Legacy Frame fonts for newer Frame versions

[Bob_Niland]

Adobe apparently changed the fonts included with the product at some time after FM7.

Of the legacy fonts, we use Courier, Helvetica, Symbol, Times and Zaph Dingbats.

Looking at the FM10 product page FAQ, I see that Helvetica, Times and Zaph Dingbats are not there.

As the company adds seats, they may be Windows, and get FM9 or 10. These folks need to have full import and export interoperability with the FM7.1 seats on Unix.

One of these users just emailed me: hey, I seem to need Helvetica.

My research on this suggests that the safest FM9 or FM10 font solution (until we all move off FM7) is the Adobe "Type Basics" package ($99), which although a deprecated Type1 product, is still available, and contains everthing we need. Can anyone confirm?

I hesitate to suggest using a newer OTF or Unicode font to solve this problem, for several reasons:

• Font names may vary slightly from what's in legacy docs (Helvetica Neue v. Helvetica).
• Even if we don't venture out of legacy Western Latin characters, the OTF and or Unicode versions may have some glyphs not present in the Type1 fonts used elsewhere. And this might cause subtle problems, like just affecting one ligature sort of stuff.
• Using a Unicode font in an FM9 or FM10 document might even cause its MIF to have major issues when back-ported to FM7.

[Mike Wickham]

If you have any PostScript printers, you might look on the installation

disk for those fonts, which normally come with a PS printer. You can

install them from the disk.

Also, be sure to search your drive for the fonts if you have other Adobe

programs, as many Adobe programs store copies of the fonts in a program

subfolder. You can then install the fonts, or just point Distiller

toward that folder to look for them.

[Bob_Niland]

If you have any PostScript printers, you might look on the installation

disk for those fonts, which normally come with a PS printer. You can

install them from the disk.

We have essentially only PS printers (due to pervasive Unix desktops and servers), all networked.

Most are so old that I doubt anyone knows where the driver floppies are.

But some are reasonably recent, so I'll put that question to IT (who have so far not exhibited any font awareness in their responses to the co-worker needing the fonts). We out-source the printer maintenance, so it's possible we simply never had the media for them. Unix doesn't care. Windows PCs just grab the driver from MS or HP.

[Arnis Gubins]

You can set up the [UnknownToKnownFontMap] section of the maker.ini for the Windows users so that the legacy Type 1 fonts are mapped to TT or OTF equivalents for working on the documents. If the the "Remember Missing Font Names" preference is enabled, then the docs can go back & forth between between the Unix and Windows platforms without issues.

FWIW, starting with FM7.1, the standard fonts supplied with FM have been OTF versions of AGaramondPro, CourierStd, LetterGothicStd, MinionPro, MyriadPro, NewsGothicStd, SymbolStd (and some CJK TF fonts).

If you stick with OTF Std fonts, then these are effectively equivalents of the older Type 1s, so the issues that you're concerned about would not be present. Besides, FM never has supported ligatures (without a third-party plug-in) and HelveticaNeue is considered a different typeface from Helvetica (it's completely re-drawn).

[Bob_Niland]

... starting with FM7.1 ...

Thanks. I was thinking it was 7.2 or 8.0. Good know the exact demarc.

FM never has supported ligatures (without a third-party plug-in) ...

We print and pass through manuals from PDFs provided by a subsystem supplier. Based on the PDFinfo, they are using Frame. When we started doing our own printing of them a couple of years ago we encountered apparent missing ligatures on display or print, depending on the system or printer. "fi", "fl" and similar were blanked.

We asked the supplier to tell their writer to embed the fonts, and that solved the problem.

Any idea how those ligatures got into the PDF? Any chance Distiller is doing that downstream?

HelveticaNeue is considered a different typeface from Helvetica (it's completely re-drawn).

You and I know that, but my co-worker does not. And as I look at font catalogs on line, I do not see anything just named "Helvetica". Presumably "Helvetica Standard" shows up in the font menus as "Helvetica". And they'll wonder if "Helvetica Oblique" is the same as the "Helvetica Italic" they need. It would easy for the neophyte to buy something that either had to be remapped in maker.ini, or had undesired presentation even if remapped.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

No version of FrameMaker beginning with FrameMaker 6 through the current release has bundled Courier, Helvetica, Symbol, Times and/or Zapf Dingbats as part of the product. If such fonts were actually installed on your system (as opposed to seeming to be available by virtue of use of a PostScript printer that has such fonts defined as “printer resident” in the device's PPD file, they came from some other source.

Yes, you can still license the old Type 1 version of the Adobe Font Basics package for $99. See http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=934.

However, as someone else indicated, if you have virtually any printer with Adobe PostScript (not “CloneScript” devices), the diskette, CD, or DVD that came with same has the fons you need for installation on your host computer systems. (Even the newest Xerox Phaser laser printers come with such a CD!)

Generally speaking, at some point you are much better off to bite the bullet and move to OpenType fonts as you create new documents and you modify or augment old documents. The longer you wait, the more difficult the transistion will be. And FrameMaker 7.0 is a rather old version of the product, dating back at least 8 to 9 years.

          - Dov

[Bob_Niland]

Dove, thanks for the response.

No version of FrameMaker beginning with FrameMaker 6 through the current release has bundled Courier,  Helvetica, Symbol, Times and/or Zapf Dingbats as part of the product.

I've been using Frame since 3.1, so I might have a dimming recollection of an earlier bundling. I also dimly recall some Usenet grumbling about bundle changes at one point - which grumbling I now cannot find, of course - the past isn't what it used to be, I suppose.

If such fonts were actually installed on your system (as opposed to seeming to be available by  virtue of use of a PostScript printer that has such fonts defined as  “printer resident” in the device's PPD file, they came from some other  source.

On my home PC, there is now no way to determine where some of the legacy Ps Level 2 Type1 font files came from. Could have been ATM, Adobe Type products, Acrobat, any of several Postscript printers, prehistoric Frames, or even other Adobe products. On the Unix systems at work, the FM7.1 and fonts were there when I got there, and the trail of how the fonts got there is equally indistinct. The enterprise has been running Solaris Frame since 5.0 if not earlier.

However,  as someone else indicated, if you have virtually any printer with Adobe  PostScript (not “CloneScript” devices), the diskette, CD, or DVD that  came with same has the fonts you need for installation on your host  computer systems. (Even the newest Xerox Phaser laser printers come with  such a CD!)

This is the direction we will take on resolving the current requirement.

Generally speaking, at some  point you are much better off to bite the bullet and move to OpenType  fonts as you create new documents and you modify or augment old  documents. The longer you wait, the more difficult the transistion will  be.

At some point we'll need to move off Solaris desktops altogether, and onto Win7/64 or Win8/64. The Frame migration, and font aspect thereof, will be least painful part of that process.

And FrameMaker 7.0 is a rather old version of the product, dating  back at least 8 to 9 years.

We have users running FM6. FM5.x is still installed as well, and I suspect some are using it too. Every once in a while, a casual legacy-version user complains that one of my documents won't open. I spin them a MIF.
_______

Then they discover that the content they wanted to swipe is actually an imported object from some other app.