Where does Acrobat find the fonts?

[prman13]

I have Acrobat Pro X. I have had no trouble converting EPS files into a pdf document for printing. The EPS files are converted with a music typography program called WINSCORE. There has never been any problem with this, except now I am getting an error message that says that it can't find the font file(s) to load:

%%[ Warning: Times-Italic not found, using Font Substitution. Font cannot be embedded. ]%% %%[ Warning: Times-Roman not found, using Font Substitution. Font cannot be embedded. ]%% %%[ Error: typecheck; OffendingCommand: moveto ]%% Stack: 3.54351e+10 -save- %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% %%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

How do you tell Acrobat where to find the fonts, if something has been corrupted?  As I say, it used to work fine, but now it can't seem to load the simplest fonts—Times New Roman and Times New Roman Italic.  Something's amiss.

Barrett Kalellis

[Moved from the general, non-support Forum Lounge to a product-specific support forum - Mod]

[Test Screen Name]

It doesn't say Times New Roman (which you probably have). It says Times Roman (which you probably don't have). Add it to your never embed list.

[Test Screen Name]

On a closer read, the font issue is a warning message. It's probably always done that. The actual problem is the line with Error, not Warning. This is bad PostScript. It may be an error in the application that exports the EPS, and should be reported to the maker of that software if remaking the EPS doesn't fix it.

[prman13]

Unfortunately, the maker of the software died in 2013, so nothing can be gained there. The program has its own fonts in a subdirectory, in numerical order, all with the extension .fmt. Then, I have another directory that has Type I EPS fonts. Under the Windows directory, there is a subdirectory called Fonts (with an A logo on it) that has 116 items in it.

The questions are:

1. Where exactly does Adobe Acobat look for the fonts to load? Is it in the Windows Font subdirectory? Where should additional fonts be put?

2. Can these older fonts be all mixed together in the same subdirectory: Type I, Type II, and those with the .fmt extension?

3. The EPS files that were created by the program all worked up to last evening—even pages with the same basic Times Roman Italic fonts. Now the pdf page cannot be created.  I suspect the problem is with Acrobat and not the EPS files.

[Doug Hanna]

Prman13,

Acrobat Distiller is the tool used to convert PostScript to PDF... so, we are going to start there.

You can set where Distiller looks for fonts under Settings | Font Locations.  Add the appropriate folders where you want Distiller to look for fonts.  Supported fonts are Type-1 (.PFA, or .PFB, with corresponding AFM, PFM, INFs, etc.), TrueType (.TTF) and OpenType (.OTF).  .FNT is a bitmapped font, still used, but becoming less and less supported.  Depending on the internal structure it may or may not work.

Distiller will grab what it can find in all the identified Font Location directories when the PostScript code is run through.  However, it cannot search sub directories!  So, put everything in the same horrendously organized folder for it to work.  The first time you add the folder Distiller will spin the icon a bit while it adds them to its database.  It will also regularly re-scan the folder(s) to keep things up to date.

So, think .. what changed between last night and now?  I'm not trying to be rude, but 'nothing' is not an appropriate answer.  Something changed.. otherwise it would still be working.  Unfortunately, the 'nothing' you are thinking of (it couldn't be that) may be the something that did it. 

Good luck!

Doug

[Test Screen Name]

My advice is to ignore the fonts for now and focus on the unconnected error. I don't know anything about your apps but I do know how to read a Distiller log. You say these files worked before but at what level?

- same EPS, made years ago, now fails?

- unchanged source, newly made EPS?

- changed source (never mind how small the change)?

- new source?

[prman13 · Accepted solution]

My thanks to both Doug and "MVP" for their expertise and good suggestions. As I continued to troubleshoot this problem, what Doug said about what had changed between the time it was working fine and when it stopped working (i.e., failed to embed basic fonts)—this I began to investigate.

The page in question was comprised of two music "systems"—each containing three staves of music: notes, clefs, barlines, texts (molto rallentando, 8va, etc.) and other musical symbols that use their own library, not Adobe-generated fonts, with the exception of the texts.  Acrobat would not generate a pdf from the two systems page, whereas it previously created pdfs from three-system pages with no trouble.

I hypothesized that there must be something on the page that Distiller did not like.  I removed one system and the page worked. I tried converting the other system by itself and it would not allow the creation of a pdf.  I removed each symbol, text or not, from the page to see if I could find the culprit, but regardless of what I removed, the page could not be converted to a pdf, even the three bare staves.  So I concluded that there must be some corruption in the file itself that caused the error.  I ended up creating a new file for the one system in question, combined it with the other one into a new page, and I was able to successfully convert to a pdf and a printout.  Eureka!  It seems these things are very touchy.

[Doug Hanna]

Glad you found where the problem lies.

Just like a great maestro, the finished product makes each of our respective endeavors look easy.

Welcome to the wonderful world of print

If you would like to email me problematic PostScript file, and some info as to what generated it (application name, version, etc.), I can take a look and see what it would take to get it to work.

douglas dot hanna at aon dot com

Thanks

-Doug

[prman13]

Doug—

I would gladly send you the offending file, but when I created the new, working file, I simply overwrote the old one, since I had to keep the same name for sequential collating purposes. It was one out of 123 sequential files.

The other problem is that you will not be able to obtain a copy of WinScore, the program that generated the file. It is no longer commercially available, owing to the death of its creator, Leland Smith. (www.scoremus.com). Besides, professional music engravers have mostly migrated to Sibelius, and academics to Finale—Windows-based typography programs that are updated regularly.

This being said, even if you had my original file, you would not be able to get the WinScore program to troubleshoot the problem, Nor would you be able to understand the program without the hefty, 337-pp. reference manual that came with the earlier DOS-based (Fortran) SCORE program which preceded it. WinScore was only considered a beta version of SCORE at the time of Leland's death, and it has memory leakage and other issues that were unresolved. Unfortunately, these programs required a steep learning curve that only came with daily usage over years of inputting music notation into the computer.

Thanks for the offer though.

Barry K..

[Doug Hanna]

Barry,

Thanks for the reply.  I would have to agree that if the tool is no longer maintained due to a deceased author it can be a bit hard to get it updated.  DOS based FORTRAN code doesn't scare me.  I've been around long enough to have worked with those 2rd generation languages in both command line and batch environments.

If you don't mind, please send me the PostScript anyways... If it's a simple 'tweak' to the code I can show you where/how to edit it and get it to work.  PostScript errors tend to fall into two camps... really, really simple (typos), and almost impossible to fix without rebuilding the driver.

If you need to combine various pieces, I suggest converting them to PDF first, then combining the PDFs with Acrobat (or other tools).

For those following along... here's a Comparison of scorewriters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My son has dabbled with MuseScore (which may not have the more advanced feature set you are needing) to a great deal of success for his budget.

Holler if you have any other questions.

Sincerely,

Doug

[prman13]

Doug,

When you ask for the Postscript file(s), which one do you mean? The corrupt file that could not be converted was overwritten so it would work, as well as the EPS intermediary file. I no longer have a corrupt file.  If you want a working file, I could send one to you. I could send a pdf file, a SCORE file (.MUS), or an EPS Postcript file. If you want one or all of these, I will send. Need to have your email address, however.

Barry K..

[Test Screen Name]

If you didn't keep the corrupt file, and don't have backups, it's unlikely anyone could tell you anything.