Cleaning out old fonts (and languages)

[Thomas Michanek <tmi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All framers,

Rhea Tolman had a problem with cleaning out old fonts in a
document, after that Frame complained about "unavailable fonts".
She couldn't find the fonts that Frame claimed were there
anywhere in the document, or the formats using these fonts,
except when searching in the MIF file. The fonts persist in the
document even after changing the format definitions and applying
Update All.

I have encountered the same problem and reported it to Adobe
back in July 1996. It has the bug number 162492. I will now try
to explain this bug...

Rhea said:
> All occurrences of these tags/fonts are in tables. As far as I can
> tell, they're being used to create "ghost" columns. I've got
> three-column tables that have 8 or more columns defined in the
> MIF! And the ghost columns have, of course, the ghost tags and
> ghost fonts. I'm feeling pretty haunted 'long about now. 
> These ancient tags and fonts seem to be locked away in parts of
> the table that don't really exist.

This is what happens: A table format in the table catalog defines
what paragraph formats to use as the default formats for each
column in the table and for the table title. Frame uses this when
a new table of the format is inserted. (This information is stored
in the table catalog, but cannot be seen in the Table Designer; 
see page 117 in the 5.5 User Guide.)

If you in some way create a table that contains an override in
these *default* paragraph definitions (compared to the table format), 
these paragraph definitions are then stored in the table itself.
In MIF, you will recognize this as:
 <Tbl 
  <TblID n>
  <TblTag `T'>
  <TblFormat 
   <TblColumn 
    <TblColumnBody
     <PgfTag `P'>

This is the definition of a table of the tag 'T' with an override
consisting of the paragraph tag 'P' as the *default* tag for one of
the columns in the table. If you're unlucky, this paragraph definition
contains an override in turn which may specify a font or language name:
     <PgfTag `P'>
     <Pgf 
      <PgfFont 
       <FFamily `Foobar'>
       <FLanguage Swahili>

Don't ask me how such a double override is created, but once it's
there, it *cannot* be deleted using Frame itself. No matter if you
Update All formats, or Import Formats with Delete Overrides, these
double overrides within tables persist. The *only* way to get rid
of them is to edit the MIF, open and resave as binary. (One clue
to the Update All behavior can be found in page 148 in the 5.5 User
Guide, but the Import Formats behavior cannot be explained.)

Personally, I cannot see the reason why a table *instance* should 
store the definition of the default paragraphs, which are already
stored in the table format in the catalog, but that is what happens.
I repeat that there is no way to get rid of overrides to these
definitions without direct editing of the MIF file. One caveat
though: I haven't tried version 5.5.6.

I hope this helps people who get stucked with unavailable fonts
or languages. Rhea, feel free to report this to Adobe and refer
to bug #162492.

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Thomas Michanek, Documentation Manager, Telelogic Tau
Telelogic AB, Teknikringen 9, SE-58330 Linkoping, SWEDEN
PHONE/FAX:  +46 (0)13 200656/212166
EMAIL:  mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telelogic.com
WWW 1:  http://www.telelogic.com
WWW 2:  http://hem1.passagen.se/framers
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