Font Issues - Unavaiilable Fonts and Font Information Changed - Recap

[Oran Petersen]

Following the two recent threads on the list concerning fonts, I did not see a comprehensive recap of these issues for cause and cure. 

CAUSE-Unavailable fonts 

1. Most postscript printers come loaded with a set of Postscript fonts. 

2. If you set a postscript printer as your default, Windows will "see" these fonts and allow you to use them in your documents. Also, if you copy/paste text from another document that uses them you can also inject them into your documents. 

3. Most computers do not have the postscript fonts installed. They must be purchased, and are not part of the default Windows font packages. Frankly, in today's world, unless you have very specific requirements, most of us do not need the postscript fonts. 

4. When you create PDF, you are using the Adobe PDF virtual printer, which does not have the postscript fonts, as it is not "real". This severs the connection to the postscript printer, and thus to the fonts. You will therefore get the "Unavailable Fonts" message whenever you do a PDF. 

5. The most common postscript fonts have an equivalent OpenType or TrueType. The two worst offenders are postscript Helvetica = Opentype Arial and postscript Times = opentype Times New Roman. Default mapping will change to the opentype unless you have changed the setting to do otherwise. 

6. With XP and Vista, the need to use postscript fonts, and the need to use special tools to manage fonts is essentially gone for most of us. 

7. Of course, any time you open a document from another source, that source may use any number of fonts not on your system, including Company specific and proprietary fonts for logos, etc. This will always display the font message when you first open the file. 



CURE-Unavailable fonts 

We have over 130 FrameMaker users bringing in data from multiple sources, including customers, on a regular basis. This data is added to our files several different ways. In spite of this, we now have very little issue with font messages by adopting the following: 



1. In your templates, use only opentype fonts, preferably within the default font set included with Windows. If you have any postscript fonts defined in your template, get rid of them. If you must have a special font, be absolutely certain that it is loaded on every computer in your system that may open the files. (We have one of these) When new machines come in, your SA must load these fonts as part of the setup for the machine. If you do work at home, your machine must have the fonts. 

2. In FrameMaker, as suggested earlier in the thread, uncheck the "Remember Missing Font Names" in Preferences. Caution: If you open a file with this setting that has needed fonts not on your machine, you will corrupt the file. The Frame Console will inform you of which fonts are mapped and to which font. Either do not save the file, or temporarily check the box to "remember" the font if you must edit on this machine. 

3. Set your default printer to Adobe PDF. This severs the connection to "bad" postscript fonts on your printers. 

Steps 2 & 3 will "remap" any "bad" fonts brought in by editing or using data from other sources, and keep your files clean. 



CAUSE-"Font Information Changed" message when changing printers from the FrameMaker print dialog. 

This message appears whenever you select a printer other than the default from within the FrameMaker print dialog. FrameMaker is warning you that you may get unexpected font issues due to this change, regardless of any "real" issues. 



CURE-"Font Information Changed" 

This one is quite obvious. Either live with the message or don't change the printer in the dialog. Our authors mostly use Adobe PDF as the default printer, which also solves the other font issues. Most of our print output is PDF. If we need a paper print from Frame we live with the message when we point to the postscript printer. This is becoming more rare as most authors work with PDF on screen now. 

Hope this helps. 

Oran