How to tell font type and other font questions

Report · Jul 31, 2008

Fellow Framers,

I have some questions about fonts that I'm hoping for some insight into.

1. Paragraph Designer lists available fonts by name, but how to know if they're Postscript or TrueType?

2. How to ensure that Framemaker can access all installed fonts? My psfonts folder includes:

GDI_____.PFB

which I believe is Adobe Garamond italic, yet this font doesn't show up in the list.

3. If a TrueType and Postscript font have the same name, what does Framemaker do?

I'm using Frame 7.2 on WinXP.

Thanks for any info or suggestions!

Jan Axelson

Report · Jul 31, 2008

> 1. Paragraph Designer lists available fonts by name, but how to know if they're Postscript or TrueType?

You can't tell from Paragraph Designer. You need to look at your
installed fonts in Control Panel > Fonts.

> 2. How to ensure that Framemaker can access all installed fonts? My psfonts folder includes:

Framemaker (and all the other programs on your computer) can access
nothing but all of your (properly) installed fonts. There's not a way to
make installed fonts inaccessible.

> GDI_____.PFB

Just because you have a font in your psfonts folder doesn't mean it's
installed. If Adobe Garamond Italic shows in Control Panel > Fonts, it's
installed. If you View Details, you should be able to see if
GDI_____.PFM is really Adobe Garamond Italic. Note that properly
installed Type 1 fonts will show the PFM in Control Panel > Fonts, not
the PFB (although both are really there).

> 3. If a TrueType and Postscript font have the same name, what does Framemaker do?

I'm not sure what Frame does, but you should try really hard to avoid
this situation. It can cause some strange things to happen, like you can
use the font, but when you print Courier gets substituted. Again, go to
Control Panel > Fonts and look through the list. If you have two fonts
of the same name, you should remove one. This most often happens with
Symbol, which comes in Truetype (with MS Office) and Type 1 (with older
Adobe products).

If you've really installed a font (through Control Panel > Fonts) but it
doesn't show in Frame (and you've already made sure you don't have two
with the same name installed), try deleting the font, rebooting, and
then installing it. Before you delete it, make sure you have the font on
its original media so you can install it again.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Report · Jul 31, 2008

Control Panel > Fonts shows 21 fonts whose names begin with AGaramond (all .pfm), while Framemaker's Format > Font (and Paragraph Designer) have just 8. (One example.)

I'm assuming I should see a separate listing for AGaramond italic, and not just select it via Angle: Italic in Paragraph Designer? AGaramond Bold is there, but not AGaramond Italic.

I've found the page below and am working my way through it, but so far no luck:

Certain installed fonts don't appear in the Font menu (Adobe applications)

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=322050

How many fonts is "too many?" Somehow over the years I've collected 1000+ files in the fonts folder.

Jan Axelson

Report · Jul 31, 2008

Jan,

FrameMaker tries to show font families, not fonts. However, it doesn't
always do a good job. Forget what is shows in the font menu, since good
FrameMaker practice is not to use it. Try to use the character designer
which can show all of the fonts using the sorted variations available.
Create a new character tag, for each font you want to use.

Mike

Report · Jul 31, 2008

> I'm assuming I should see a separate listing for AGaramond italic,

Why are you assuming that? Try formatting some text in AGaramond with
Angle set to Regular. Now format some text next to it in AGaramond with
Angle set to Italic. Are you getting true Adobe Garamond italic? (Hint:
check a lower case a or f--the letterforms are completely different.)

Here's how my Adobe Garamond family breaks down:

AGaramond-Regular (gdrg____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-Italic (gdi_____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-Semibold (gdsb____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-SemiboldItalic (gdsbi___.pfm, .pfb)

These four show in Frame as one family: "AGaramond". To get ital, bold,
and bold ital, you have to change angle and weight.

AGaramond-Bold (gdb_____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-BoldItalic (gdbi____.pfm, .pfb)

These two show in Frame as one family: "AGaramond Bold". To get bold,
you have to change weight.

In addition to those six weights (in two families), I also have 13 more
AGaramond expert fonts that would show up in (I think) seven families. I
don't have them installed right now. The important point is that in
Frame's list of fonts you should be seeing a list of font *families*,
not individual variants. You could very easily have 21 fonts showing in
eight families.

This naming system does not always seem logical. Often they're offset:
Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic in the first family and Demibold
and Demibold Italic in the second family. Futura, for instance, has (at
least) 12 fonts in 4 families: The Futura family has Book, Book Oblique,
Bold, Bold Oblique. The FuturaMedium family contains Regular, Oblique,
Heavy, and Heavy Oblique. And there's a Futura Light family (Light and
Light Oblique) and a Futura Extrabold (ExtraBold and ExtraBold Oblique).
Adobe Indesign is much better at listing all 12 fonts, in the proper
order, in one family. But most other DTP apps (on Windows) organize
fonts the same crazy way Frame does.

> How many fonts is "too many?" Somehow over the years I've collected
> 1000+ files in the fonts folder.

In Windows 98 and earlier, it was important to minimize the number of
fonts loaded (and printers installed) because the name and path of each
font went into win.ini, and the OS would only load the first 64 kb of
win.ini. Install too many fonts (or too many printers, because each one
had its own list of fonts) and win.ini would exceed 64 kb and fonts
would just start dropping off the list.

Beginning with Windows 2000, this was no longer an issue. I have well
over a thousand fonts loaded here, although I periodically weed out the
ones I'm not using just to keep the list manageable.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Report · Jul 31, 2008

I think I understand how it all works now. This article was very helpful:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=328508&sliceId=2

especially its link to:

http://www.adobe.com/type/pdfs/Type1-2-OpenType.pdf

Thanks for the comments, which led me on the right track.

Jan