From Apple and Extensis: Font management under Mac OS X

Can you give me the URL for that PDF? I can see why you got the wrong idea about InDesign CS's features in this area; it looks to me like the person who wrote it was confused about exactly what the feature does. But maybe I'm the confused one. I will go inquire of some InDesign engineers to make sure I understand this correctly. Maybe the feature is better than I think!

Here's my understanding of what InDesign CS does with font conflicts involving different formats:

You can now have a font family that has fonts from different formats. With InDesign 2.0, if you had Glurbish Regular and Bold in TrueType, with large character sets, and then four Glurbish fonts in Type 1 (Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic), with smaller character sets, then all you would see in the font menu would be the TT Regular and Bold. With InDesign CS, you would now see the TrueType versions of Regular and Bold, and the Type 1 versions of Italic and Bold Italic. But you still can't see two different versions of the same font format. At least, that's how I understand it.

T

>>>I would love to see a reference to this "Adobe claimed that their new programs...."

Sure. From a PDF on Adobe's web site:

>>Dont be bothered by font name conflicts because InDesign CS now lists all active fonts that share a font name but have different PostScript® names. You can differentiate them because the font names are listed in all Font menus with the font technologies abbreviated in parenthesesfor example, ITC American Typewriter (TT) for the TrueType version and ITC American Typewriter (T1) for the PostScript Type 1 version.

And:

>>Avoid font conflicts: Easily view all fonts and identify different font technologies thanks to InDesign CS softwares ability to report this information on the Font menu.

I see those items as indicating I can have various fonts of the same name but different formats available at the same time.

Bob,

I'll note that dfonts ARE TrueType fonts, which is why they show up as TrueType fonts. They're just wrapped up in a new way, so Apple can build them on a Unix file system without worrying about resource forks.

I would love to see a reference to this "Adobe claimed that their new programs...." But in any case, Adobe's different applications deal with font conflicts with varying degrees of success. It is possible for example to end up with a font family where you have the regular and bold from the TrueType version and the italic and bold italic from a Type 1 version. It's true that you can access all four styles, but....

It's true that Apple has a new scheme in OS X for prioritizing fonts based on location. For the time being, Adobe has continued to use its previous methods of choosing between conflicting fonts, which apply to both OS X and older OSes (and to Windows, for that matter).

In any case, speaking for Adobe's type group, it is our strong recommendation that for many Adobe applications on OS X, and for all applications on OS 8/9 and Windows, you should never have more than one font installed with a given menu name or PostScript name. In most applications, you have to use one or the other, anyway, so you should pick which one you want, and deactivate the one you don't want.

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinney
Fonts Program Mgr.
Adobe Systems

Helvetica and Times (along with Courier and Symbol) are legacy fonts, pretty much going back to the earliest days of the Macintosh. If you have ANY other version of these fonts (or any other fonts automatically installed), choose one version or the other.

Neil

Oh, I believe I've read where Apple says that the fonts in the User space are activated first, then the main Library, then the System Library, etc... And Adobe claimed that their new programs would list all fonts and add a TT for True Type and T1 for Type 1, etc. If that is not TRYING to manage multiple fonts of the same name, I don't know what is. Trouble is, they do do as THOROUGH a job as need be. Maybe they can keep working at it.

In the mean time, if what you say is true (which it may well be) why in the world would Apple put HELVETICA in the System Library Fonts?!!! Crazy! Same with Times. Crazy!

Bob,

Neither Adobe nor Apple have said that it is OK to activate duplicate or same-named fonts simultaneously, even if they are different formats.

Neil

But, Adobe made marketing claims that all was now well, what Adobe's programs now listed fonts by type; ie, TrueType, T1, OpenType, etc... Guess they forgot about .dfonts (which are USUALLY listed as TT). Thanks for the advice, though!

Bob,

Short answer: don't have conflicting fonts activated at the same time. Adobe does not support such configurations, and STRONGLY RECOMMENDS against having them.

Regards,

T

Correction: All is not well with Gill, either. When both my Gill with Agency Fit and Apple's .dfont Gill are enabled with Font Book, Both show in AI, but only mine shows in ID. If I put my Gill in Adobe's font folder, only my Gill shows in AI. Aaugh!

Another question: Do you think Adobe will incorporate somehow Apple's Font Sets into the next release of the cs apps? Or, even before. That would allow me to keep many, if not most, of my fonts installed and not make me scroll through thousands of faces to find the four I need for a project. BTW, does Illustrator still read all of the open fonts as it starts up? That would make things very slow if many fonts are activated...