Fonts That ID & QX Can Both Access

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

We have a so-called Pre-Press office and the guys are confused about where to put fonts they use for IDCS and QXP documents. I tried to introduce Font Explorer but they find font managers too complicated.

What they want to do is find which font folder to place document fonts that IDCS, Adobe Acrobat and QXP could all access. Is this possible in OS X? They are all using Tiger and G5s.

Thanks

P.S. I wish to add that I've read some references about fonts and I find the link below —— as posted in a previous topic in this forum —— and found it to be a recipe for disaster. It tells you to leave only certain fonts from the folder called System, and since the recommendations are based on Panther, a Mac running on Tiger could get in trouble. Although I'm no stranger to font management, I tried doing what the site mentioned (for curiosity) and it only brought problems to one of the G5s which I experimented on. I'm mentioning this as a precaution to others who may be led to the site.

This is the link: <http://software-robotics.com/docs/PDF-X-Robot_Font_Management.html>

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

You need to you font management sw. Nothing complicated about learning to use font management. Dumping all your fonts into system folder will bring your system to a crawl.

[Phil_Taz@adobeforums.com]

I agree with Richard that there is nothing complicated about font managers, but after many bad experiences with various font management applications, I gave them up about 4 years ago and have never looked back.

I work in prepress in many applications and I have *not* used a font manager or had any system problems related to fonts in that time. I have found a couple of bad fonts, but they caused problems in the font managed machines also.

DO NOT dump thousands of fonts into your system fonts folder, manage them in and out as needed, it's not hard. I described the method step by step about 2 or 3 months ago on this forum....It has been totally successful in all my systems up to my current one (10.3.9).

[Eric_@_MCA@adobeforums.com]

Which Quark XPress? If it's XPress 6+, just go download Font Explorer from Linotype. It's free, it looks like iTunes for fonts and it seems to work quite well.

The only downside to it is that it completely ignores Classic. So if you need fonts to be available to XPress 4 or 5, then you need to consider a font manager that talks to Classic too.

By the way, when dealing with font manager, I always turn off autoactivation (in Font Express, just don't let it install the plugins). Font activation is worth more trouble then it's worth, imho, but your milage may vary.

[Heather Bell]

Hmm, confused where to put fonts?
Alright, if they really don't want to use a font management program, then don't, just don't use more than 100 active fonts. There is really no need for more fonts than this. Half of today's fonts look exactly the same with a different "R" or a 9 with a descender below the basline... things that can easily be accomplished with a glyph, or modification. If a job comes in that requires an specialty font outside your standard, save it to the same archival folder as the job it's used for and activate and deactivate as needed. If your "pre-press" people have a difficult time with font management programs, for gawdsake don't let them touch any of the actual system folders or rearrange the font folders. Lock the folders, make them invisible, and require a password, if font management is too much for them, then they don't belong anywhere near anything on a mac they may actually be vital. They'll just have to use fontbook that comes with operating system, when turning fonts on or off. It moves them, when opening a font for the first time just make a copy and put it on the desktop, open from there, it puts it where it wants it, when done go back and disable it. When you need to enable it again just find the copy where fontbook decided to file it. It's not ideal, it's a PIA program, and it is very annoying, but that's what comes of not using a real font management program.
I must admit, this is a bit terrifying to hear about a pre-press department, this is kind-a their job, they should be answering this question for somebody else, like a customer, not asking it.

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

Richard,

I've read not a few participants in this forum (Phil Taz included) saying you need a font manager if you are dealing with thousands of fonts. These guys I'm talking about use less than thousand fonts (the maximum I've noted is 462).

Phil,

In that topic titled Adobe should make a font management program you said:

I generally activate clients files in collections of 1-20 fonts at a time,
multiplied by maybe 5 clients at a time so a couple of hundred fonts active
at any one time.




How do you "activate" in collections of 1-20 fonts at a time?
Where do you place those fonts?
Please note that the fonts needs to be accessed by IDCS, Acrobat and QXP6.5.

I must admit, this is a bit terrifying to hear about a pre-press department,
this is kind-a their job, they should be answering this question for somebody
else, like a customer, not asking it.




That's true. We also have a stupid technician who initialized a malfunctioning G4 and the user lost plenty of important data. Fortunately, my Data Rescue software managed to recover some.

[Phil_Taz@adobeforums.com]

Heather, in defence of prepress people, they get told that font managers work well and then when they follow the instructions they find that they get a lot of errors and problems and the font managers dont work well. Using a font manager in prepress is different to using a font manager as a designer also.
Prepress gets given all kinds of crap from the various levels of designers like modified fonts with the same name as the source font and badly made custom freebie fonts off the net.
Personally, I am glad to hear a prepress person here asking questions, where else are they going to learn? This is where I have learnt a huge part of my general knowledge. You must only come here to answer questions do you?

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

One of these pre-press guys fell in love with Font Explorer that I installed in his G5. However, he gets in trouble whenever they get a job using different fonts.

[Phil_Taz@adobeforums.com]

Arnold, you posted while I was responding to Heather....
I activate fonts this way:

Before this job, I created an alias of the /library/fonts folder and added it to the favourites panel at the left of a finder window, I created a 'fonts inactive' folder and added a favourite of that also.

1. When starting a job, I create a fonts folder containing the fonts for that particular job or client named '32111 freds fonts'.

2. Drag/copy the job fonts folder to the alias of the library/fonts

3. When job done or fonts no longer required, click on fonts alias in favourites panel at left of finder window to open fonts folder, drag job font folder to 'fonts inactive' shortcut.

Done.

