Hyphen turned into a + sign

[default7xv39hd5qnf3]

Customer sent in a 24-page book in Illustrator, and we had no issues with fonts when exported as PDF. Later some edits were requested, and we failed to notice that all hyphens turned into + signs. Customer is upset, and so far I don't have an answer.

Using Illustrator 26.5, font application is Connect by Suitcase.

Any ideas?

[Monika Gause]

Can you give us some more details? Like:

Which font?

What kind of edits have been made?

Was there a change in the font itself, like: did you switch from T1 to OTF?

Were there switches from Mac to Windows?

Does Extensis have anything on this issue?

[default7xv39hd5qnf3]

The font is Swiss BT, which Suitcase sees as Open Type - TT. What is confusing to me is we were made aware of issue yesterday. When file was opened yesterday, I saw all the + signs where hyphens should be. When I open file today, the reflow of text is different and there are no hyphens or + signs. No fonts were added or unloaded, so I'm not getting consistent results from day to day.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Have you confirmed that the font is permanently Active in the Extensis app? Dont let it auto activate when you open.

[Monika Gause]

Dont let it auto activate when you open.

By @kevin stohlmeyer

Which somehow defeats the purpose of font management.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Working with Extensis for years - it's never been an easy plugin/system to work with. We're looking for alternatives as our contract is coming due.

[Monika Gause]

I haven't been using font management since ATM has been EOL 😄

[default7xv39hd5qnf3]

Thanks Kevin. That seems closest to the solution as anything we've found so far.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

What we've experienced is if you have several "flavors" of a font family (OpenType, TrueType, T1, etc.)

Extensis causes conflicts not recognizing them as different font types. Example - Arial.

We ended up removing all other variations except for the OpenType version to avoid OT Regular autoactivating and TT Italic activating, etc.

We also came up with a core set of application fonts to permanently activate and then grouped project fonts in subsets as needed.

[Mylenium]

Without actual system info, screenshots, info about fonts used, language settings, PDF presets and all that jazz we honestly can't tell you much. To me this sounds like a language issue where an automatically inserted character changes depending on what the system is set to and/ or a font doesn't have the proper glyph, so it gets substituted. that would be the first two things to check.

Mylenium

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This sounds like an encoding issue. Are you sure everyone is using the exact same font/format from the same source. These old Bitsream fonts are "all over the place" these days.

[frigassi]

Hello!

Just to chime in: we're using Connect Fonts by Extensis as well and - by now - Illustrator 27.0

Our Fonts are synced through the Connect Fonts Cloud so everybody uses the exact same Font (Helvetica LT Pro, OpenType - PS). We've noticed the same thing happening: some times hyphens turn to + signs. Funny enough if you close and reopen the file, therefore let Connect Fonts disable and re-enable the font it gets fixed… sometimes. Some other times we have to open and close the same file multiple times.

It's really frustrating because we deal with a large amount of text on a daily basis and sometimes we don't notice the + signs straight away. It's always hard to explain to our clients...w

[Monika Gause]

Then maybe you will have to talk to Extensis about that issue.