This would be illegal unless the fonts included a license which
allowed
copying them and sending them around. Unless the fonts were free...
But yes, I agree that it is annoying.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of clark
slater
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 6:16 PM
To: [ExtendFlash]; [FlashCoders]
Subject: [Flashcoders] RANT: Collect Fonts Button
Print designers who use QuarkXpress have had an essential utility for
years.
They can collect all the fonts used in a project so that when passing
the source file to a bureau for print the exact same fonts are
supplied
along with the artwork and layout.
I cannot begin to list all the times we have encountered major pain
because the designer who created a particular FLA has lost the fonts
or
reinstalled their operating system or for whatever reason can no
longer
get their hands on the fonts. It is such a phenomenal pain in the
tits.
In terms of production time this is a VERY costly problem. We have
literally wasted hours screwing around with fonts trying to track down
the exact font used in a particular file. Sometimes the font might be
correct version - but different kerning table means it reflows
everywhere. Arrrrggh.
Often made worse by the way that font names are handled differently in
Flash than in other programs using the exact same file. The scope for
confusion is enormous. Even using third party font management tools
like
suitcase does not alleviate the problems because of the way that most
design applications will install their own dirty secret fonts into the
system fonts folder.
Given the number of FLA files that are shared from designer to
developer, agency to client to agency to freelancer etc. I simply
cannot
understand why Macromedia never saw fit to implement a utility like
Quark has so it would be easy to collect all the fonts used in a
particular file for handoff to the next part of the production
workflow.
The chance of font piracy is not a strong enough argument to explain
why
this critical design feature has been left out. After all anyone
wanting
to pirate fonts can just swap the contents of their system fonts
folder
etc.
Clearly, I sincerely hope this is included in the next version of the
Flash IDE - but I'm not holding my breath as it's been a submitted
wishlist item since version 3 or 4! In the meantime it would be great
if
there was a way to handle this with JSFL. Unfortunately I can't see
any
way to access the fonts used property of a document.
I'm sure we are not the only agency nearly driven to dementia with
these
kind of Flash font related issues. If anyone else out there shares our
anguish please speak up, we need to convince Adobe to include proper
font management in the next Flash IDE. And on the offchance that
anyone
has found a funky solution to this most annoying of problems, I will
at
the very least buy you a case of your favorite beer. And if anyone has
any insights to how this could be pulled off with JSFL I would be very
interested to discuss.
OK anyone that made it this far thanks for listening to my ranting.
Maybe we're the only Flash agency lame enough to be so badly affected
by
such font problems coz I don't really see this discussed anywhere, or
maybe there's some really slick or simple solution that everyone else
is
using...but I'm betting not. In which case it seems like an extension
that could fix this would be a *really* shit hot item for someone to
develop and offer to the Flash community as a whole.
Clark Slater
www.bayinteractive.com
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