Minion vs. minion pro

Question

Would someone be able to clarify me what/if there is a difference between minion pro and minion fonts? I am currently using InDesign CC 15.1.2 and have minion pro installed. When I open documents from my colleague, the text is highlighted pink indicating that I don't have "minion" font and suggests I replace it w ith "minion pro."  We both have 2017 MacBook Pros and the only difference colleague is that she using indd version 15.0.1. When I go to Adobe fonts, there is no Minion, only Minion pro and Minion 3. I searched the web, and found Minion available from a 3rd party for $600. My question is, are they the same? And if so, why am I getting the replace fonts warnings and highlighting? Has anyone else encounteres this with minion or any other font family? See screenshot.

Jeff Witchel, ACI · Accepted Answer

I believe the major difference is that Minion is a Postscript font and Minion Pro is OpenType. The OpenType version will have a much larger character set (more Glyphs to choose from), but it's basically the same typeface.

Dov Isaacs · Answer

Confirming Jeff Witchel's response. The original Minion fonts were release as Multiple Master Type 1 fonts nearly 30 years ago. They were replaced by the Minion Pro OpenType CFF fonts at about the same type as InDesign 1.0 was released, over 20 years ago.

Adobe has not directly licensed the original Minion fonts for well over 15 years.

And quite frankly, you shouldn't count on ongoing support for the original Type 1 fonts, Multiple Master or otherwise, going forward. Photoshop already dropped support for those Type 1 fonts.

In terms of compatibility, in addition to the possibility of some reflow issues, you may also have issues if you use ligatures, swash characters, small caps, old style figures, and other symbolic characters. Minion Pro, like other OpenType fonts, is Unicode based and all the special characters are in the base font; they are not accessed from special auxilliary fonts.

In terms of Minion 3, it is a slightly updated version of Minion Pro that was released relatively recently. Note that Minion 3 does not have any of the “condensed” widths that Minion Pro does. Both font families are considered “current” by Adobe.

What I would avoid is a font named Minion Variable Concept. It is an OpenType Variable CFF2 font with a relatively small character set. Designed to demonstate the features of OpenType Variable fonts, neither OpenType Variable fonts nor InDesign nor the rest of the workflow tools are quite ready for prime time at this point.

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