Re: Errant Fonts and Adobe Bashing

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Craig,

You don't say WHICH fonts claim to be missing but I think I
know what is going on ... And it is somewhat confusing as to
under what conditions this is occurring, but let me try to
fill in some of the blanks for you.

(1) Having a PostScript print driver causes any application
(such as FrameMaker) calling the driver to assume that the
PRINTER has whatever fonts are enumerated in the PPD for the
particular printer selected. These can range from hundreds 
of fonts or more down to 0 (yes, ZERO) fonts. There is absolutely
no requirement that a PostScript printer have any fonts although
in reality, all have at least Courier. The Acrobat 4 Distiller 
PPD claims only 6 fonts (4 faces of Courier, Symbol, and 
ITC Zapf Dingbats).

(2) The PostScript print driver's "enumeration" of fonts in the
PPD is only for purposes of allowing the driver to NOT download
such fonts to the printer. The driver also has the metrics for
such fonts.

(3) Unless the user explicitly installs the "base 35" (or whatever
"base" number you want to chose; PostScript 3 printer have 136 faces
resident) on their desktop system, they don't have access to those
fonts for (a) WYSIWYG viewing of the document or (b) access for
downloading to other printers. You explicitly need to install ATM
(Adobe Type Manager) and install such fonts for such on screen and
downloadable to other printers access.

In your particular case, the symptoms you describe sound like you
have a PostScript printer with a driver that advertises 35 typefaces,
but empirical evidence would lead me to believe that you have either
not installed ATM, the fonts, or both. Thus, printing documents formatted
for the PostScript printer to a PCL printer would result in the fonts
missing. You wouldn't get proper WYSIWIG display. Creation of PDF files
requesting all font embedding under Acrobat 4 would fail for all fonts
except four faces of Courier, Symbol, and ITC Zapf Dingbats.

Does my scenario match reality?!?

Bt the way, if you had installed ATM and the "base 35" PostScript fonts,
then the fact that Acrobat 4 doesn't ship with those typefaces would be
totally irrelevant and transparent to you.

         - Dov 




At 12/6/99 02:02 PM , Craig Ede wrote:
>This discussion has burned up a lot of bandwidth, generating more heat than light, I'm afraid.
>
>Here at the company that "Los Jugadores" use as a playing field, we ran into missing font messages a lot with our PC users. I figured the IS guys who installed the software screwed up now and again and simply forgot to install the fonts sometimes. Then we found out that simply having a postscript printer selected as the current printer solved these problems for many common postscript fonts.
>
>It seems that the 35 "standard" postscript fonts installed in most PS printers announce themselves when you have these printers selected. The users with problems had selected the PCL flavor of the HP driivers for our printers. The PC system inself does not have to have the font installed on it.
>
>So either the driver or the PPD of a PS printer (one that includes the "standard" 35 fonts) is enough to solve the missing font problems. I suspect it's the driver, but maybe one of the Adobe folks who read this can enlighten us.
>
>I've never had a user encounter a missing font problem for any of the 35 standard fonts when producing a PDF using Acrobat 3.01 or 3.02 with the Acrobat PPD and the Adobe 4.2.6 driver. Can I assume that this configuration of a Distiller printer "finds" the standard 35 postscript fonts in a similarly to our other PS printer drivers?
>
>Now I recall that the new improved Acrobat 4 doesn't include Times and Helvetica... (but we won't get into that.)
>
>Best,
>
>Craig Ede
>Los Jugadores Bazutadores
>"Somos de Minnesota"


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