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Fonts appear to not be collecting


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Okay........... When I go to compose and then collect the file I'm working on, it appears that my fonts are not collecting. When I compose, the log gives me numerous errors. Actually, I'll just copy/paste the contents below:

 

Job started 17:54:54 - 1225130094.

Creator: FusionPro Desktop 5.1P2c

/Volumes/EMD_Users/Chris/FusionPro_COMPLETED_COVERS/Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy/COLLECTED/AntiMicroAgents_Chemo_COVER.dif

Font assets file is not found. Only system fonts will be used for this job.

Begun composing record #1

Failed to load font †Helvetica.bfk

Font ID 108 is not loaded into DTL properly. Default plain style font is used instead

Font <Dutch801 Rm BT> normal style is not loaded, using italic style of this font family.

Font <Futura> normal style is not loaded, using italic style of this font family.

Job ended 17:54:55 - 1225130095.

 

When I check out the Assets.dat file, it's always 4kb, and when I open it it's just composed of a few random characters. As I understand it, this file is supposed to contain all the font information, so I assume this is the cause of the problem.

 

We are using Suitcase Fusion for our font management, but I bypass that when using FusionPro. I actually have a folder in which I keep all my fonts I've been using for FusionPro jobs. I do make sure that FusionPro is directed to this folder, and I always load the fonts as well.

 

For this particular job, when I upload it to my PrintManager, everything seems to upload fine. However, when I preview this job, type in a few variables, and then refresh the preview, the fonts are all screwed up. When I go to download the preview and view in Acrobat, the fonts are still screwed up. What's most puzzling to me is when I select the text, PitStop shows that the correct fonts are in place, but the correct fonts are definitely not displayed. It also shows that the correct text is not embedded.

 

Any thoughts? Am I royally screwing things up?

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It's not clear to me if you're seeing the problem when you compose locally in FusionPro Desktop, or if it's only in your PrintManager.

 

The Assets.dat file is used only when you compose the collected job in FP Server (which is used by FP Web). It's not used when you compose with FP Desktop. And as you've seen, the Assets.dat file is binary, and there are no user-servicable parts inside. However, the list of fonts collected can be seen in the DIF file, in the <fontdict> section at the end.

 

So, if you do see the problem in a local (Desktop) composition, then it's a font loading problem, not a font collecting problem.

 

The error message is telling you which font it's having trouble with. You might have a conflict between multiple "Helvetica" fonts. I wouldn't expect a font with a "" character in its name to load properly anyway. I'd be interested to see the lines from your fonts.ini and fonts.err files which reference Helvetica after you load your fonts, as well as the DIF file.

 

I'm also not sure what you mean by "make sure that FusionPro is directed to this folder." How do you "direct" it to a particular folder? When loading fonts, FusionPro just iterates the fonts installed on the system at the time. Also, are you shutting down the FusionPro application after loading fonts?

 

P.S. Careful where you're pointing that thing!

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It's not clear to me if you're seeing the problem when you compose locally in FusionPro Desktop, or if it's only in your PrintManager.

 

The Assets.dat file is used only when you compose the collected job in FP Server (which is used by FP Web). It's not used when you compose with FP Desktop. And as you've seen, the Assets.dat file is binary, and there are no user-servicable parts inside. However, the list of fonts collected can be seen in the DIF file, in the <fontdict> section at the end.

Hmm, okay, well I checked the .dif file after I collected everything, and it appears from there that the fonts collected okay. Here's what the content of the .dif file says, regarding the fonts (sans all the lines of random characters before the tag closes):

 

<fontmetrics

family = "Dutch801 Rm BT"

style = ""

psname = "Dutch801BT-Roman"

ttffilename = ""

pfafilename = ""

bold = "1"

italic = "1"

charset = "W"

type = "True Type"

format = "bfk"

>

 

</fontmetrics>

 

<fontmetrics

family = "Futura"

style = ""

psname = "Futura"

ttffilename = ""

pfafilename = ""

bold = "1"

italic = "1"

charset = "W"

type = "True Type"

format = "bfk"

>

 

</fontmetrics>

</fontdict>

So, if you do see the problem in a local (Desktop) composition, then it's a font loading problem, not a font collecting problem.

