Inspiring

Answered

end of support type 1 fonts

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 15, 2021
8 replies
6913 views

I have read all replies on this topic but one matter stays unaddressed. I have a massive archive of books of about 30 years. What will happen to text if type 1 fonts are replaced by openfonts. Will text reflow? Because it ill be a massive pain to check thousands of pages to see if text has reflown. I can imagine it will reflow because of added glyphs, changed kerning etc. Anyone any idea? Thanks in advance!

Type

Correct answer Randy Hagan

You may see some different line breaks, depending on how tight your layout is and how large the copy blocks are. If you're one of those folks who applies lots of little tricks to adjust your copyfit in documents — I am not trying to point a finger here; I stand before you guilty as charged — those fixes may stand out and need to be modified as they're found.

If you'd ask me what you want to do, which maybe you have, maybe you haven't, I would do it on a case-by-case basis as I needed to do it. Because you're right: if you're a detail-oriented person with a big bag of tricks, this can, on occasion, be a big pain. If the trip isn't necessary, there's no need to go down that road.

First I'd run a PDF of the existing document, preferably before the currently two year out end-of-support for Type 1 fonts. It gives you the baseline you want, and into the future if you want to re-use the document with no changes it gives you a file where the end-of-life of Type 1 fonts won't apply. If you just need to recycle/reproduce the job you've got, save yourself the effort and work from the preserved-state PDF.
Then I'd open the document and start proofing pages. Primarily you're looking for line breaks, fixes which may have turned into gaps in the copy block, and spots where a formerly perfect cheat turns into layout issues.
If there only a few issues, which will generally be the case, all you have to do is hunt them down and fix them.
If there are a bunch, I'd recommend that you first set all the type back to the style baselines — kill changes based on the style. It's the only way to be sure. That's a lot easier to do, of course, if you made changes based on character styles, not so much if you just set type to be bold, italic, bold italic and/or underlined on the fly. Then, if needed, re-apply your magic fixes for tailoring the document(s) to your standards. Again, this is where that intrinsic PDF with how the document used to be will be your guide.

It stinks to realize this. But the more exacting your standards are, and the more skilled you are in using a variety of tools and tricks to bend InDesign copyfit to your will, the more attention you'll need to apply to make the transition seem seamless. Of course you'll know it's not. But if you do what's needed, at least there will be no evidence at the scene of the crime.

For better or worse, I hope this helps.

Randy

N

ninaschw

Known Participant

Dear Designer,

Yes. As Randy wrote, with new OTF versions of the same or similar fonts, your books will likely reflow. I have the same problem. To my knowledge, you can only completely avoid reflow by changing all the text on every page to outlines, which would hugely increase memory usage. So here is my suggestion. Once you have installed replacement fonts on your computer: in InDesign, globally edit each Paragraph Style (you will need to do this anyway). If the same size of a font is taking up more space than it did before, lessen the text size by .25 to .5 of a point. If it takes up less space, increase the text size by .25 to .5 point. If changing the font size doesn't work: still in Paragraph Styles, try decreasing/increasing the character width by up to 97%, and/or decreasing/increasing the character spacing by as much as 5 units. This should minimize reflow caused by using the new fonts, while staying as close as possible to the original text's size and appearance. Hope this is helpful.

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Your recommendations are solid, though I'd personally suggest starting with reducing/expanding the character width between 97%/103%, simply because it is a finer control than changing character size.

Depending on the font and the copyfit/kerning/tracking of a given font, I've occasionally cheated it as much as 95%/105% with next to no evidence of the crime. But that's pushing it. Since you're changing it in global terms across the paragraph style as it's used throughout the document, a sharp art director would need a type spec book to catch you at it.

