Comments on: Copy and Paste, Without the Pink

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:33:05 +0000

Hmm, now that I think about it, there is another way to expunge Times (TT)–or any other font–from a CS3 doc, and it’s very similar to the IDML method I was hinting at.

Export the affected doc to INX.

Open the INX file with a text editing application. Do a Find/Replace to change all instances of “Times (TT)” to “Times”.

Open the updated INX with InDesign. Voila, no more Times (TT).

To be honest, this doesn’t fix the original doc. But now you can throw it away, and replace it with the fresh version generated from the INX file.

Bonus tip: if possible, place the INX file in the same folder with all your art files before you open it. That way, the new “Untitled” document won’t open with any missing art links.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:03:54 +0000

Klaus: You have once upon distilled it perfectly.

I have long enjoyed reading Mike’s very funny and insightful posts at publicious. It’s going to be great having him as a contributor.

You can also see Mike (and several other InDesignSecrets contributors) at the InDesign Conference in Seattle next month. If you can make it, use the discount code IDSECRET08 (that’s a zero-eight) to get $100 off the registration fee, or $25 off the cost of one of the tutorials!

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:45:49 +0000

Isn’t there an Important Moral here, namely this: “Thou shalt never ever use the infernal [Basic Paragraph] style, but always and ever create and use your own custom styles”?

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:17:46 +0000

oddly enough, that’s the first thing i do with a new installation of indesign. well, part of a series of things i do. chances are i will never be working in a document that will be times or times new roman, but myriad pro is our default corporate font.

with no documents open, i change the default font in default para to myriad pro. then i do a bunch of other default changes (like changing the default for kerning from 20, which is like a 10lb sledgehammer, to 5, which is more scalpel like in comparison).

speaking of which, is there some reason adobe sticks with some of the clunky defaults they start with? that 20 setting in kerning is ridiculous.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:59:22 +0000

Mike, welcome to the blog! Great first post!

(Readers, David and I will be “officially” introducing Mike in the next podcast — but to learn more about him, click his author name at the top of his post, or check out his funny and intelligent blog at publicious.net)

That Times thing is a PAIN! It also rears its ugly head when moving ID docs from one platform to the other … because the default on Windows is Times New Roman, different than on Macs (where it’s just Times). Aggravating in InCopy/InDesign workflows too where editors are often on PCs and designers on Macs. You may have busted your butt to make sure everyone’s got the same exact OpenType fonts used in the publication, but you’ll often get that “Missing Font” error solely due to the hard-wired Times … even if it’s not actually used anywhere in the doc.

I asked Mike Ninness (ID/IC product manager) about this a few weeks ago … has his team ever considered changing the default font to one that’s installed by ID/IC itself, like Myriad Pro? He said, “That’s come up for discussion only about oh about a thousand times.” But it always comes down to the issue of what happens to legacy docs opened in the new version with the new font specced for [Basic Paragraph] … do they fade away like a dream deferred? Or do they explode? Answer: They explode, apparently.