 

The error message is telling you which font it's having trouble with. You might have a conflict between multiple "Helvetica" fonts. I wouldn't expect a font with a "" character in its name to load properly anyway. I'd be interested to see the lines from your fonts.ini and fonts.err files which reference Helvetica after you load your fonts, as well as the DIF file.

I honestly don't know why it's even pulling Helvetica. The document I'm setting up doesn't use Helvetica, and I don't have any instances of Helvetica turned on in Suitcase.

 

I'm also not sure what you mean by "make sure that FusionPro is directed to this folder." How do you "direct" it to a particular folder? When loading fonts, FusionPro just iterates the fonts installed on the system at the time. Also, are you shutting down the FusionPro application after loading fonts?
What I meant by this is that by default, FusionPro pulls fonts from within its own folder. On my computer, the path is .../Library/Preferences/Printable/FusionPro/Fonts. The problem is, our IT people have pretty much restricted us from accessing anything that isn't on our desktop, which includes the FusionPro fonts folder. So our way around that has been to collect the fonts for each document, and redirect the "Fonts Directory" to this folder, from within Acrobat (FusionPro > Advanced > Advanced Settings...) This appears to have mixed results because this setup has worked for other files I've set up, but now it's not.

 

Oh, and yeah, I do restart Acrobat and FusionPro after loading the fonts.

 

I've gone ahead and attached a couple screenshots of the file I'm trying to setup in the PrintOne Manager, and the end product...

 

Picture 1 - This is the preview (pre-publishing), before I plug in any info. I'm not sure, but this could probably just be the thumbnail image I have assigned for this product.

 

Picture 2 - This is after I plug in info. Notice how the fonts on the volume, number, month, year, title and author lines have all changed.

 

Picture 3 - This is the downloaded .pdf proof. If you look at the green highlighted areas, I clicked on the title and authors, and Enfocus Inspector displays that the correct font is being used; however, that font is definitely not Dutch801BT-Roman. Same with the volume, number, month and year lines; these are supposed to be Futura, and Enfocus Inspector will say that that's the font displayed, but it definitely isn't.

 

Sorry for the overload of info, I hope this actually makes sense...

Picture_1.thumb.jpg.9c7fcf4a908e3b242e2c7361261216bb.jpg

Picture_2.thumb.jpg.8fd078e05cddb631a5480d472efabc2b.jpg

Picture_3.thumb.jpg.b49406b5ca41808128c923e78136b5ac.jpg

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What I meant by this is that by default, FusionPro pulls fonts from within its own folder. On my computer, the path is .../Library/Preferences/Printable/FusionPro/Fonts. The problem is, our IT people have pretty much restricted us from accessing anything that isn't on our desktop, which includes the FusionPro fonts folder. So our way around that has been to collect the fonts for each document, and redirect the "Fonts Directory" to this folder, from within Acrobat (FusionPro > Advanced > Advanced Settings...) This appears to have mixed results because this setup has worked for other files I've set up, but now it's not.

 

Oh, and yeah, I do restart Acrobat and FusionPro after loading the fonts.

 

SCRATCH THIS!

 

I'm not sure why, but the default FusionPro font folder is now accessible (only on this particular computer -- 1 of 4 -- that I work on. So with that, I re-composed and re-collected the files, and then re-uploaded the template. I tested it out in my PrintManager, and now when I download a .pdf proof for the file, THE FONTS SHOW UP CORRECTLY. However, they're still showing up incorrectly when I preview the proof online. What should be showing up as Futura and Dutch801BT is still showing up as Helvetica. Any clue why?

 

Also, I just now noticed that the fonts show up correctly when I download the .pdf proof ONLY if I have these fonts loaded in FusionPro. So, if I'm a customer, and I want to download a .pdf proof of this file, aren't the fonts not going to show up correctly?

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I meant by this is that by default, FusionPro pulls fonts from within its own folder. On my computer, the path is .../Library/Preferences/Printable/FusionPro/Fonts. The problem is, our IT people have pretty much restricted us from accessing anything that isn't on our desktop, which includes the FusionPro fonts folder.

