Adobe Community: Next Font Folio?

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1. Dov Isaacs,

Apr 12, 2010 9:31 PM in reply to John Hawkinson

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Unfortunately, since there isn't any announcement from Adobe of any new version of Font Folio, anything that anyone would tell you here would be sheer speculation and not very useful.

With OpenType fonts unlike the older Type 1 packaging of these fonts, there aren't any expert fonts anymore. All the glyphs for a particular font are in a single font file and are accessed via Unicode encodings.

Although Utopia had a more extensive complement of glyphs in its old Type 1 packaging, the same font family and its font complement did not have enough features to be classified as an "OpenType Pro" font by Adobe, but rather an "OpenType Standard" font family. However, all the extra glyphs that were available within the expert fonts in the Type 1 packaging have been included in the OpenType versions. Nothing was lost! See http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&even t=displayFontPackage&code=1414 for further information about Utopia OpenType Standard.

I obviously don't know who you spoke to at phone support, but you should be aware that your choice of licensing (you can't buy anything other than licenses for fonts) is more than everything or only single typefaces. There are significant discounts for licensing a whole family or subsets of certain large font families. There are also volume purchase plans, but you need to pursue such volume purchase plans other than via standard Adobe Customer Support or whoever you did speak to. Look on Adobe's web site for our volume purchase plans and perhaps follow that route.

- Dov

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2. John Hawkinson,

Apr 12, 2010 9:41 PM in reply to Dov Isaacs

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Thanks for the snappy response.

Clearly I'm a bit confused.

The big issue is that Utopia seems to be lacking unicode some unicode glyphs, like, say, Turkish's İ (looks like a capital I with a dot; I think U+0130?). This came up recently (kind of stunning that...). Someone over here concluded it was because we didn't have Utopia Expert...you say not?Another example (just came up last night!) was the lack of the letter n with the accent-acute...can be formed with the compositional versions in InDesign with Peter Kahrel's script, but really inconvenient.

You're saying there's not an easy way to solve this by throwing money at the problem?

Yeah, we do have the whole CLP/etc. thing going...of course, navigating that purchase process seems to be an exercise in painful bureacracy... educational doesn't help with this, I'm afraid...still trying to straighten out the mess from my last purchase being tracked wrong on licensing.adobe.com.

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3. JohnEHoffman,

Apr 13, 2010 9:45 AM in reply to John Hawkinson

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I don't know if this will solve your problem, but if you go to www.adobe.com/type, and then go to the page for Utopia Std, the bottom link on the right side of the page is for Utopia Expert in pdf format. If you click on the link, you can buy individual expert fonts for $26 or the whole set of 17 expert fonts for $96. I'm not an expert, but perhaps you could you those to access the glyphs that are not Unicode encoded in the OpenType Utopia Std. (This seems to be akin to a problem I ran into into trying to access small caps in the Arno Pro typeface.)

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4. John Hawkinson,

Apr 13, 2010 9:52 AM in reply to JohnEHoffman

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Right...that was my initial inclination, though I had wanted to see if there was an easy way to get all such fonts in one batch purchase instead of just Utopia Expert. But Dov's post gives me pause -- it sounds like there are no glyphs in that Utopia Expert bundle that do not exist in the Utopia Std (OpenType) that is part of Font Folio 11.

I don't suppose CS5 has support for native support for compositional unicode accents (and the required superimposition thereof)?

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5. JohnEHoffman,

Apr 13, 2010 10:04 AM in reply to John Hawkinson

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I think you will either have to use the work around that you mentioned in

your inquiry or use a font that has a larger glyph complement than Utopia

since it appears that the Turkish glyphs you want do not exist in any

version of Utopia.

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6. Miguel Sousa,

Apr 13, 2010 1:17 PM in reply to John Hawkinson

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John Hawkinson wrote:

Right...that was my initial inclination, though I had wanted to see if there was an easy way to get all such fonts in one batch purchase instead of just Utopia Expert. But Dov's post gives me pause -- it sounds like there are no glyphs in that Utopia Expert bundle that do not exist in the Utopia Std (OpenType) that is part of Font Folio 11.

Correct. All glyphs that existed in Utopia and Utopia Expert are available in Utopia Std. According to the Type 1 to OpenType Font Conversion FAQ page there are also noticeable changes in design or spacing between the Type 1 and OpenType versions.

