What’s The Deal On Font Auto Activation?
Brian wrote:
I was just reviewing a blog speaking about how when using Suitcase in conjunction with InDesign files placed into InDesign files, the fonts won’t auto activate. I have the same issue. Do you know if there was ever a fix for this problem?
We’ve been getting a number of emails about fonts recently, and I suddenly feel compelled to say: All questions that involve the phrase “auto activation” have the same answer: Go update your font manager and its side-kick font-activation plug-in. Period. It’s their fault.
And since I’m at it, and I’m feeling crabby, I should add: While I have used a wide variety of font managers in my day, I don’t use auto-activation in any font manager. Just as I wouldn’t want my television to turn channels on and off for me (I only really watch The Daily Show and The Backyardigans anyway), I take the responsibility of turning fonts on and off myself.
It’s not that I don’t like the idea of having some software take care of this for me. It’s simply that font activation just never ceases to be a problem. Everytime InDesign or the operating system gets upgraded, even a tiny bit, it seems like the auto-activators break, which causes a new series of emails and forum posts and hair-pulling and sturm und drang. Often, things completely unrelated to fonts go wrong, and it’s only after hours of troubleshooting that people realize that it was the auto-activation plug-in all the time.
If you use auto-activating fonts, you need to set your expectations lower: If it works at all, you should be grateful and amazed. If it breaks, you should sigh and say, in your best imitation of Eyeore, “I knew it wouldn’t work.”
I’m sure everyone and their mother (especially font developers) will flame me on this one, but until InDesign or the OS itself handles all the font activation, this just isn’t going to get better.
In the meantime, check out these pages, depending on which font manger you use:
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I think we could add to your post the fact that auto-activation is generally quasi-auto-activation, or perhaps semi-auto-activation.
All the major font programs (including Apple’s own Font Book on Leopard 10.5) claim to “auto-activate” your fonts for you.
But none of them really live up to this claim.
I’ve had good luck with Linotype Font Explorer, and it seems to make the whole font process more intuitive than the other major managers, but none of them really fully-automatic activate your fonts.
Maybe if we expect a little less from our font managers?
David,
Do you need a pillow and a blanky? Or a hug?
I agree with you though and never use autoactivation. I just don’t trust it, plus I am in the habit of using a certain set of fonts for each project.
Pete
@Dreamspeaker: Thanks, I’ll consider myself hugged. No need for the pillow; I’ve got one here. ;)
Hi all.
Have a look into the strategy of many other people: They do not use any font “manager” at all: me inclusive. Because these applications are producing problems with and without auto activiation.
Instead we are using two aliasses (“Fonts” and “Fonts inactive”), and that?s it. And we do not experience any problems at all ? neither under WinXP nor under MacOS.
Suitcase is not the best solution. Use Linotype fontexplorer. It has more options to flush the cache of apps and system.
Cheers to activating fonts yourself & being a Daily Show fan. Love the Colbert Report as well!
I’m still giddy that you can leave InDesign open, drop folders of fonts (the whole folder!) in InDesign’s fonts folder and watch them snap to life in your documents when you go back to the program. I haven’t used a font manager since Adobe Type Manager was a going concern.
Really don’t understand the fuss about font auto-activation. Never had a moment of trouble with FontExplorer.
We are using computers and this to me implies that quite a few things can and should happen automatically. Like auto-activation.
In the same breath, I am often suprised about the many requests for automation of “unnecessary” things in InDesign in the Adobe forums. Quite often the automation is more complex than a little standard command.
Wish I had the time to find out about ALL the good features in InDesign in the first place.
Yes, the Fonts Folder is quite amazing, if you’re only needing those fonts active in InDesign. We discussed this back in this post.
One time UPS (or was it DHL) lost a package I shipped. Now I don’t use them anymore, I just hand deliver everything.
I also got a ticket once because I didn’t have my headlights on when it was raining. I have those auto headlights, but since the ticket I just leave them on all the time now. When I get home I just put my battery on the charger until I leave again. It has the added benefit of keeping my back yard lit up at night (good security).
Last week I got some corn on the cob and there was a worm inside one of them. From now on, I am going to shuck all my corn at the store before I buy it to make sure I don’t get anymore worms.
I once had a calculator that gave me the wrong answer because the batteries were going dead. Now I make sure that I perform any calculation three times to be safe.
One time at band camp……
IMO the main culprit with fonts is Apple. They knew before getting involved with OSX that fonts would be an issue, yet ahead they went. The font cache system they came up with isn’t prepress friendly thats for sure. I seem to spend more time these days cleaning out those pesky font caches just to get fonts recognized, than I do actually working on the supplied files that need those fonts. In prepress we constantly need to change fonts from truetype versions to postscript or opentype. Don’t even get me started with the people that use system dFonts in their Quark docs. Switching from a postscript version to those dFonts can be an exercise in futility sometimes. Especially when Quark is involved.
