Software Help Is anyone having Adobe Type 1 Font issues with Flexi 21?

[Graphics2u]

Is anyone having Adobe Type 1 Font issues with Flexi 21? These are old fonts that i've had from Flexi 6.6. When opening a file that used those fonts, Flexi tells me that it can't locate the font even though the font is installed in windows. The font also doesn't show up in the list of fonts to pick from when opening the file. If I install the font again in windows even though it's already there, Flexi sees it and it opens just fine. But the next time either after Flexi closes and reopens or windows restarts the same thing happens over again with the same fonts.

Any ideas?

 

[gabagoo]

I know in Signlab even if you have the fonts loaded in windows, that you still need to install them in Signlab. I was just looking at my Flexi 21 but don't see anywhere to load fonts....how about putting the fonts in the same directory as the ones Flexi takes them from?

 

[Graphics2u]

I know in Signlab even if you have the fonts loaded in windows, that you still need to install them in Signlab. I was just looking at my Flexi 21 but don't see anywhere to load fonts....how about putting the fonts in the same directory as the ones Flexi takes them from?

wondered about that, but I've never used the Flexi Font folder in the past and I've used Flexi for 20 years. All my fonts were just installed in Windows and they always showed up in Flexi too. Maybe something has changed? Just upgraded to Flexi 21 fro ver 10 this month.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Considering Type 1 fonts are deprecated (to be totally removed in 2023 as far as Adobe support), I would expect programs to start dropping support for them. Some my take longer compared to others, but I would expect it to happen with them all at some point.

I would suspect that probably installing Type 1 fonts in Windows would be supported for a long time as that is part of the charm of the bloat that comes with Windows is that legacy support, but even with that, would have to have that legacy program that still supports Type1.

 

[Graphics2u]

Considering Type 1 fonts are deprecated (to be totally removed in 2023 as far as Adobe support), I would expect programs to start dropping support for them. Some my take longer compared to others, but I would expect it to happen with them all at some point.

I would suspect that probably installing Type 1 fonts in Windows would be supported for a long time as that is part of the charm of the bloat that comes with Windows is that legacy support, but even with that, would have to have that legacy program that still supports Type1.

I did wonder if Flexi just stopped supporting them also. But what's strange is if I install the fonts while Flexi is running it recognizes them and all is well. But after a restart it seems to forget them.

I've got a email in to Flexi on it so I'll see what they say.

I've got over 600 of those fonts, I wonder if Adobe is updating them since we did buy them at one time? That's basically all that came with my initial version of Flexi twenty some years ago.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I've got over 600 of those fonts, I wonder if Adobe is updating them since we did buy them at one time? That's basically all that came with my initial version of Flexi twenty some years ago.

If you are a CC subscriber, I think that you can get the ones that they have updated that way. I think that is the only way to get those updated versions though, but I could be wrong.

I would say that what you are noticing is perhaps a bug of how they are trying to do away with supporting them. Typically programs that are running while a font is being installed are not able to see those fonts until they are closed out and re-opened. So I would say that there is a bug going on there that is having an unintended ability and they haven't totally stripped out the support for Type 1. I'm speculating, but that's the only thing that would make sense to me with the ability to read a font that is just installed while the program was open to begin with.

 

[Bobby H]

I've got over 600 of those fonts, I wonder if Adobe is updating them since we did buy them at one time? That's basically all that came with my initial version of Flexi twenty some years ago.

Many different type foundries, such as Linotype, Berthold, ITC, Monotype, etc have released fonts in Postscript Type 1 format in the past. Adobe has created a decent number of their own typefaces, some of which have been called "Adobe originals" releases. The decision is up to each individual type company or typeface designer to revisit an old type design and create a proper update in a modern font format.

Adobe's own type library has been updated to OpenType format, with further updates made to various typefaces. These updates are more than just a raw conversion from Type 1 to OTF. Often the character sets are expanded considerably.

Postscript Type 1 fonts are limited to no more than 256 glyphs per font file. A single OTF file can contain up to 65,535 glyphs. Most OTFs contain nowhere near that many glyphs, but it is common for many commercially sold OTFs to offer between several hundred and a couple thousand glyphs. The expanded character sets can cover multiple alphabets and an array of design-friendly features, like native small capitals, ligatures, alternate characters, etc. A graphics application must be fully OpenType aware to take advantage of those expanded character sets. Most industry specific sign design applications don't do that. The past few versions of CorelDRAW (going back to X6) have been OTF aware, the latest versions support OTF Variable fonts. Adobe Illustrator has been fully OTF aware since the first "CS" release in 2003.