Randy

N

ninaschw

Known Participant

Saving old documents as pdfs won't solve the problem of Adobe's yanking older fonts away either, since those fonts will not APPEAR correctly IN, nor PRINT correctly FROM, those very pdfs. And it isn't just Type 1 fonts Adobe is taking away; those are gone, but Adobe is also yanking older OTF fonts. Today, Jenson Pro Italic otf wouldn't appear in Extensis Connect or FontBook. As an Adobe subscriber, I have free access to similar fonts (and Google offers similar OpenSource fonts). But I had to stop work on a project that used the italic font in a block of text, download a similar font in Roman, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic, reflow the text, and redo a Photoshop background that had to fit the new text. This is not a technology issue. Designers should have the right to continue using digital properties that they own; and the entities that purchase their work should have the right to reuse and reprint it without further payment to Adobe.

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

That would be correct.

If you can't use Type 1 fonts in your old documents that you open after Adobe deprecated Type 1 font support, you won't be able to use them to create new PDFs with those deprecated fonts.

However, if you had created those PDFs before Adobe stopped support of Type 1 Postscript fonts, they would still be usable. Legacy PDFs that were created back then are still fine. Which is why I, and others, advocated that if you wanted to have usable PDFs after the end of Type 1 support, you needed to create them before the deadline.

I can't comment on your feelings about this issue, except to say that lots of companies draw a line at accepting old software. I have a trusty old Mac Mini that is 13 years old, that will not support Adobe CC applications beyond CC2013. It won't support updates to Office 365 either. Which is why I have a new Mac Mini today, and my trusty old one has been relegated to my office music jukebox.

Time goes on, and sometimes old technology doesn't get to continue the trip.

Sorry for your loss,

Randy

K

Kathleen22662965p9e0

Participant

Does Adobe expect everyone to PAY for replacement typefaces and/or typeface conversion applications?

D

David22503752td9p

Participant

I see this question goes unanswered. Adobe, please answer. This gets at the heart of whether you are "kind and respectful" ( your community guidelines ) of the creative professionals that depend on and pay for your applications for their lively hood.

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

This is a user-to-user forum, and while Adobe staffers may occasionally review these, most all the folks here can't answer for Adobe Systems. In short, We can't answer for them; we can only offer help for the options you have to consider.

I appreciate your anger, honestly. And if you go through the various answers provided here, you may find a course of action that works for you. But nobody here can speak for Adobe Systems.

It's what we've got, and I hope this forum can help you past the problem.

Randy

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

To be fair, text reflow issue has plagued the industry from the beginning. Even with PageMaker, every new version had much improved text handling algorithms. For those old enough to rememeber, the jump from PM4 to PM5 was particluarly jarring. 😉

D

designer1955Author

Inspiring

and verntura, quark had the same issues. I was just very glad Indesign did not have this problem very often. I work as a designer from 1990 with my own company. So yeah i remember:-)

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Yes there will be some reflow.

As suggested, keeping a clean PDF now will help in the future.

The easiest way I found to deal with it is to create a new PDF with the replaced OTF fonts (fortunately, with some exceptions, Adobe's own OTF match their Type 1 almost exactly in metrics).

Take the old and new PDF into Acrobat and do a Compare Files, with "compare text only" unchecked. It will be the quickest way to identify where pages "go wrong" and be quicker than doing a page-by-page compare yourself.

I recently did a 200 page book and, thankfully, only 6 pages in the entire thing changed.

Your mileage may vary.

rob day

Community Expert

fortunately, with some exceptions, Adobe's own OTF match their Type 1 almost exactly in metrics

Hi @Brad @ Roaring Mouse, from my limited testing it looks like TransType keeps the font metrics and the version number, so there shouldn’t be text reflows with converted fonts. Determining whether the conversion is a copyright violation will be the real problem.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Long time TransType guy here! I haven't used it much in recent years, but recently updated it to convert some older non-Adobe fonts (like old Letraset or ImageClub fonts!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi together,

what we also should keep in mind are workflows that require the usage of EPS files where the used fonts are not embedded in the files. I'm just looking into MathType eps code where two fonts are declared as:

%%DocumentNeededFonts: SymbolMT
%%+ DINOT-Light

Would a future InDesign still be able to access them if they are installed in the system?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

D

designer1955Author

Inspiring

As far as i understand is that newer versions of Indesign will stop recognising type 1 fonts. Older version will still recognise. So we need to keep Indesign 2021 at hand.

rob day

Community Expert

There are a number of Type 1 font converters available. If it isn’t a violation of the font’s EULA check out FontLab’s TransType. I’ve tested some old documents with Type 1 fonts converted, and there was no reflow or need to replace the fonts. The converter keeps the version number, so it was just a matter of making the conversion, and activating the converted font. See this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/ende-der-unterst%C3%BCtzung-f%C3%BCr-ps-type-1-fonts/td-p/11874314

D

designer1955Author

Inspiring

Thnaks Rob, that might be an idea for older docs! Great idea!

R

Randy Hagan

Correct answer

Community Expert

You may see some different line breaks, depending on how tight your layout is and how large the copy blocks are. If you're one of those folks who applies lots of little tricks to adjust your copyfit in documents — I am not trying to point a finger here; I stand before you guilty as charged — those fixes may stand out and need to be modified as they're found.

If you'd ask me what you want to do, which maybe you have, maybe you haven't, I would do it on a case-by-case basis as I needed to do it. Because you're right: if you're a detail-oriented person with a big bag of tricks, this can, on occasion, be a big pain. If the trip isn't necessary, there's no need to go down that road.

First I'd run a PDF of the existing document, preferably before the currently two year out end-of-support for Type 1 fonts. It gives you the baseline you want, and into the future if you want to re-use the document with no changes it gives you a file where the end-of-life of Type 1 fonts won't apply. If you just need to recycle/reproduce the job you've got, save yourself the effort and work from the preserved-state PDF.
Then I'd open the document and start proofing pages. Primarily you're looking for line breaks, fixes which may have turned into gaps in the copy block, and spots where a formerly perfect cheat turns into layout issues.
If there only a few issues, which will generally be the case, all you have to do is hunt them down and fix them.
If there are a bunch, I'd recommend that you first set all the type back to the style baselines — kill changes based on the style. It's the only way to be sure. That's a lot easier to do, of course, if you made changes based on character styles, not so much if you just set type to be bold, italic, bold italic and/or underlined on the fly. Then, if needed, re-apply your magic fixes for tailoring the document(s) to your standards. Again, this is where that intrinsic PDF with how the document used to be will be your guide.

It stinks to realize this. But the more exacting your standards are, and the more skilled you are in using a variety of tools and tricks to bend InDesign copyfit to your will, the more attention you'll need to apply to make the transition seem seamless. Of course you'll know it's not. But if you do what's needed, at least there will be no evidence at the scene of the crime.

For better or worse, I hope this helps.

Randy

D

designer1955Author

Inspiring

Terriffic answer Randy. I am a user with strict disciplin. All text has its appropriate style. But i have over 5000 books of usually 500 pages, that are often reprinted... I was afraid of this. Since a reprint fee is low. This will take a lot of effort to repair. But he, we will do it! Thanks for your excelent reply!

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

I'm glad I could help.

I know it's not the most encouraging answer, but I think it's an honest one.

The good news is, though, that an unchanged reprint will only be a PDF copy to your printer(s) away. As long as you have that clean PDF, there will be no big issue for reprints without changes. Revisions will open that can of worms, but even then you may get away with only a few minor fixes. Or not. But we can only hope, right?

Can I ask a favor of you? Could you please mark this thread with a Correct Answer? That lets the moderators know to archive this, so it'll be available for folks with similar issues, and it'll be listed in the Related Conversations panel for others looking for help. And if you have any other issues in the future, please feel free to come back here and ask for help. There are lots of sharp folks around here who can lend a hand.

Hope the day treats you well,

Randy

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