With regards to updating "old" versions of Adobe fonts ...
(1) For better or for worse, Adobe has never offered any "upgrades" for
users of individual typefaces or full font families licensed from Adobe. This
includes not only the original Type 1 fonts, but also Multiple Master and now
OpenType fonts (yes, there have been significant updates and improvements in
those fonts since they were first released over a dozen years ago). The only
upgrades that Adobe offers are for licensees of the Adobe Font Folio products.
(I will not even attempt to provide the business reasons for this or justify it
any way, but those were the decisions made. FWIW, Adobe's policies in terms of
font upgrades is fairly consistent with industry practice.)
(2) Originally, the OpenType format was also supposed to support a
Multiple Master flavor of fonts, but this was dropped shortly before the first
release of the OpenType fonts due to the objections of Microsoft who refused to
support such a feature. When Adobe made the OpenType versions of the Type 1
Multiple Master fonts, it made an individual font to match each and every one
of the primary instances of the comparable Type 1 Multiple Master font in terms
of weight, style, optical style, etc. In some cases, extra fonts were added to
reflect common customized Multiple Master instances that were believed to be in
use and of general usefulness to users. Migrating from Multiple Master to
OpenType requires you to match the Type 1 Multiple Master font instance with
the particular member of the comparable OpenType font family.
(3) With regards to "converting" fonts - let's say from Type 1 to
OpenType, we strongly discourage that. Although this may sound self-serving and
even assuming you use a product that preserves hinting and metrics, you gain
virtually nothing from such conversions other than a repackaging of the font.
In producing the OpenType version of its type library, quite a bit of work was
done in the area of adjusting and correcting metrics, supporting Unicode,
creating links that allow for automatic use of ligatures in page layout
programs, easy access to alternative and swash characters, small caps, and old
style figures, etc.
Given that Adobe hasn't release any Type 1 or Multiple Master fonts in a dozen
years, from a business perspective, you can readily declare that your Type 1
fonts from Adobe are fully depreciated. Adobe is not abandoning Type 1 support
in any of its products (nor do we have any plans for such abandonment) and we
absolutely cannot eliminate Type 1 and Multiple Master support for Acrobat (for
the obvious reason that we will "forever" need to support embedded fonts in
existing PDF files).
What I typically recommend is for users to continue to use their Type 1 fonts
with existing documents and publications and add the OpenType fonts as
necessary under any one or more of the following scenarios:
(1) You create a new publication (or artwork) or significantly modify
the style of an existing publication (or artwork).
(2) You need to have cross-platform compatibility for editing.
(3) You need access to the typographical and multilingual features (via
Unicode) of OpenType fonts.
Further note that the OpenType fonts from Adobe have different names (typically
suffixed with either Std - standard character sets or Pro - extended character
sets often with support for one or more non-Western Latin alphabets) than the
Type 1 or Multiple Master fonts they replace. You will need to do some edit
work to migrate an existing document to use of OpenType (note that this is
where use of paragraph and character styles really pays off handsomely!). We
purposely did this renaming in order to avoid any misperception of 100%
compatibility of the Type 1 to OpenType migration. There is minor chance of
text reflow, but also the possibility of problems with mapping of non-ASCII
characters (this is especially true for all characters in fonts such as Symbol,
Carta, Sonata, and Zapf Dingbats).
-Dov
[cid:image001.png at 01CDF41A.14B92F20]
Dov Isaacs
Principal Scientist
Adobe Systems Incorporated
+1 408.536.2896 (tel)
+1 408.242.5161 (cell)
isaacs at adobe.com<mailto:isaacs at adobe.com>
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704 USA
http://www.adobe.com<http://www.adobe.com/>
Feel free to print this e-mail if your needs dictate hard copy.
There is no need to feel guilty about printing!
Paper is renewable and recyclable.
ISAACS-OFFICE.corp.adobe.com
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at
lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Syed Zaeem Hosain ([email protected])
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 12:09 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Updating older versions of Adobe fonts? Slightly off-topic, but
related in a way!
Hi, all (particularly Dov Isaacs, as I seem to remember that you know a lot
about Adobe fonts).
Over the years, I bought a number of fonts from Adobe (some of them were quite
expensive too) for use with FrameMaker. Of course, since these were all
purchased _more_ than a decade ago, they are all Type 1 PostScript fonts (i.e,
before the TrueType and OpenType formats even existed).
Now, I assume that, since my purchases, these fonts have _probably_ been
improved and tweaked quite a bit. Plus, there are newer versions in the
OpenType format now for many of these fonts (like Adobe Caslon, Adobe Caslon
Expert, Adobe Garamond, Adobe Garamond Expert, Tekton ... just to name a few of
the ones I purchased)!
1. How can I "upgrade" (so to speak) these fonts to the latest -
presumably OpenType? - versions of the same fonts without having to buy them
all over again? I have not seen anything on the Adobe site that would seem to
allow such an upgrade. Or would it be considered a supportable download,
perhaps? :)
Buying new versions these would be quite an expensive proposition, so I am
hopeful that you all have some recommendations here!
Also, some of these purchases were of "Adobe Multiple Master" Fonts (or some
such name, as I recall). Since the old Adobe Type Manager is not supported
under Windows 7, I don't know how to use these with Windows applications
anymore - let alone FrameMaker.
2. How do you all deal with these older Adobe Multiple Master Font
formats? Am I even asking the right question here?
Thanks much for any recommendations/suggestions you all may have.
Z
________________________________
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Wickham
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 6:51 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Updating older versions of Adobe fonts? Slightly off-topic, but
related in a way!
I, too, wish there were an upgrade path for fonts.
Though I haven't tried them, something else to look at might be the
various font conversion utilities. Searching on "font conversion" turned
up several free online utilities. You can also buy professional
conversion utilities at http://www.fontlab.com.
Mike Wickham
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