I don't suppose CS5 has support for native support for compositional unicode accents (and the required superimposition thereof)?

InDesign supports combining marks since version 5 (CS3). But in order to work, the font needs to have some support for it as well, and Utopia Std does not.

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7. Miguel Sousa,

Apr 13, 2010 1:19 PM in reply to JohnEHoffman

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JohnEHoffman wrote:

I think you will either have to use the work around that you mentioned in
your inquiry or use a font that has a larger glyph complement than Utopia
since it appears that the Turkish glyphs you want do not exist in any
version of Utopia.

Those are two possible options. Another option is to modify the font itself, adding glyphs as necessary. Adobe's EULA permits this.

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8. JustBob,

Apr 13, 2010 1:55 PM in reply to John Hawkinson

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Are you using Adobe InDesign or Illustrator? If so, you don't have to enter unicode numbers. Just open the Glyphs panel and choose your characters there.

(One thing I wish the Glyphs panel had was the keyboard shortcuts needed to get that character without having to open the panel. You know, select a character and have the keyboard shortcut listed somewhere in the panel.)

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9. John Hawkinson,

Apr 13, 2010 8:55 PM in reply to Miguel Sousa

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Miguel:

InDesign supports combining marks since version 5 (CS3). But in order to work, the font needs to have some support for it as well, and Utopia Std does not.

Ah...

Those are two possible options. Another option is to modify the font itself, adding glyphs as necessary. Adobe's EULA permits this.

I worry about confusing our printer (person, not machine) and soforth by doing so...I guess some internal ID number or whatever would change so it wouldn't be a huge problem (Advice on this welcome!). What tools are necessary to add support for combining marks to an OpenType font? I would like to hope that this is a relatively brainless process... Since I last looked at this it looks like Fontographer has been replaced with FontLab Studio...and that maybe its little brothers Typetool and/or CompoCompiler are sufficient? I realize this is maybe a bit off-topic for this forum, is there a better place to ask?

JustBob:

Are you using Adobe InDesign or Illustrator? If so, you don't have to enter unicode numbers. Just open the Glyphs panel and choose your characters there.

Err, this was never about entering Unicode numbers. I merely included them for convenient reference.

(One thing I wish the Glyphs panel had was the keyboard shortcuts needed to get that character without having to open the panel. You know, select a character and have the keyboard shortcut listed somewhere in the panel.)

Well, this came up recently in the InDesign forum, see Set a keyboard shortcut to a glyph character in InDesign CS4?. In short, you can easily use your OS's support for entering arbitrary unicode chars by number, you can bind a trivial script to a single key to insert the glyph you want, and you can make use of ID's preexisting "Glyph: Insert Most Recent Glyph" (or the penultimate, antepenultimate, anteantepenultimate, or 5th most recent glyph) commands.

Thanks again!

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10. Miguel Sousa,

Apr 14, 2010 1:02 PM in reply to John Hawkinson

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John Hawkinson wrote:

I worry about confusing our printer (person, not machine) and soforth by doing so...I guess some internal ID number or whatever would change so it wouldn't be a huge problem (Advice on this welcome!).

Changing the name of the font by e.g. adding a prefix or a suffix is enough. This way you'll have no problems using the unmodified font alongside the customized version (i.e. both can be installed at the same time).

What tools are necessary to add support for combining marks to an OpenType font? I would like to hope that this is a relatively brainless process... Since I last looked at this it looks like Fontographer has been replaced with FontLab Studio...and that maybe its little brothers Typetool and/or CompoCompiler are sufficient?

You'll need a tool that can generate OpenType Layout features, therefore Fontographer and TypeTool are out. FontLab Studio 5 can't do it either because it only supports version 1.6 of the AFDKO. You can use the latest AFDKO (v2.5) and VOLT. FontForge will also do it, I believe. But I think you're better off just adding to the font the (pre-composed) accented glyphs you need, rather than support for combining marks, which BTW is rather complex. And honestly, if you don't have font production experience, if you value your time and if you need it done right, you should definitely hire a professional to do the job.

I realize this is maybe a bit off-topic for this forum, is there a better place to ask?

Yes, Typophile's Build forum and/or FontLab's forum.

Hope this helps.

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