Electronic Prepress:
Fonts
Font problems are unquestionably responsible for more job delays and frustrations than any other area of digital file production. However, they can easily be avoided once you know what to look for and how to properly organize them.
Type 1 fonts for Macintosh
The original Adobe Postscript font format, Type 1, is still considered to be the best by most professionals. Type 1 fonts consist of two parts: the SCREEN font and the the PRINTER font.
The screen font is a bitmap image of the letter forms used to represent the type on screen.
Shown above is a sample of the icon used for a Type 1 (or postscript) screen font for Helvetica Bold.
Screen fonts are usually collected in a “suitcase”, which can contain fonts from many different families. For proper organization of your screen fonts, it is best to put each font family in its own font suitcase.
Shown above is a sample of the screen font suitcase for the Helvetica family.
The printer font contains the data that is actually sent to the laser printer or imagesetter and is used to correctly render each character. If the printer fonts are not available or are damaged, your font will look “jaggy” on the screen and will either print with the same bitmapped appearance, or convert automatically to a default system font such as Courier.
A sample of the printer font icon for Helvetica is shown above.
It is important to send both the screen and printer components for each font used in your document. This includes fonts used for EPS files as well (maps are notorious for containing fonts not included with the job, as they are often created by a different source than the pages). Many fonts with the same name, such as Helvetica, are manufactured by more than one company and may have differences in kerning values, letter weight, etc., which may cause your text copy to reflow if we have to substitute our version of the font because we did not have yours. On a Macintosh platform, the fonts can be found in hard drive/system folder/fonts.
TrueType Fonts for Macintosh
The TrueType format was developed by Microsoft and is now widely distributed with system software, applications and on disks of font collections. The most obvious difference between Type 1 and TrueType is that both screen and printer data are contained in one file where Type 1 has two separate files.
A sample of the TrueType icon for the italic version of Century Gothic for a Macintosh is shown above. TrueType fonts are also stored in a font suitcase and should never be mixed with Type 1 screen fonts. Doing so will occasionally cause unexpected problems when printing.
Type 1 and True Type for Windows
The same concepts apply for Windows versions of Type 1 (postscript) and True Type fonts. Just as on a Macintosh system, the postscript font is composed of two parts, a printer font and a screen font. The printer font has an extension of .pfb and the screen font has an extension of .pfm, and both have the same red Adobe “A” icon as shown below.
Printer fonts are used by ATM (Adobe Type Manager) to create crisp, accurate screen renditions of the font at any point size. You will find the postscript fonts in C:\psfonts folder. You must be sure to send both the screen and printer components.
A sample of a Windows True Type icon is shown to the above. If you are using ATM, then these fonts can be found in C:\windows\fonts\ATM folder. If you do not use ATM, then all fonts available on your system should be found in C:\windows\fonts.
One benefit of using ATM is that it can help you find your fonts quickly on your hard drive. The Deluxe version includes a Font List tab which allows you to see all the fonts your system uses as well as if they are true type or postscript fonts. You can locate a font on this list by clicking on it, and then under “Display” go to “Properties” (shown below) and it will tell you exactly where this font is, as well as the actual name of the font. This can be very useful since many fonts such as the “Times” font family can have the following names: “TIR”-Times Roman; “TIB”-Times Bold; “TII”-Times Italic; “TIBI”-Times Bold Italic.
Open Type
OpenType® is a new cross-platform font file format
developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe has
converted the entire Adobe Type Library into this format
and now offers thousands of OpenType fonts.
The two main benefits of the OpenType
format are its cross-platform compatibility (the same
font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers), and
its ability to support widely expanded character sets
and layout features, which provide richer linguistic
support and advanced typographic control.
The OpenType format is an extension of
the TrueType SFNT format that also can support Adobe®
PostScript® font data and new typographic features.
OpenType fonts containing PostScript data, such as those
in the Adobe Type Library, have an .otf suffix in the
font file name, while TrueType-based OpenType fonts have
a .ttf file name suffix.
OpenType fonts can include an expanded
character set and layout features, providing broader
linguistic support and more precise typographic control.
Feature-rich Adobe OpenType fonts can be distinguished
by the word "Pro," which is part of the font name and
appears in application font menus. OpenType fonts can be
installed and used alongside PostScript Type 1 and
TrueType fonts.
One
cross-platform font file
Any OpenType font uses a single font file
for all of its outline, metric, and bitmap data, making
file management simpler. In addition, the same font file
works on Macintosh and Windows computers. As a result,
OpenType lets you move font files back and forth between
platforms with noticeable improvement in cross-platform
portability for any documents that use type.
Better language support
Based on Unicode, an international
multi-byte character encoding that covers virtually all
of the world's languages, OpenType fonts can make
multilingual typography easier by including multiple
language character sets in one font. All Adobe OpenType
fonts include the standard range of Latin characters
used in the Western world, and several international
characters, including the "estimated," litre, and euro
currency symbols. Adobe's OpenType Pro fonts add a full
range of accented characters to support central and
eastern European languages, such as Turkish and Polish.
Many of the Pro fonts also contain Cyrillic and Greek
character extensions in the same font.
To learn more about OpenType fonts
click on the icon below.
Families and Applying Styles
A font is an individual style and weight, for example, Times Bold. A family is a collection of these individual fonts. The family will include Times, Times Bold, Times Italic, Times Bold Italic, etc. Your font package will contain a printer and a screen font for each member of this family. A common mistake made when setting up files is to “style” the font instead of selecting the true font. One example would be to use Times, then apply bold to it by choosing the “bold” option from the font style menu. If you initially set up your pages by applying styles, always go back through your document using the “find and replace” function and change these stylized fonts to the correct family member to avoid imaging problems.
You should never apply bold or italic stylization to fonts that do not have existing bold or italic family members. It may work on your screen, and may even print to a printer, but generally will not work correctly when sent to an imagesetter. Sometimes bold applied to a font that does not have a bold family member will cause the font to have a double image. Applying italics this way may cause the font to only slant instead of becoming a true italic, or may not print at all to an imagesetter.
Some styles, such as underline, superior, superscript, subscript and small caps, can only be accomplished by using the styles menu and are generally acceptable. The drop shadow and outline styles should be avoided–they were designed for non-postscript use.