I really wish Adobe would do a revival of some typefaces they previously released in Type 1 Multiple Master format, such as Penumbra and Kepler. The OpenType Variable re-creates the flexible capability of the Type 1 MM format, but with a radically expanded character set. Not many type foundries embraced the Type 1 MM format back in the 1990's. Far more type vendors are releasing OTF Variable fonts now.

If you are a CC subscriber, I think that you can get the ones that they have updated that way. I think that is the only way to get those updated versions though, but I could be wrong.

The Adobe Fonts service offers 165 Adobe Originals type families. Many are older typefaces dating back to the 1990's. Some, such as Adobe Text, are more recent releases. There is a good bit of foreign language fonts that inflate that 165 number. Anyone with vintage copies of Illustrator or PageMaker would have a couple hundred Type 1 fonts that came included with each. Not all those fonts are carried over into OpenType format and the Adobe Fonts service. None of the "Berthold BE" fonts Adobe licensed in the 1990's have been carried over into OTF versions of Adobe Font Folio in the 2000's or the Adobe Fonts Service now. Some others from Monotype and Linotype previously bundled in Adobe software releases are also missing.

The upside is the Adobe fonts service has over 2600 type families from dozens of different foundries. And there is a healthy number of fresh, fairly new typeface releases.

 

[FrankW]

I know in Signlab even if you have the fonts loaded in windows, that you still need to install them in Signlab. I was just looking at my Flexi 21 but don't see anywhere to load fonts....how about putting the fonts in the same directory as the ones Flexi takes them from?

Flexi uses system fonts. It supports special fonts like Casfonts which needs to be installed separately, but regularly any font available in the OS can be used.

Perhaps, there could be a problem with nearly 20 year old Flexi 6.6 files and font ids.

 

[Bobby H]

I have a fairly big collection of old CASmate SCF fonts, some of which were copied from stacks of 3.5" floppy discs. Way back then CASmate had a font conversion utility that could convert True Type fonts to SCF format. I don't remember if the utility worked with Postscript Type 1 fonts. I don't think it did. Not that it made all that much of a difference. In the early 1990's I was doing more and more of the design work in Windows using CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator then exporting the artwork so it could be brought into CASmate, which at first was running in freaking MS-DOS. Then it moved over to Windows.

One of the nice things about the Scanvec-Amiable Technologies merger back in the 1990's was newer versions of Flexi following that merger could read CASmate SCV files and use CASmate SCF fonts. "Installing" the fonts doesn't take any more effort than dropping the SCF files into proper folder. I don't know if the same thing applies to the Vinyl Express LXi application sold by Sign Warehouse. The application is very much like Flexi, but I don't know if it can use CASmate SCF fonts.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

In the early 1990's I was doing more and more of the design work in Windows using CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator then exporting the artwork so it could be brought into CASmate, which at first was running in freaking MS-DOS. Then it moved over to Windows.

Practically all Windows OSs were running on top of DOS back in the 90s (unless you were running NT back in the 90s and I would speculate most on here were not, but it is possible, NT I do believe was purely 32bit, which all the 3x, 9x OSs were 16/32 hybrids), which means all the programs (even ones that only ran in the win shell were also running on DOS, since that was the kernel of the OS). It wasn't until the Mistake Edition that DOS was getting gutted. By the time XP was around, it was just the GUI and it was switched to the NT kernel, nothing remained of DOS except NTVDM (which outside of one open source project, doesn't exist for Windows anymore (as far as I know) since all OEM installs of Windows are 64 bit now, I don't think there are any 32bit installs of any current versions of Windows anymore).

 

[Graphics2u]

Flexi uses system fonts. It supports special fonts like Casfonts which needs to be installed separately, but regularly any font available in the OS can be used.

Perhaps, there could be a problem with nearly 20 year old Flexi 6.6 files and font ids.

Thanks Frank. It's not a problem with the old files, That just how long I've had the Type one fonts. Files that I created just a few weeks ago that use one of those fonts can't find them either.