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- Font tips
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Click on the headings below to view the information.
We (usually) cannot output your job without having your fonts
loaded on our system. The most reliable way to achieve this is
for you to include them on your disk. Please read the "licensing
issues" section below. If you are unable to provide
us with copies of your fonts, we will need to substitute fonts
we have, adding prepress charges and an extra round of laser
proofs. In some situations, we may be able to accept a PostScript
file with your fonts already embedded.
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Small amounts of type in an EPS file or document may be converted
to outlines to avoid font issues entirely, if your application
supports this. Very small type will loose the benefit of "hinting" provided
by the actual font. It will be nearly impossible for us to fix
typos for you if fonts are converted to outlines.
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Fonts are computer programs. Many (most? all?) computer programs
have bugs. You can reduce your chances of encountering "buggy" fonts
if you purchase high-quality fonts from reputable foundries.
You would typically pay around $10-$30 per outline, not $25.99
for a CD of thousands of fonts.
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Bitmap/*.FON formats will not output well to the imagesetter.
Even with TrueType system fonts, variations in the font from
one version of the OS to another can lead to unavoidable errors
in type flow. System fonts include:
- MacOS: Chicago, Geneva, Monaco, New York, Charcoal, EspySans...
also any bitmap fonts such as San Francisco, Venice, Los Angeles,
London, Mobile, Cairo and Athens (remember those?).
- Also avoid Apple's versions of Courier, Helvetica, Times,
Palatino, and Symbol provided with the MacOS. These are "hybrid" TrueType
fonts that also include bitmaps which link to printer-resident
Type 1 outlines. Because three different font technologies
are all combined together, the operating system can sometimes
get the "wrong" metrics, leading to unexpected spacing
and line breaks. Consider replacing these with "pure"
Type 1 versions (e.g., from Adobe; this is my own preference)
or removing the fixed-size bitmaps (thereby leaving only the
TrueType fonts within the suitcase).
- Acrobat (any platform): AdobeSansMM, AdobeSerifMM
- Windows: any *.FON file, including Helv, Courier,
Modern, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif, Small Fonts, Large Fonts,
Symbol. Note that there are usable TrueType (*.TTF)
versions of Symbol and Courier ("Courier New").
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Please do not remove your bitmaps from their suitcases. ATM
Deluxe will not allow us to activate both "Helvetica Condensed
10" and "Helvetica Condensed Bold 10" if they're
in separate files (they're considered to be the same font and
conflict with each other). We must recombine the bitmaps into
a single suitcase, adding to the prepress charges for your job.
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Avoid combining multiple fonts into the same suitcase. If any
conflict with other fonts, it makes it very difficult to activate
your fonts. Also, I've seen an invisible Geneva that resides
in some suitcases, probably suitcases from the MacOS that were
emptied and refilled with other fonts.
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The font suitcase or *.PFM file refers to its outline (*.PFB)
file by an exact filename. If your outlines have been renamed
(e.g., Impact's outline shows up as "Impac Copy" instead
of "Impac"), we will have to change the names back
to avoid a missing font at print time.
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Fonts are usually protected by copyright, just like any other
software. You are responsible for ensuring that your license
to use the fonts allows you to send them to us for temporary
installation and output on a high-resolution (2400dpi) device.
- Some font licenses require that we own our own copies of
the fonts you send us. Some fonts we have include:
- The set of 135 Adobe fonts included with PostScript Level
3 printers (which includes the standard fonts from earlier
PostScript versions)
- Fonts that may have been provided with application software,
including (for the Macintosh) Adobe Type Manager, Adobe
Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe PageMaker, Macromedia
FreeHand, and (for Windows) Adobe PageMaker, Microsoft
Publisher 2000, and CorelDRAW 7.
- We don't know the contents of these sets off the top
of our heads... if you want us to load fonts from these
standard sets, please let us know where you think we should
be able to find them.
Adobe's web site is at http://www.adobe.com/
