Adobe Font Name Changes...

[JustBob]

Hello,

I have several Adobe fonts on my system with slightly different names. I tried to see which is newer by looking at Creation and Modification dates without much success (details too lengthy for here).

Can someone please tell me which would be the newer version by the font name? Here is an example:

MinionPro-Regular.otf

MinionProRegular.otf

Which would be the newer font? Does anyone know the major differences between these fonts? Why was the name changed? Any reason to keep the older fonts? Restrictions on the new fonts?

Should I wait for CS5 before making changes to my fonts? I mean, could we expect more changes or updated fonts. (I know, you can't tell me much about that; but, there may be a history that would yield a probability...)

Thank you!

[Guest]

Bob:

I cannot tell you for sure, by my Adobe fonts that came with CS4 have a hyphen in the font name, so I suspect those with the hyphens are the newer versions.

If you are on a PC, download and install MIcrosoft's free Font File Properties Extension from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=25A5E8C5-4A5A-4619-A856-6005B1F83235&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

Then right-click on the font files, choose Properties, and click on the Features Tab. That will tell you the number of glyphs in the font file. Whichever of your similar font files has the larger number of glyphs is almost certainly the newer, since Adobe normally does not remove glyphs when it revises fonts.

John Hoffman

[Dov Isaacs]

Note for the record that the Microsoft Font File Extension package only works on 32-bit versions of Windows. Microsoft's font group does have one that works for 64-bit Windows, but they are not making it publicly available (I have no idea what reason they have for not doing so).

         - Dov

[JustBob]

Thanks Dov,

I'm on a Mac, though... I guess the shareware Font Examiner will do that...do you happen to know if Apple's Font Book would be of any use in this regard?

[Dov Isaacs]

I am not familiar with that product. I do recall that Font Book does show at least some of the font attributes.

          - Dov

[MiguelSousa]

On a Mac, to get the version number of a font, just select the file and do "Get Info" (Command+I) to get a window similar to this

which will allow you to compare version numbers. In this case, the MinionPro-Regular.otf font file I selected was version # 2.030.

AFAIK, all the MinionPro-Regular.otf font versions released by Adobe had an hyphen in their name.

[JustBob]

Hello Miguel,

Well, I am glad you asked. Here is a sample set of duplicate fonts:

MinionPro-Bold.otf

MinionPro-BoldCn.otf

MinionPro-BoldCnIt.otf

MinionPro-BoldIt.otf

MinionPro-It.otf

MinionPro-Medium.otf

MinionPro-MediumIt.otf

MinionPro-Regular.otf

MinionPro-Semibold.otf

MinionPro-SemiboldIt.otf

MinionProBold.otf

MinionProBoldCond.otf

MinionProBoldCondItalic.otf

MinionProBoldItalic.otf

MinionProItalic.otf

MinionProMedItalic.otf

MinionProMedium.otf

MinionProRegular.otf

MinionProSmbd.otf

MinionProSmbdItalic.otf

Now, let's Get Into on the two Minion Pro Bold fonts:

As you can see, the version numbers of both files are the same; but, the Created and Modified dates are different. MinionPro-Bold's Creation date is earlier than MinionProBold's; but, it's Modified date is later. Is the Modified date the date it was installed on this computer? Probably not, because MinionProBold's Created and Modified dates are both the same.

Adobe really shouldn't do this, IMHO; but, if they are going to change the names of fonts, I think they should make a big effort to make sure everyone knows and tell us why they are doing this and if anything in the file has changes, or just the name. I don't know, maybe they did and I missed it. And, they need to make it easy to identify which is the latest version, IMHO.

[MiguelSousa]

Do you know where the files without hyphen in the name came from? Can you tell if they were installed by an Adobe app? Which one?

I can assure you that the names of the fonts were not modified. The correct and official font file names of Minion Pro version 2.030 (and previous versions) are the ones with hyphens. If you have other files in your system it's because something else happened, and I'm interested to know what exactly.

[JustBob]

I believe all these "duplicate" fonts came from Adobe. I've been using InDesign since version 1.0. Most of these fonts came with CS 2, I believe. CS 3 was mostly a duplicate of CS 2, although there may have been some updates, probably to include the Euro sign. I recently installed a trial version InDesign CS 4, and this is probably where the "duplicate" names appeared.

[MiguelSousa]

As I said, the fonts that we officially released have a hyphen in their names. Therefore, my suggestion is that you delete the files that do not have the hyphen.

If you see those files again, please try to find out what process created them and report back on this thread. I'll then use that information to follow up with whatever team and log bugs if necessary. Thanks.

[JustBob]

Hello Miguel,

Looking at the screen shot above for MinionProBold.otf, the copyright is attributed to Adobe Systems. I would bet that Adobe originally released the fonts without the hyphen (my preferred choice, BTW) and later changed to a hyphen version.

I will report back if I learn anything, though...

Thank you,

Bob

[MiguelSousa]

The first release fonts of the Minion Pro family (OpenType format) were made in November of 2000. The version number of these fonts is 1.011. All font files have a hyphen in their name. The font names have not been changed since then.