@almaink: Don’t forget about Microsoft Windows, too! It’s not like fonts and activation are that much simpler over there, either.
I am also a self-font activator. Something about the control of it makes me happy, I suppose. That, and the fact that the auto-activate doesn’t always work properly of course!
I have worked in electronic prepress for about 25 years now and have never been able to completely depend on the auto activation feature in any of the font managers I’ve ever used. That is until I started using FontAgent Pro. This is a fantastic font manager. Granted I always activate the fonts sent by the client. But as is often the case with fonts from clients they don’t always provide all the fonts needed to produce their job for them. That’s where auto activation shines with FAP. Or if I have problems with the fonts provided I will deactivate them and let FAP take over. It has never disappointed. If a font is displaying incorrectly I will immediately deactivate the font and let FAP choose for me and if the font resides in my database the issue is resolved.
Another great tool for your toolbox is TransType. It will convert all those pesky PC fonts to Mac format so you can work all your jobs on a Mac where they belong.:)
Mac OS X 10.5.4
“Another great tool for your toolbox is TransType. It will convert all those pesky PC fonts to Mac format so you can work all your jobs on a Mac where they belong.:)”
There is no such thing a PC fonts anymore per-say. True Type fonts works on both platforms since OSX. Type ones work with InDesign, just drop them into the InDesign fonts folder. And of course Open Type is also cross platform.
Fonts sure get everyone going don’t they?
Anyway, my question is, are OTF really cross platform. I have read several articles where they say that even though they are suppose to be, that they don’t always work that way and that there are only a few fonts that are actually reliable in this regard.
Is that true? I work on a PC as little as possible. so I don’t really know.
Just curious, so don’t get mad and hit me.
Actually fonts are almost a non-issue on Windows. Just install them and you’re good to go…almost.
The almost here is for Vista users. There’s a problem with some Type 1 fonts not showing up in InDesign even though they’ve been properly installed. It may only be a 64 bit problem. I don’t remember off hand.
Of course, opentype is the way to go but almost all of my type 1 fonts came with CorelDRAW which also supplies TrueType versions so that’s my workaround.
It’s auto-activation that’s a “problem.” The last Windows O/S that allowed it was Windows ME. NT based Windows systems do not allow it. Windows users have simply learned to live without it.
@dreamspeaker. I don’t know where you read that but whoever wrote it was is horribly misinformed. OpenType is indeed totally crossplatform.
almaink wrote
“There is no such thing a PC fonts anymore per-say. True Type fonts works on both platforms since OSX. Type ones work with InDesign, just drop them into the InDesign fonts folder. And of course Open Type is also cross platform.”
Yes, in a perfect world where a designer using a Windows OS doesn’t have access to hundreds of cutesy fonts downloaded for free from the internet then you really don’t need any additional font tools in your toolbox. However, I have to work with software other than InDesign and I have to be able to provide solutions to problems that arise to keep the job moving forward. That is why I use Transtype as one of my tools.
It’s a prepress thing.
Hello, I’ve recently purchased Mountain Lion and installed Adobe CS6 Creative Suite. Unfortunately I’ve found that certain files are now struggling to open fonts that I have successfully installed / activated (using Font Book), whereas previous versions of InDesign opened the fonts no problem. Am I missing something obvious here – please help!! Thank you
In a way I agree and disagree with you. At my work, I’m shackled to Suitcase Fusion 3 and auto activation comes in very handy only because Fusion doesn’t keep your fonts activated. It has a “permanently active” feature, which would make me a lot less reliant on auto-activation—if only it worked, which it doesn’t.
Auto-activation always did work for me and didn’t really cause any problems … until now. My company upgraded our Adobe suite to Creative Cloud and now it appears Auto-Activation isn’t going to work until we upgrade to Fusion 4. Inconvenient, sure. Costly, a little. But it’s a problem we’re only going to have to deal with when we upgrade software. In the meantime, activating fonts by hand is becoming a real time-suck and making it hard to stay focused.
When I’m working at home, though, I don’t have this problem, because there I use the font manager of my choice—FontExplorer—which I chose because it was free. It has this really nice feature I like to call “not screwing with my font selections”. I activate a font and it stays activated until the end of time or until I deactivate it.
1. I hate auto-activation but I truly don’t see a practical way around it. For large projects, I could see it being worthwhile. But I work on several different jobs each day, most of them not new. That means collecting fonts for each, and moving the folders in and out.
But now that I wiped out my computer and reinstalled everything, I’m trying to do without it once again.
2. What is the advantage of using InDesign’s fonts folder (where I need to authorize every time I want to edit the folder) over my user library?
I have the library font folder on my sidebar and I drop fonts into there.
But it’s still not a real solution.