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Question

Indesign not recognizing font by same name as other programs

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 25, 2022
3 replies
3342 views

Hi there,

I am currently running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6, with InDesign cs6.

Our company is beginning to transition from QuarkXpress 2017 to IDcs6, so we purchased the plug-in program Markzware to convert all of our .qxp files into .idml files. Everything is running smoothly for the most part, but indesign is having trouble recognizing our body copy font as the same in quark and indesign. After converting the file, I open the IDML in indesign and the typical missing font error pops up, only the font is not technically missing. On quark, the font is just called 'Stone Serif' but when looking at it through indesign, it's called "ITC stone serif." On my system, however, the font family is just called 'Stone' and each of the different font styles are listed as 'StoneSer ....'

I found an article which states "the font you are looking for, uses a different internal font name than do QuarkXPress and/or InDesign, and the same font, under a slightly different name, will be available, referring to the exact same font" which is exactly the issue I'm having, but the article provides no solution on how to tell InDesign that the font it's reading is the same one as what it says is missing.

I know that it's not a huge workaround to just use the "Find Fonts.." panel in Indesign and update all of our body text, but we are looking to convert hundreds of files from quark to indesign, so I'd like to see if theres a solution/a way that I can tell indesign to read the font in the same way it does for Quark, so that when I open the new .idml pages in Indesign, I don't have to update the font and style sheets every time I open a new document.

It should be noted as well that it is only creating this issue for two of our fonts, Stone Serif and Matrix. It does not say the fonts are missing for other text we use on the page.

Hopefully the screenshots below help illustrate this issue a bit better. I will also link articles I've already looked at so it's known what I've already tried to fix the issue.

https://www.qppstudio.net/webhelp_xv4/fonts-installed-available-to-quarkxpress-and-indesign.htm

- this page technically is referring to their software, but it is where I saw the information about quark and indesign reading separate file names.

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/error-fonts-currently-available-incopy.html

- tried everything from this thread to no avail.

https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-troubleshooting-font-problems-in-adobe-indesign--cms-24652

- tried everything here as well, and what's even weirder, is under the Library/Application Support/Adobe/ folder, I don't have a fonts folder, only the FontsRecommended and FontsRequired folders.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

A bit of history is in order here in regards to the Stone family of fonts which might explain things a bit.

But before that, you are going to a lot of trouble for nothing to do this now because, come January 2023, your existing Type 1 fonts (which is what your Stone fonts are) will no longer be usable, so this whole undertaking will only be good as long as you never need to open these CS6 converted files in anything Adobe releases after January.

Soooo, back to Stone.

When Stone first came out, in the late 80s, it was packaged as all Mac Type 1 fonts were, with a Font Suitcase and the Outline fonts. Within the Font Suitcase, were the Screen Fonts, which contained the spacing information/font metrics. like so...:

So here's where the naming is confusing. Quark (and other programs back then) used the names of the actual Screen Fonts in their menus (the files on the right of my screengrab), which did not include the initial ITC moniker.. that was only on the name of the enclosing Font Suitcase.

Fast forward to now, and modern font managers don't need the Type 1 screen fonts separately anymore... they read the data from them and then store it internally, but now list everything according to the "Family Name" (which in this case is the name of the Font Suitcase.. i.e. "ITC Stone Informal", etc. hence the different naming.

Since this naming is different than what's in your Quark file, even though they refer to the EXACT SAME Type 1 Outline font, it will show up "missing" until you replace it manually.

So, what to do: As I said, it's literally a waste of time to do this now. If you are serious about this, you need to invest in the OpenType versions of Stone (unfortunately, and weirdly, Adobe does not offer them in their Cloud fonts.. you have to BUY them from a reseller like fonts.com. Be warned: it won't be cheap)... and they have been renamed to "ITC Stone Informal Std...", etc etc, but they are a direct replacement for the Type 1 versions.

alywitmerAuthor

Participating Frequently

I created a video illustrating what the issue is at hand a bit better than my typed description:

https://youtu.be/a29GiOtKyHk

jane-e

Community Expert

@alywitmer wrote:
Our company is beginning to transition from QuarkXpress (sic) 2017 to IDcs6

InDesign CS6 (released in 2012) is no longer available for purchase from Adobe. Any copies you find today are likely to be pirated and contain malware. Current plans for legal versions are available through Adobe from this site — click the appropriate tab.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

Jane

alywitmerAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Jane,

Thanks for your response, however, these are not new downloads of cs6, our office macs are from 2012 and have had Adobe CS6 on them for years. We are only transitioning now to allow more cross-compatibility with the elements we create in photoshop and illustrator. These computers are not capable of running creative cloud as they're still running Mojave 10.14.6.

alywitmerAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you so much for your response! I haven't had any luck trying to find anything online about it. Granted, I might not be wording the question properly to illicit the right search results, but most articles I've found just refer me to the find fonts command. I did consider trying to edit the font itself, especially because Adobe will stop supporting type 1/postscript in 2023, but we may just try to re-purchase a license for the stone serif font as opentype, which would fix that issue, but still doesn't quite resolve how to update all the indesign files at once.

You're maybe ten years too late to get good results for your search. I recall a few threads around here that covered this issue exhaustively, but that was maybe two generations of forum software ago, and I don't have the endurance to find 'em in the Internet Archive.

Additionally, the way these errors show up in InDesign changes from version to version. I think that probably the mid-paragraph switch from Stone Serif to ITC Stone Serif was more than likely an artifact of the conversion from Quark to InDesign. If I'm right, you've probably bought the old Q2ID plugin, right? If Markzware was still supporting the tool you're using to do the conversions, then I bet he'd be the first person to ask. We could take apart one of your IDMLs in a forensic manner, and could document exactly what was going wrong, and maybe even come up with a fix.