If job comes back, click inactive fonts alias and move fonts back to fonts favourite. etc etc

I have had a thousand fonts active like this when searching or testing but normally 50 or so is common and I NEVER have font problems except where the font itself is broken.

There is a lot of font voodoo out there, but if you use this method and trust it, you wont regret it. You need to trust that if a font does not work it might actually be broken.

In case of font problem, restart apps, run cron scripts, disk permissions repair, cocktail or whatever you prefer, retry the font and if it still doesn't work, it is broken.....replace it.

Hopefully, I have done this link properly....

<http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1aJQkJ2GH96rnE0lkAHkmQIlJR4Af81>

[Heather Bell]

Not trying to be insulting guys, I am the graphic designer, prepress department (all of it, that's me), web master, CSR, order processor, network manager, and a host of other things for my company. I was not trained thoroughly in all these rolls at first. I understand asking questions. I do not understand anyone in prepress NOT wanting a font management program, for EXACTLY the reasons you noted. If someone sends me something, no path conversion, and fonts attached, I look at the font name, if I have a "similar" font, I turn it OFF, turn ON the customer's font, work the job, and then disable and turn mine back on. I prefer paths or PDFs, I hate getting Word Docs where you don't even know what font has been mysteriously replaced, and I therefore spend a lot of times instructing customers how to imbed fonts in Word. With all the chaos that goes on in prepress, I really can't begin to fathom not wanting font management, or thinking that playing with the font folders manually would somehow be easier, that's all I'm saying.

[Marco_A_SantaMaria@adobeforums.com]

I generally place my fonts in the HD/Library?Fonts folder
But I do use a Font manager, FR—so far stil worling for me—and the folder containing the data is in HD/Library/Managed fonts Folder (this is a custom folder).
Here is a page from Apple explaining about the it fonts folders and how they work.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106417>

[Phil_Taz@adobeforums.com]

No insult perceived, Heather, but you haven't quite got the gist of the thread....Many people have trouble with font managers and I am always encouraging people to drop them because they are unnecessary in a prepress environment.

They are useful for managing font collections and conveniently activating and deactivating font sets. Many people have had fonts that wont activate through font managers but will work through direct loading.

As I said, I have been direct loading for years with no problem and it is simple. And it works.

Actually, there is some insult in what you wrote, in the last line 'playing with the font folders manually would somehow be easier'......It is NOT playing, and it IS easy. Maybe prepress would be a little less chaotic for you if you didnt believe there is some voodoo that the font managers are doing, that's all I'm saying.

Thanks for the link Marco, that is a useful reference.

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Phil. That's fairly simple and I guess would work for the guys I'm talkin' about.

Marco, we are aware of what those different folders are supposed to be (thanks just the same for the link). I remember you were among those who coached me about it during those Jaguar days. In our office where most of our page makers/designers use InDesign 2 (we've long dumped Quark X since we plunged into the OSX world), there were instances when Indy won't recognize some fonts. We have long resolved that by using a solution suggested by some gurus in this forum, and that is to place the fonts into the Indy font folder. And for those who need to use Acrobat, we simply place the required fonts in the Adobe font folder. But when you are also using Quark Xpress, you may not place those fonts inside the InDy or Adobe folders. I don't use QXP, that's why I'm asking how others do it.

As for Heather's concern, let me say that people have different tastes, comfort zones, or whatever you may call it, and there are instances when you can't convince others to a style or technique even though it is convenient and works quite well to you. Part of my job is to simplify work for our writers, copy editors and editors, page makers and designers, all of whom won't spend a minute visiting this great forum. Among the things I've done that everyone liked are the customized keyboard shortcuts for InDy and macros for MS Word. Anything complicated don't get their votes.

[Marco_A_SantaMaria@adobeforums.com]

The main folder I would use for Manual activating and de-activating fonts would be the HD/Library/Fonts Folder. Like most have said, having an Folder that would have an Alias on the desktop for fast adding or taking out from that locations.
Good luck to all with your font proccess. The good thing for me is that now I Know more way on how to activate fonts if the case comes to be.
Thanks!

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

Not to sound like a broken record but FAP works flawlessly for me. it activates the fonts that are needed and gives me a way to view fonts that are not active. I have over 4500 fonts.
It just works Much better than FEX.

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

I've gone off on FEX myself. FAP works for me. Not using a font manager may work for Phil but I've never worked in a studio anywhere that did not use font management.

[Heather Bell]

I've never had a font manager do anything it wasn't supposed to, or not do it either. Anytime I've had problems it was the font, only screen version provided etc. What exactly are the problems people have with font managers? Are you saying there are fonts that worked when placed in font folder but the manager wouldn't open? I'm curious. Is this something that happens with versions, or certain types of fonts etc.? I use Adobe Type Manager on the PC and in six years it's never failed. Mac G5 is fairly new and I haven't decided on a new font manager, so I've just been using font book, which I'm not terribly fond of in comparison, but works. I have probably well over three thousand fonts, I only keep my standards active, and then activate and deactivate for certain jobs that use fonts like Harlow. If I ever get any help in the type department it would also be good to know what the complications are people find with font programs, problems that may be encountered I've not seen to warn about in training etc. And I apologize for the "playing" comment, it was a turn of phraze that came out more snide then I had intended.

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

Fonts that don't auto-activate in FAP are few and far between. I use sets anyway for clients and/or jobs. I can't imagine that's there's this huge bunch of fonts that don't load when you open a doc that they were used in.

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

FAP is by far the best font manager. Try the demo see for yourself

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

Perhaps Buko hasn't tried the latest version of FEX.

F - Free and (User-)Friendly
E - Extraordinary or Excellent
X - X-rated (meaning, suited or OSX)

Thank you.