Letters get substituted in InDesign

I've just had a similar problem. Fonts have been problematic all morning (half of Museo Sans, for example, suddenly not active). Anyway, I just went to format some text and saw that the name "John" had mysteriously changed to "Joą". I tried closing and reopening the doc but that didn't change anything. So then I quit InDesign and reopened the document and all was good again.

A bit concerning to say the least!

Alex said: "Thank you for analyzing our problem in such detail! I think the savest thing to do, is to replace our PS Type-1-Fonts."

Hi Alex,

don't know if this is safest thing to do, because we did not find the real cause of the issue.

But yes, the time for PostScript Type-1 fonts is running out as you know.

You said:

"We are using InDesign 16.4 on MacOS 11.2.2

Mac Details: iMac20,2, Core i7, 32GB RAM"

Hm. The info of the PDF says that this PDF is exported from InDesign 16.3.

Did you see issues like that in a previous version of InDesign on the same machine?

I would install InDesign 2020 side by side to 2021 and test with the older version.

Oh, and did you test my suggestion for disabling the Ligatures feature?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Alex,

a possible workaround could be to disable ligatures for the character combination "hn".

This could be done with a GREP Style in the applied paragraph style with pattern:

hn

and a character style where feature Ligatures is disabled.

Just a shot in the dark…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Alex,

thank you for the PDF.

I looked into it with Acrobat Pro DC and yes if I copy the sequence "Ú" to the clipoard and paste it to my text editor on Windows 10 the result is "hn". You might be puzzled a bit that one character could be pasted into two characters, but I guess it's because the Uacute "Ú" could be expressed as two glyphs, the "U" and the acute. But this is pure speculation from my side. So in the end the combination of the two glyphs results in "hn". A mapping error.

What kind of font is this? A PostScript Type-1 font?

Please select the characters "hn" and look the info up with:

Type > Fonts Find/Replace…

Schrift > Schriftart suchen/ersetzen… [Mehr Information] in your German InDesign.

I inspected the PDF code with Acrobat's Preflight function Options > Browse Internal PDF Structure… and it is showing this for "InhalationstecÚik" which reflects what we see on the screen where it is intersting to see that "Ú" is represented by the code \332 :

But this does not explain why I can copy/paste \332 as "hn" to my text editor.

Also did a report on the document's fonts and in the case of "Ú" there is the following information:

In detail:

U+0068

CID 218

006E

and the name of the glyph "Uacute".

Codepoint Unicode 0068 is mapped to "h".

Codepoint Unicode 006E is mapped to "n".

Now it's clear why this glyph named "Uacute" can be copied as "hn" to a text editor.

The error is already done in InDesign.

If that is sporadic it could be the installation of the font in your system or it is the font itself that has issues with InDesign. The export module to PDF is still seeing "hn" in the text, but substitutes this string with a "Uacute" glyph.

An InDesign developer should have a look at this bug.

So do a bug report at InDesign UserVoice, come back to this thread and post the URL of the report.

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs

What also could help, but I'm not sure:

[1] Update your InDesign to version 16.4.0

[2] Uninstall the font from your system and reinstall it.

[3] Also do an export when Suitcase is not installed; just to rule out that Suitcase has an issue with the font and is the cause of this problem.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi defaultmum3gqrsg8zr,

let's begin with some basic questions:

What's your exact version of InDesign?

What operating system? In case of Mac OS what are your machine details?

Further, in case this happens again:

What is the Glyphs panel showing when you select Úi in the text?

Could you share one page of the PDF where you see this?

What is the font?

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

"I've checked the font and there is only one version in our Suitcase."

That might be. But could Suitcase detect fonts in e.g. a Document fonts folder?

Or the Fonts folder in InDesign's application folder?

InDesign will always pick-up fonts from a given Documents fonts folder first; and then look further if a missing font is not found. So one could block system installed fonts with fonts in a Document fonts folder for example.

I only mention this to rule out any "cases"…

I have no idea if you are working with a Document fonts folder.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

What happens if you apply a different font?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )