PrePressProduction.com / tips / fonts

Corrupted fonts are one of the biggest reasons for getting postscript errors when printing. Follow these suggestions to minimize corrupted fonts:

Make sure that you only use fresh copies of fonts that you have purchased.
Do not download fonts haphazardly from the internet. If you want to use a font that you found on the web, then use a clean-up program, such as FontAgent to check the fonts for corruption.

Fixing corrupted fonts

In some font management programs, such as ATM Deluxe, you can use the"verify" function to quickly check a font's integrity.

If a screen font (found inside font suitcases) is damaged, or missing, you can use Fontographer to open the Postscript printer font (or Truetype font) and re-generate new versions of the screen fonts.

If your printer font of Truetype font is damaged, you can try to fix it by using font utilities such as FontAgent (see the Font Links page), or replacing it with the original copy (remember to always backup your fonts).

Opening fonts from remote servers

Don't open fonts from remote servers... that is, don't drag fonts into your font management program's window from mounted network drives: Always copy fonts to your local drive, and then add them to your font management program. These are some of the reasons why opening fonts over a network is not a good idea:

Fonts can get corrupted.
The network might suffer a speed hit, or worse, a traffic failure.
Your font management program might slow down, and even crash.
If your computer crashes, you run the risk of crashing the remote server as well.

Adding fonts to the System Folder

NEVER place new fonts into the "fonts" folder in your system folder. This takes up unnecessary system resources. It's far more efficient to use a font management program, such as ATM Deluxe, to manage your fonts. You should only have the basic system fonts in your System Folder.

Smooth screen fonts

To make your Truetype fonts smooth on screen, turn on "smooth all fonts on screen" in your "appearance" control panel (for example, this will ensure all your fonts in your Web browser will be smooth).

Duplicate fonts

You should not have duplicate fonts open at the same time, even if they are of different format (for example, Postscript and Truetype versions of the same font). You should remove these fonts from the "fonts" folder in your System folder, and activate only the postscript versions in a Font folder elsewhere on your drive.

It's possible to have different formats of the same font open at the same time; however, some applications may get confused and display distorted text on screen (this can occur on input fields on Web pages... Web browsers seem to prefer Truetype fonts).

If you are serious about having a clean, dedicated production-only system, follow the no-duplicates rule.