Adobe Illustrator 2020 v24.1.2.408 and Adobe Photoshop 2020 v21.1.2 Issue with axt (arabic) font

[basera.jeddah]

Whenever I'm typing an arabic text with continuation of numbers, it works fine but when I just take another line with number only it get changes to boxes. On Windows Please help me to find out a solution to this problem. I'll be very greatful. Thank you.

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience. You mentioned that this is happening with Illustrator and Photoshop both apps. It could be a font issue as well. Have you tried with different Arabic fonts or just one? If it is a specific font, would you mind sharing the font information so that we can check it out? Please share version of OS as well.
Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Ashutosh

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Kindly delete this post!!

[Zaid Al Hilali · Accepted solution]

Adobe stopped supporting AXT fonts back in May 2012 when adobe released its Creative Suite 6. The AXT fonts were and are still meant to work with QuarkXpress as an Arabic Extension.

You should look for other fonts such as OpenType fonts that are fully supported in Adobe and Microsoft applications. Many axt users don't know that these axt fonts are poorly developed in a sense that when you export/save to PDF, your PDF is not searchable even though the text is live.

[Shola33650878ussw]

Poorly developed or not, the bottom line is that they are good and okay to use. Any smart designer with any desktop publication knowledge should know that writing any PDF file with live fonts in it is a very silly and risky idea. The best way is always to convert them to path before saving as PDF files. It is safe and will not give any production house or printing press font issues at production stage.

Regards.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

As a 27 years designer, and someone who has been teaching Pre-Press standards as well as being a consultant for print press houses and publishing offices, I strongly recommend to keep the font as is ( you called it live) in the PDF so the PDF can be searchable since newspapers and magazines need it to be searchable. Besides, converting your fonts to outline will render your text to gain some weight ie. it becomes thicker, and PDF becomes bigger although this was an important matter a few years ago, however now, file size isn't that much of a big issue. 

Converting all your text to outline in a large document such as a magazine will delay the processing at the RIP.

Any smart designer shouldn't stick to an obsolete technology such as the AXT fonts, as Adobe products will not support it.

[Shola33650878ussw]

Thank you for your response Brother. 
I respect your experience and opinion. But it seems to me you have a thing or two against QXpress. I used to find it boring too until InDesign came to my rescue.

So having started with QXpress back in 1988 as well as some earlier Adobe products, etc, I have learned from experience and could boldly say that having your fonts outlined can help keep your documents from being tampered with at the production level as they won't have to start messing around with your layouts in the name of trying to stay with your fonts choices and I believe it is okay to deactivate the fonts as long as all necessary pre-press cautionary measures are adhered to anyway. I suppose that is the advantage of having Acrobat Pro for pre-press output preparation, etc. Even if your file is big, it will still get to the intended production house all well with a smooth ride. It ain't gonna be going through a floppy drive, will it? So obsolete tech or not, I should have the privilege of not having to change my old layouts fonts every time I have to keep up with some software writers whimsical modus operandi in the name of being in tandem with the so called latest technology that can be very annoyingly dumb at any given day, nor being forced to throw my old artworks away because I am having AXt Arabic fonts in the publication layouts. Is that technology so truly perfect and error free these days? I don't think so.

Regards and peace be with you, Brother.