RE: cleaning out old fonts

["Snavely, Deborah" <dsnavely@xxxxxxxx>]

Rhea,

>What to do? I can't search for either the tags or the fonts in the
>native FrameMaker file, because they're not accessible in that
>form. The MIF file is intricate, and I'm not at all confident that
>I could remove the unwanted font calls without munging the file.
>And, there are a LOT of them. These are old docs. They've been
>around.
>
>FWIW, I'm using FrameMaker 5.5.2 on NT4 with Adobe Type Manager
>Deluxe. I think that the docs have always been on Wintel
>platforms.

On any version of Frame (4.0 and up for Mac, 5.5 and up for Windows) that
offers the "Remember Missing Fonts" preference, you can quickly remove any
truly unused font names with the following simple procedure (per file, but
it's fairly quick):

1. With the file closed/ open Frame Preferences and un-check Remember
Missing Fonts. 
2. Open the file or files you want to clean up, respond to the dialog box
about missing fonts, then save and close the file/s. 
3. Open the file/s a second time to check that you do NOT get the missing
fonts dialog again.
4. When you're done with all files (or for the day, I don't recommend
leaving Frame Prefs set this way for any length of time), open Prefs and
check Remember Missing Fonts. 

As always, do one or two test files to make sure this procedure does what
you want. Note that uncataloged paragraphs or characters on reference and
master pages may contain fonts not in your current styles but could cause
some past-style fonts (ghosts, I call 'em) to remain in your document.
Cleaning up document templates to delete such ghosts is a fine art, and an
action I recommend whenever you make major style changes to dept/corporate
docs (you're using templates, yes?). Once ghost fonts and other elements are
gone, there are two or three fairly clean ways to apply the new styles to
older documents being revised or updated. For new docs, it's almost always
easiest to clone a blank template or boilerplate (based on the current
template) and assemble docs from there.

Good luck!

Deborah Snavely
Senior Technical Writer
consulting at Visa
standard disclaimers apply

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