Frame9: Find/replace missing fonts?

[jaggedpeak]

Search function doesn't seem to work, so I hope you'll bear with me.

When I open a frame book/documents, I get a message in the FrameMaker Console: "The "<foo>" Font is not available. "<bar>" will be used in this session.

Question: In InDesign, there's a font find/substitute feature (I don't recall the proper wording offhand). Is there something similar in Frame 9? (I've looked but can't find one.)

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand · Accepted solution]

Jagged Peak,

There is, this is a new feature in FrameMaker 9. You start by opening the Fonts pod from the View menu, the details are descibed in the online help:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/9.0/Using/WS3311ECE5-10BA-4125-87B4-4C8508D817AA.html

- Michael

[Bob_Niland]

There is, this is a new feature in FrameMaker 9.

Cool. We'll give that a try when next needing to revise or source from legacy documents.

Even though our production environment is FM7.1/Unix, presumably opening in FM9/Win, cleaning up fonts, and re-saving as MIF would allow subsequent opening in FM7.1 (or would it ... I can conceive of [Unicode] font encoding issues arising).

Of course, for those without FM9 or 10, the classical way to handle Missing Fonts was to save as MIF, and use a text editor to perform global search&replace on the phantoms. There are just too many places for fonts to hide to chase them down from within pre-9 Frame.

______

And if the missing font name is not found in the MIF, it's being invoked in an imported object.

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Even though our production environment is FM7.1/Unix, presumably opening in FM9/Win, cleaning up fonts, and re-saving as MIF would allow subsequent opening in FM7.1 (or would it ... I can conceive of Unicode font encoding issues arising).

If you ever need a workflow that crosses the Unicode barrier (between FrameMaker versions 7.2 and 8) you have to test everything, since the additional power of Unicode encoding may introduce stuff, that will get lost in previous versions.

Of course, for those without FM9 or 10, the classical way to handle Missing Fonts was to save as MIF, and use a text editor to perform global search&replace on the phantoms. There are just too many places for fonts to hide to chase them down from within pre-9 Frame.

IMO, the even simpler and almost always good enough method was to just switch off the »Save Unknown Font Names« in File > Preferences before opening and saving such files. This replaces those font references with the default font (which in turn can be set in the maker.ini, if you really need something special).

With three actions File > Open/Save/Close All Files in Book (press the Shift key before clicking the menu) even complete books are cleaned-up quite easily.

- Michael

[Bob_Niland]

If you ever need a workflow that crosses the Unicode barrier (between  FrameMaker versions 7.2 and 8) you have to test everything, since the  additional power of Unicode encoding may introduce stuff, that will get  lost in previous versions.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. We will eventually have to migrate from Solaris/SPARC FM7.1 to Windows/X64 FM9 or later, and I'm thinking that once a document is modified on FM9, it's a one-way trip. Back-porting MIFs without [possibly silent] errors is not assured.

IMO, the even simpler and almost always good enough method was to just switch off the »Save Unknown Font Names« in File > Preferences before opening and saving such files.

Thanks for the reminder. I didn't think of that because I can't fully use the feature because...

This replaces those font  references with the default font (which in turn can be set in the  maker.ini, if you really need something special).

This is Unix, so there is no .ini (and I've hacked maker.ini a few times on Windows). There is some Unix equivalent feature, and for some reason it cannot be modified on the workstation I use. Our Sun-guru IT guy has been unable to figure out why (it doesn't seem to be a simple problem of file permissions). So I'm still using, and cannot change, the start-up defaults of my predecessor here, including font mapping.

[Van Kurtz]

Likely in most cases, it is not necessary to hack the ini file. In my experience, missing font problems are due to the font's being used in some obscure place that is not visible in the final output. Therefore, it is easier to let FrameMaker substitute SOME font to get rid of the problem; generally, I do not care what that font is.

We also include the font in our eps files. So, even legacy illustrations work fine.

[jaggedpeak]

Thanks Michael -- I was fairly sure that I'd seen the solution when I first got Frame9, but when I *needed* it, had no idea where to find it again (and since I'd just used the InDesign feature, I thought perhaps I was 'misremembering').

Colour me happy!