If I'm wrong, and you've bought a license for OmniMarkz, then contacting Markzware would be your first stop. After looking at your video (switching to ITC Stone in the middle of a sentence?) I feel confident that this is a converstion artifact. If I'm right that you're doing these conversions with the old, no-longer-supported Q2ID tool, or if you'd rather fix this thing yourself than file a bug report, then read on, because I have a few ideas for you.

One thing you can try is to try to make a "new" font. You could take your current T1 Stone Serif and edit its internal name (I think "typographic family name" but it's been a while, and also it's Type 1 so I might have zero memory of how the T1 terminology differs from the TT terminology) to be "ITC Stone Serif." The problem is that it's looking for a font with a different name, right? If the filename and TFN are different, then your OS should see it as a different font. Install both fonts, both fonts get used in a single document, and there's no pink highlighting. This requires no action in InDesign, and so might be the least scripty solution possible.

Alternately, you could use a script. There's lots of options, here. Peter Kahrel made a script that I use regularly (the Manage Missing Glyphs one), where it replaces any text with that pink highlighting with a font specified in the code. We could edit that script to make Stone Serif the default replacement font, and then you could fix any document with a single double-click. That's also the kind of thing that we forums regulars could do for you quite easily, so you wouldn't have to do any script development yourself.

Lastly: I'm not going to dogpile on you with the rest of the fine posters here telling you that your hardware and software are obsolete and unsupported. Hell, I just shut down my Mirror Door G4 after using PageMaker 6.5 (to recover an ancient state form translation). It is true that you should be looking to the future when you're making these plans. If you know that T1 support is going away, and that your old hardware will eventually fail, then you should be thinking on how to migrate your current workflow off of CS6 on Mojave onto something newer & easier to support. At that time, you're going to need to have some kind of script to replace your T1 Stone with an OTF Stone, and Every. Single. One. of your massive archive of documents will require font substitution & human proofing to ensure that changes in spacing or sidebearing or whatever have not caused reflow. You will not be able to automate this procedure (barring development of strong AI). You know it'll take months, maybe years, right? Might you not be best off starting to do this massive conversion project now? Build a workflow that requires a slow-but-steady investment of time & effort in migration of your archive to contemporary formats? Food for thought.

My apologies I was a bit unclear in my video; when I open the converted quark doc, it shows all of the body copy as a missing font. I was the one who changed part of it mid paragraph to show that indeed the two fonts are the same (to avoid the question of if they are slightly different), but forgot to mention that in the video (I had actually done a first video where I showed me change it, but messed it up so I started again).

We purchased the newest Q2ID plugin, and I was in contact with the IT support at Markzware the day we bought it (last Friday) but haven’t heard back after sending in one of the .idml files to inspect. I’ll be following up to see if they potentially have a solution, though I wasn’t sure if they would because it’s moreso related to indesign rather than the plugin, but I’m still holding out hope as this is definitely within their area of expertise. We also had an issue come up after converting the .qxp to .idml, the original .qxp file, when opened, causes quark to crash. But that’s another story for another day.

Because Adobe wont be supporting T1 soon, we’ve been discussing the alternative of just choosing a new body copy font, but from my understanding, we’d then still have to manually use find font to update all of our layouts, and then go in and adjust where needed if anything becomes overset. At that point, we’d probably just look into re-licensing a copy of stone serif that is an OT or TT file. Though, it sounds like by using the script you mentioned, we’d be able to do that pretty easily, whether we continue w/ stone serif, or pick out a new font to use. I’m nominally familiar with scripts (by that I mean I used one script many times, to layout yearbook portrait pages) so it sounds like it may be an easier option.

I’ll admit I’m not as familiar with mac as PC, so when it comes to trying to edit the internal name of the font, I’m not sure how I’d go about that on this computer. When I go into Library>font, the name is “StoneSerif” so I’m not sure where on the computer indesign is pulling “ITC stone serif” from. I know it must be the same file (because the font is only installed once) but I didn’t want to try doing anything to the files since I’m not sure if I’d cause errors in any other place.

When it comes to upgrades and looking to the future, I’m on the same page but unfortunately, it’s hard to get the rest of the team on that page. Not because they don’t want change, but it would be a huge financial investment that I’m not sure they’re ready to make, esp. considering they’re relatively fine with continuing to use quark. Additionally, prior to me starting work there, they had just gone through converting their old quark docs to open in the 2017 version, so I know my fellow production editor is not quite stoked on the idea of doing it all over again, but her and myself both prefer InDesign at the end of the day.

I haven’t worked there very long myself, but I can imagine based on my previous newsroom experience, extra money in the budget is probably slim to none, and since Adobe switched to a subscription model, we would have to pay yearly for at least 4 different CC subs (since it allows for up to 2 devices) rather than being able to buy the program outright. This would also require brand new macs for the office since our version of Mojave isn’t supported by CC. However, like you said, it is something that will have to be done eventually (unless they want to just stick with quark forever). I also knew going into this that regardless of how automated we could make it, it would still take time as we still actively refer back to files from 2019/2020/2021, and the amount of files is definitely up in the thousands, so I may just have to do my best to get them comfortable with the idea of taking the time to upgrade everything to something even better than cs6. Hopefully they'll go for it. Quark is fine, and we could probably upgrade to the 2020 version easier than upgrading to Adobe, but I miss some of those some small features that made things in InDesign so much easier. Thank you so much again though for your timely and knowledgeable responses!

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