 

Well, the idea behind font loading is that the fonts aren't going to be user-specific, therefore all the font information is cached in the system-wide Preferences folder by default. Mac OS X does allow you to install fonts in user-specific locations, but FusionPro is not intended to be used in this manner. This is why fonts are loaded at installation time, and of course, the installer itself has to be run under a user account with administrative privileges. However, you can use the Advanced Settings dialog to change the location of the Fonts folder.

 

So our way around that has been to collect the fonts for each document, and redirect the "Fonts Directory" to this folder, from within Acrobat (FusionPro > Advanced > Advanced Settings...) This appears to have mixed results because this setup has worked for other files I've set up, but now it's not.

Hold on a minute. Do you mean that you're modifying the fonts within FusionPro's Fonts folder? Or that you're changing the "Fonts Directory" after loading fonts? Please don't do either of these things; they won't work. You can change the "Fonts Directory" if you need to, and then re-load fonts, but once you've loaded the fonts, you can't change either the location of the "Fonts Directory" or the contents thereof. If you do change the "Fonts Directory" location, you have to load fonts again. And changing the contents of the folder is not supported at all.

I've gone ahead and attached a couple screenshots of the file I'm trying to setup in the PrintOne Manager, and the end product...

 

Picture 1 - This is the preview (pre-publishing), before I plug in any info. I'm not sure, but this could probably just be the thumbnail image I have assigned for this product.

 

Picture 2 - This is after I plug in info. Notice how the fonts on the volume, number, month, year, title and author lines have all changed.

 

Picture 3 - This is the downloaded .pdf proof. If you look at the green highlighted areas, I clicked on the title and authors, and Enfocus Inspector displays that the correct font is being used; however, that font is definitely not Dutch801BT-Roman. Same with the volume, number, month and year lines; these are supposed to be Futura, and Enfocus Inspector will say that that's the font displayed, but it definitely isn't.

 

Sorry for the overload of info, I hope this actually makes sense...

 

I'm not terribly familiar with all the inner workings of FusionPro Web and exactly how all the proofs and previews are created. If the problem is specific to FP Web, please post in the FP Web forum.

 

I'm not sure why, but the default FusionPro font folder is now accessible (only on this particular computer -- 1 of 4 -- that I work on. So with that, I re-composed and re-collected the files, and then re-uploaded the template. I tested it out in my PrintManager, and now when I download a .pdf proof for the file, THE FONTS SHOW UP CORRECTLY. However, they're still showing up incorrectly when I preview the proof online. What should be showing up as Futura and Dutch801BT is still showing up as Helvetica. Any clue why?

I'm also not sure what the difference is between what you get when you "download a .pdf proof" and what you get when you "preview the proof online." That's a question for the FP Web folks, in the FP Web forum.

 

And it's still not clear to me if you're seeing the problem when you compose locally in FusionPro Desktop, or only in FusionPro Web. Did the error messages in your original post come from a local (Desktop) composition or from FP Web? (And I'd still be interested to see the lines from your fonts.ini and fonts.err files which reference Helvetica after you load your fonts, although that's a secondary question.)

 

In either case, you may need to collect up your job, and possibly the fonts in question, and send everything to Support for a full analysis. But Support will also need to know if the problem occurs locally in Desktop or just in FP Web.

 

Also, I just now noticed that the fonts show up correctly when I download the .pdf proof ONLY if I have these fonts loaded in FusionPro. So, if I'm a customer, and I want to download a .pdf proof of this file, aren't the fonts not going to show up correctly?

 

You're talking about composed output, right? I don't see how having fonts loaded or not in FusionPro should make any difference at all to viewing an output file. You shouldn't need to have FP Desktop installed to view a composed PDF in Acrobat, let alone have fonts loaded in FusionPro. Of course, if the fonts are not embedded in the document, then you'll only be able to view them on machines on which the font is installed.

 

So the real question is, are the fonts embedded in the output document? I would look at the Document Properties dialog in Acrobat to determine this, not PitStop.

 

Also, did you turn on font embedding in the Composition Settings? If so, then the fonts should be there. Unless, of course, you get an error at composition time.

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Man, this stuff is very confusing... I have a feeling though that a lot of these issues has to do with our font management, and limited access to certain folders (i.e. FusionPro's font folder)... I've contacted our IT Dept. to see if they can make some changes specifically for the FusionPro users, and hopefully that will fix the situation. If not, well.......... I'll be back.
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