Adobe Acrobat 2020 not recognizing installed fonts

[Spectrum Writing]

Hello,

This is post is going to be cross-posted to the Framemakers forum as well but I thought that I would try here first.

I am Windows 11, 64 bit and have Framemaker 2019 installed and updated to date for the last version available. I have Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 also installed and updated to the latest version available. I have the Roboto Font Family installed in C:\Windows\Fonts. I have confirmed that all the fonts are properly installed. They are the Open Type fonts available from Google that I received from a client (and they from Google) and these are the exact same fonts that are available from https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/roboto. (In fact, there is even the disclaimer for these fonts on the Adobe site that they are from Google.)

In Framemaker, when I am setting up my template and creating the necessary paragraph tags, all the installed Roboto font families are available on the Font tab in the Paragraph Designer and all the available variations w/in these families (Bold, Italic) are available as options, so all is working correctly in Framemaker 2019.

I always use the Publishing option in Framemaker to produce my PDFs. However, I always create a custom settings/job options file that stipulates the fonts that I want to embed for a specific template/client. (It's the standard procedure to do so, but for reference, see https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-framemaker-how-to-edit-the-pdf-preset-list/.) 

When I am creating the custom job options file in Distiller 2020, this is where I run into the issue: Adobe Distiller is NOT recognizing all the installed Roboto fonts. In the Fonts source list, C:\Windows\Fonts,  only a very small subset of all the installed Roboto fonts are available for selection. And it appears to be helter skelter as to which fonts are available for embedding and which are not. For example, none of the Roboto Thin variations and none of the Roboto Light variations are available, Roboto Black is available, but not Roboto Black Italic and yet all the variations of the Roboto Condensed (Bold, Italic, etc. ) are. And for reference, https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/kb/fonts-not-showing-in-the-menu.html, none of these possible reasons is applicable and again, I have confirmed these reasons are not applicable with Adobe. Acrobat is simply not recognizing these fonts and I cannot create the needed custom job options file to properly embed the needed fonts in the final PDF.

I have been working with Adobe on this issue and they are just as stymied right now as I am and right now, so I thought that I would reach out to the community to see if anyone has run into this issue and what they did to resolve it.

And I have confirmed emphatically with Adobe support that Framemaker 2019 and Acrobat Pro 2020 do absolutely work and are supported on Windows 11.  So far, FM2019 is cooperating, but the even newer product Adobe Acrobat Pro is the one giving me fits.

Thanks!

TVB

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

That may well be a conflict with the Roboto font, that some grades are using conflicting IDs. As a side note: the fonts on the Google site and on the Adobe site may differ in the font version.

You could try to uninstall all Roboto fonts on your system, download the current version from the Google site. Be sure that the fonts don't get sourced from a different directory, like a local FrameMaker font directory.  Furthermore, make sure that the Roboto fonts from Adobe fonts are not installed, as they may conflict with the local fonts.

NB: by redownloading you may use a slightly different font as you got from the customer, as fonts evolve and get updated in regularly. The difference, however, should not be seen by an untrained eye.

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

That may well be a conflict with the Roboto font, that some grades are using conflicting IDs. As a side note: the fonts on the Google site and on the Adobe site may differ in the font version.

You could try to uninstall all Roboto fonts on your system, download the current version from the Google site. Be sure that the fonts don't get sourced from a different directory, like a local FrameMaker font directory.  Furthermore, make sure that the Roboto fonts from Adobe fonts are not installed, as they may conflict with the local fonts.

NB: by redownloading you may use a slightly different font as you got from the customer, as fonts evolve and get updated in regularly. The difference, however, should not be seen by an untrained eye.

[Spectrum Writing · Accepted solution]

I actually got the issue resolved and it took some assistance and a wonderful conversation with the long gone but still extremely missed Dov!! You are absolutely correct ins tating that the fonts from the Google site and the  Adobe site differ in the font versions and for many reasons, I was given explicit instructions NOT to download the fonts from the Adobe site but go to the source, Google itself. The next issue involved how Microsoft also does not want to play nicely with fonts, whether with other vendors such as Adobe or incredibly their own users. In Windows 11, when you right-click a font to install it, you see a single option to "Install" on the context menu. If, however, you hold down the CTRL key and then click the font, the classic Windows context menu opens (the one that users have seen since forever) and it's on that menu that you get the option "Install for all users." That is how you absolutely should install a font on a Windows OS again for reasons that were explained to me and how it bypasses some of the cr*p that MS also tries with fonts. Now, when I open Adobe Distiller, and select Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings and open the Fonts tab, in the Embedding Font Source list, EVERY SINGLE Roboto font that I installed is displayed - not one is missing. I am back in business and thank you for confirming exactly some of the concerns that I had and what I did to resolve them.