Letter "N" symbol instead of hyphen when hyphenation is activated

[Brecht Ameye]

Hi,

We have a problem with a certain file. After first auto activation of a font, the hyphen character is replaced by a "N". When we then close the file, not Illustrator, so fonts stay active and simply reopen the file, the hyphen is displayed correctly.

We use Connect Fonts for fontmanagement, but apparently the problem is on the Adobe side (according to Extensis)

How can we prevent this? 

Kind regards,

Brecht

[Monika Gause]

Do you also have the problem, when you turn off the fontmanagement?

[Brecht Ameye]

Hi,

No, when I install the font locally, I don't have the problem.

[Monika Gause]

In that case the font management could be the cause of your issue.

[Brecht Ameye]

As expected, font management is looking to Adobe where the problem is...

Our plugin is only designed to identify what fonts are used in the document, check if they are available within the available font libraries and then activate them to the system. We do not have any influence on how the fonts are displayed on screen, this is controlled by the built-in graphics engine in Illustrator.

So, maybe a glitch in how Illustrators copes with fonts activated by Connect Fonts?

[Monika Gause]

You might want to report that to https://illustrator.uservoice.com and have the engineers of both parties check that out among them. 

Illustrator has not been working well with font management for as long as I've been using it.

[Brecht Ameye]

OK, just posted the bug on the uservoice website.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[Mike_Gondek]

What font is this, and what language install are you running eg: English USA.  Can we see a screenshot with the "n" selected and character & paragraph palettes expanded?

[Brecht Ameye]

Hi, the font is Gotham Condensed. We're using International English as install language.

[jdanek]

You might be better off activating the font in your font management program > restart > then open Illustrator first ( this should load the font in start-up ) > then open the file.

[Brecht Ameye]

Yes, indeed, this would work. But auto activation is one of the reasons why we use a specific font management tool.

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hello Brecht,

we are having the same issue. (See screenshot).

The font is GothamRounded Book. We where using Fonts Connect, but the same problem exists when using RightFont (and probably others). 

We use the Dutch (Nederlands) hyphenation library.

Closing the file and re-opening also solves the problem because the font already is active when opening for the second time.

This is a font related problem, because this never happens with other fonts. I will also add the font info.

Did you receive any news from Adobe yet?

Kind regards

Peter Hebbinckuys

Belgium

[Anubhav M]

Hello @peterhebbinckuys,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I tried replicating this on my end but was unable to. Would you mind manually turning off the Font Management program and installing the font to check if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hello Anubhav,

Thanks for your reaction.

In deed uninstalling the Font managment, of turning off auto-activation helps for sure.

If you in any way activate the font manually in advance (with or without font managment program), the problem does not manifest itself.

It's always in combination with autoactivation from a font manager.

This also means that if you open the file and the font gets auto activated, and you close and re-open the document a second time, the problem dissapears because the font was activated on the moment that you open the document the first time.

If you want, I can send you the files over a private link for testing.

Kind regards

Peter 

[Srishti Bali]

Hi @peterhebbinckuys

I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the file along with a short video of your workflow. This will help us understand the issue better and find a solution more efficiently. Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

Srishti

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hello Srishti,

Can you provide me a private upload link since our customer would not approve it to share their files publically.

Kind regards

Peter

[Srishti Bali]

You can upload the file to a service like Creative Cloud or Dropbox and then share the download link via DM. To send a DM, just click on my name to open my profile, and you'll see the option to send a message there.

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hi Srishti,

did you receive my files a while ago? Any news/conclusion?

[Anubhav M]

Hello @peterhebbinckuys,

Thanks for confirming. I was unable to download the file using the link provided. Could you kindly reshare the file after making the link public so I can check it with the team?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hello Anubhav,

I sent you a PM.

kind regards

Peter

[Anubhav M]

Hello @peterhebbinckuys,

Thanks for sharing the files. I tried replicating this behavior on my end but was unable to do so.

Would you mind trying to validate the fonts installed on your computer (https://adobe.ly/3T7v5Da) and disabling the Font Manager installed on your computer and then relaunching Illustrator to check if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hello Anubhav,

The fonts get validated without problems. See screenshot.

Disabling the Font Manager helps for sure as I mentioned before. The problems only arise when the fonts are not active before opening the document and when the fonts have to be auto-activated by the font manager.

Greetings
Peter

[Anubhav M]

Hello @peterhebbinckuys,

Thanks for confirming. Would you mind installing Illustrator 27.9 (https://adobe.ly/3X7LlW5) and checking if it helps? Also, try contacting the font manager app's support team and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Anubhav

[peterhebbinckuys]

Hi Anubhav,

Illustrator 27.9 shows the same behavior.

I first contacted Extensis for this problem in 2023 since I presumed it was a problem with their software. After extensive testing the conclusion was that there is no problem with Extensis fonts connect, since they are not performing the rendering of glyphs or texts on screen. I'll copy a part of the last conversations below.
My opinion at the time, was that the problem is caused by a problem in the font. So I was surprised that someone else reported it in the Adobe community

Kind regards
Peter

------------------- reaction Extensis --------------

Hi Peter,
 
Both the Adobe font metadata and our own fontsense metadata show that the correct font is recorded and activated.
 
This is the font info recorded in Connect Fonts for GothamRounded-Book ( note the fontsense ID number )
 

Name: Gotham Rounded Book
PostScript Name: GothamRounded-Book
Family: Gotham Rounded
Styles: Book, Rounded
Classification: --
Type: OpenType - PS
Version: 1.200
Font Sense: 846383218
Foundry: --
Library: Local Font Library
Tags: None
Location: Vault

 
This matches the font metadata registered within the document itself which I quoted in the first reply so there is no question incorrect auto-activation.
 
There have also been reports by other Illustrator users on Adobe's own community forums in regards to hyphens being substituted. You can see similar reports if you search for the term 'hyphen' at https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/ct-p/ct-illustrator?page=1&sort=latest_replies&lang=all&t...
 
So I'd like to re-iterate that our plugin simply reads the font metadata within the document and then searches for the matching font within Connect and activates it to the entire operating system at which point the request is completed. It does not perform any rendering of the glyhs or text on screen.

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @peterhebbinckuys,

Thank you for taking the time to test this under Illustrator 27.9 and for sharing the detailed response from Extensis. We appreciate your thoroughness in investigating this issue. We’ll pass this information along to our product team so they can look into it further. We will get back to you as soon as we have an update.

Best,

Anshul