Type 1 fonts have become invalid/damage

[kajoiner123]

Hello,

We purchased the Agena type 1 font set several years ago and I have been using it for artwork.  I also use Swiss 721 type 1 fonts that came with my copy of Corel Draw 10.  Recently I began having font swapping issues in Corel Draw even though the fonts are loaded (Win XP Pro).  I tried reloading the fonts and received an invalid or damaged font message.  These same fonts work fine on other machines.  Does anyone have an idea on what could have caused this problem?  I also tried reloading the Swiss 721 fonts from my Corel Draw CD with the same message.  It seems the problem is with my computer, but I'm not sure what could be causing this.  I'm not an expert in this so hopefully I have overlooked something.

P.S. the fonts are working on the other computer with Corel Draw

Thanks,

Kyle

[Dov Isaacs]

Since neither Agena Type 1 fonts, Swiss 721 Type 1 fonts, nor CorelDRAW are Adobe products, it would probably be prudent to contact either the font foundries in question or Corel Technical Support to answer your question.

          - Dov

[kajoiner123]

Dov,

I will check with our purchasing department but I'm thinking we purchased the Agenda font set from Adobe. It has been several years so I will need to check. The Swiss 721 fonts were definitely from Corel since I pulled them off of the CD.

The strange thing is that all of the fonts started having problems and I cannot reinstall them on my machine, but they will install just fine on another. I am a little worried that the issue is in my computer but don't know what could cause that issue.

Sincerely,

Kyle Joiner,

Senior Mechanical Engineer

kjoiner@thinkipa.com

[Dov Isaacs]

You never purchased a licensed for a font family called Agenda from Adobe since we never had a font with that name or anything similar to that name.

One thing that could cause Type 1 font installation problems would be any attempt to install Adobe Type Manger to any version of Windows beyond Windows XP 32-bit. That could effectively destroy Window's own native Type 1 font handling.

I have also heard of some instances where a defective video driver (possibly from nVidia) somehow interfered with the Windows internal, native Type 1 font renderer.

          - Dov

[kajoiner123]

Dov,

I'll find out where our purchasing department bought the fonts.

I have not run Type Manager since upgrading from Win 2K to XP

Your mention of the video driver is interesting because I recently installed the latest video drive for my nVidia graphics card. That could be the cause of the problem.

It sounds like the situation might be pointing toward my video driver. I will contact nVidia and see if they have any reports of font problems with their latest version.

Sincerely,

Kyle Joiner,

Senior Mechanical Engineer

kjoiner@thinkipa.com

[Dov Isaacs]

Kyle,

Let us know what you find out. As I recall, the problem didn't affect all nVidia drivers, just some of them for a particular class of video card. The workaround was either yet another driver update or a registry entry. (Thinking about it even more, it may have been that the defective drivers were distributed by Dell or HP for video cards bundled with their systems.)

          - Dov

[kajoiner123]

Dov,

I checked with our purchasing department and you are correct - we bought the fonts from another source. The video card I use is the nVidia Quadro FX1700. I work mostly in CAD so it is pretty good for that application. I also use Shot rendering software on occasion and upgraded my driver based on recommendations by them.

My computer is a Dell T3400 workstation but I upgraded the driver from the nVidia site and not through the Dell site. I'm checking with members of my CAD forum to see if they have run across similar problems since most of them use a similar card. It's amazing how video cards and drivers can cause so many issues not related to them, but I've seen this a couple of times before so you have brought up a very interesting topic and possible source of all of the font problems.

I'll see if I can locate my older driver and roll back to it and find out if the problems go away. I will keep you updated on what I find.

Sincerely,

Kyle Joiner,

Senior Mechanical Engineer

kjoiner@thinkipa.com

[Dov Isaacs]

Glad to know I am not totally crazy (at least not yet).

Also, I have two Dell T5400 workstations that also have the nVidia FX1700 cards. No Type 1 problems, at least with Windows 7 64-bit and previously with Windows Vista 64-bit.

          - Dov

[kajoiner123]

Dov,

I rolled my video driver back to my previous version 169.26 (pretty old) and discovered a few new items:

My screen colors looked different than what I remember them to be on the older driver

The type 1 fonts would install, but when I tried using them in Corel Draw, they would show up in the list (good), but were invisible on the screen (bad)

It may be a case where I should have deleted the old driver when installing the new one, but then I would not have had it available to roll back

Anyway, I reinstalled the newest driver, and the invalid/damaged font message returned.

I sent an email to nVidia regarding this problem and I'm waiting for their response.

This problem does seem to point to the video driver. I'm glad you mentioned it, because I would have been trying a lot of other things and never given the driver a thought.

If I come up with a solution I'll let you know.

Sincerely,

Kyle Joiner,

Senior Mechanical Engineer

kjoiner@thinkipa.com