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R
ronw67486321
Participant
May 26, 2015
Answered

How do I use fonts I bought from Adobe back in the floppy days? Are they still usable and how?

  • May 26, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 565 views

How do I use fonts I bought from Adobe back in the floppy days? Are they still usable and how?

I bought the Stone family of fonts from Adobe back in the floppy days and would like to use them today. Do I get any credit for that early purchase? I'm subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud and using it regularly. The floppies were for the old macs and of course are useless today without incurring the expense of a reading and transfer which as far as I know, might not even be legal.

So, what can I do?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Dov Isaacs

    Actually, what you bought were licenses for the font with media; you didn't buy the fonts themselves.

    That having been said, there are no legal restrictions to your using those old Mac Type 1 format fonts with your current Adobe applications on a MacOS system. Assuming that you have access to a USB diskette drive and can copy the files into a private font directory, you are good to go.

    However, note that MacOS no longer natively supports Type 1 fonts at all. Adobe applications continue to support these fonts, but you must put the font files into the private font directories of the applications for them to be recognized. Cross-platform OpenType fonts are currently what are licensed by Adobe, providing not only cross-platform compatibility, but advanced layout support, character sets, etc.

    Unfortunately, there is no “trade-in program” for those old Type 1 fonts to license the OpenType equivalents. (After all, you've have those fonts for at least 15 years, if not much longer!)

                  - Dov

    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
    Legend
    May 26, 2015

    Actually, what you bought were licenses for the font with media; you didn't buy the fonts themselves.

    That having been said, there are no legal restrictions to your using those old Mac Type 1 format fonts with your current Adobe applications on a MacOS system. Assuming that you have access to a USB diskette drive and can copy the files into a private font directory, you are good to go.

    However, note that MacOS no longer natively supports Type 1 fonts at all. Adobe applications continue to support these fonts, but you must put the font files into the private font directories of the applications for them to be recognized. Cross-platform OpenType fonts are currently what are licensed by Adobe, providing not only cross-platform compatibility, but advanced layout support, character sets, etc.

    Unfortunately, there is no “trade-in program” for those old Type 1 fonts to license the OpenType equivalents. (After all, you've have those fonts for at least 15 years, if not much longer!)

                  - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    R
    ronw67486321Author
    Participant
    May 26, 2015

    So, if I want to use those type faces, I have to "buy" them again? Even though I've had them to use for 15 years, in using them I've had innumerable designers ask me what they were and of course, I've directed them to Adobe. If I were to receive a small sum for all those referrals, I might be outside waxing a Bentley instead of emailing a reply to you on my out of date iMac. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to stick with Palatino . . .

    You've told me all I need to know; thank you for the reply . . .

    Ron Williams

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    May 26, 2015

    Ron,

    I absolutely did not say or imply that you needed to “buy” anything at all, at least in order to use the fonts with Adobe applications under recent MacOS versions. Adobe has no plans to discontinue support for Type 1 fonts within its own applications (we rely on our own font rendering engine on all platforms). And I did tell you how to install and access them for those applications.

    However, if you want to use the fonts with non-Adobe applications, yes, you need to license the OpenType versions of those fonts since Apple (not Adobe) decided a few MacOS versions ago, to totally stop supporting Type 1 fonts on their operating system. Adobe was not consulted for that decision and there was and is nothing we at Adobe can do about it.

                - Dov

    PS:     For what it is worth, although Microsoft continues to officially support installation and use of Windows format Type 1 fonts under Windows, Microsoft no longer supports Type 1 fonts for Office 2013 or Internet Explorer. OpenType CFF fonts are fully supported.

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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