helvetica is the Linotype variant, while Helvetica Neue is the Adobe variant. I don't know how different they are. I *do* know that recently acquiring a Linotype Frutiger rather than a Monotype Frutiger involved me in about an extra 100 hours' work.

. The good on-line font sites such as Linotype, Monotype (www.fonts.com) and Bitstream have a lot of backing material that explains the origin and sometimes the purpose of individual fonts. In the UK at least, too, a phone call to Monotype gets you through to some very knowledgeable and helpful people.

. You can sometimes, but not always, make financial savings by buying font family packages. It all depends on the size of the family (some are huge) vs. the faces you actually need.

. OpenType is allegedly the 'way forward', but I've never used it with FrameMaker so I cannot comment. Others will be able to advise you.

. 'Often, however, they'll make very broad statements without a lot of specifics because their goal is to create a degree of uniformity without boxing in the different divisions and functions in ways that would inhibit their routine tasks. That might explain identifying a font family as a standard but going no further'

This will bite back very hard on costs unless more granularity is added to the specification.

. Guy is very, very right ;-)

-- 
Steve