what are people doing for fonts?!

[clairec2306082]

With the resent banishment of T1 fonts, how are people dealing with this?

May of the fonts we use are so old and equipment has been updated, we have no log of what foundries they came from.

It is causing some real issues.

Anmy advice would be welcome

[Steve Werner]

I'd suggest going to the website "WhatTheFont" to try to identify your fonts and what foundry they were created by. 

https://www.myfonts.com/pages/whatthefont

[rob day]

Look into a font converter, TransType seems to work very well:

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

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It worked very well for me; when I built this new workstation about a year ago, I deliberately did not install any T1 fonts, but went through my collection and selectively converted the (small number) I wanted to keep using.

[Bill Silbert]

Generally, knowing the foundry that a very old font came from probably won't help very much. If you're trying to get a True Type or Open Type version that will behave exactly the same way as the old one in terms of kerning and baseline alignment then you should know that even if you were able to get a new Type 1 version of your old font that foundry adjustments to kerning and tracking tables over the years since you got the old ones would make even those (now unattainable) fonts rag type very differently. In my experience the same named Open Type and True Type versions of Type 1 fonts will look the same in terms of outward appearance but will always have to have adjustments made for kerning and even baseline shifting. By the way, if you see that text has moved up or down in a text frame after replacement I would recommend shifting the text frame to adjust rather than using the baseline shift options in the Control Panel or Character Panel. Baseline shifted text can become annoying to deal with in terms of selection as the selection highlight does not actually match the raised or lowered text any more.

BTW another site that you might look at for new fonts is https://www.whatfontis.com.

[rob day]

Hi Bill, In my limited testing, TransType worked very well with Type 1 fonts from the 90s. It keeps the font’s metrics and version numer, so there was no need to update via Find/Change Font—InDesign saw the OTF version as the same font..

[Bill Silbert]

Rob, that sounds very interesting. My only concern would be when the InDesign file is collected for output and sent to a vendor for printing. Licensing concerns for fonts mandate that vendors must have their own license for any fonts collected in order to output them legally for commercial use. It might become complicated to expect a vendor to own the same converted fonts. Or for that matter to expect vendors to go through the same conversion process for possibly whole libraries of fonts (especially when they may well have already removed all Type 1 fonts from their systems). Any vendors who would go through the conversion process would probably pass the expense of the time and effort along to their clients.

[rob day]

The designer would have to weigh that against their expense of purchasing a new font and then worrying about hidden reflow problems.

I stopped delivering packaged files 20 years ago—most printers want press ready PDFs with the fonts embedded. I also own font licences from foundries that went out of buisness long ago—Bitstream used to be a client.

[BobLevine]

I stopped delivering packaged files 20 years ago

I stopped using Type 1 fonts around the same time. 🙂

[Bill Silbert]

Unfortunately, in the world of advertising from which I only recently retired packaging original files and fonts is still SOP. This is because usually the clients get the jobs printed wherever in the world they can find the cheapest price and insist on the packaged files rather than PDFs. I know that I can't speak for all advertising but at least in the case of the agency I worked for—which is part of the largest group of agencies in the world—this was the case.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The big-A Advertising world being surprisingly conservative in many ways. 😛

I've mostly worked out in the fringes but I have a long and amusing list of demands from the big agencies and clients. Some clearly go back to the "incompatible files on a floppy" era. 🙂

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

we have no log of what foundries they came from.

By @clairec2306082

That information would be in the font file's metadata — usually part of the copyright information — which you can view in several ways:

• Right-Click and look at Properties or Information or Details
• Use a font manager to delve into the font's details.

Once you know who owns or developed the font,  you can then track down it's current owner. So many of our foundries have been consolidated over the years by Linotype and Monotype. Monotype now owns Linotype itself, as well as Bitstream, URW, and dozens more companies. I wouldn't be surprised if most of your fonts end up now being owned by Monotype.

In one way, that's good because MT probably has created an OpenType version of the font by now.

But on the other hand, you'll pay handsomely for the right to use that font in your work. Be sure to check their licensing requirements and ability to embed the font into a PDF. That's usually in the fine print on Monotype/Linotype's website.