When problems occur in print production, one possible reason is the use of a font that is not "cleanly" encoded. Fonts are standalone programs that describe individual glyphs as graphics, using resources such as character spacing, x-height, baseline, cap height, descender and ascenders, kerning, and encoding. Fonts are and remain a complex topic, which has only been made slightly easier with the application of the OpenType standard between Microsoft and Adobe.

For this reason, it is important to note that not all font formats, nor all font sources can be processed in the Workflow. Please observe the following rules for the trouble-free operation regarding fonts:

Rule 1: Only use fonts that can be installed locally (available from installable files) on a system. Do not use web fonts – in Adobe applications these are also called Type Kit or Adobe Fonts.

Rule 2: Only use fonts with the following formats:

But your asking, how can users tell which font format a font has? A small hint could be provided by the font menu of Adobe applications, which show the font format using an icon on the right side.

Figure 1: The font menu in Adobe InDesign CC 2020, showing all font formats.

Before you can use fonts for Captions in the Impose Editor, you must first create a new imposition in the Impose Editor and create a Default Caption. Proceed as follows:

1. Select the Production Job menu item [8].
2. Open an existing Production Job by double-clicking on an entry in the list or create a new Production Job via + New [5] in the action bar.
3. Then select a Substrate or the Substrate Definition in the Output Configuration [6] tab.
4. Then switch to the Impose tab [7] and select any Impose Mode [9].

Figure 2: An open Production Job with the Impose tab selected.

5. Selecting an Impose Mode opens the Impose Editor in the selected mode. However, you can also directly open the Impose Editor under the menu item Automation > Impose Editor without first creating a Job.
6. Add at least one Print Item to the imposition and add a Default Caption using the Captions settings under the Marks tab of the Impose Editor. If you need more detailed information about Captions, please refer to the article Overview.
7. Next to the Font Size input there is the Open Font Manager [10] symbol.
8. Click on this icon to open the Font Manager.

Figure 3: The Default Caption sub-section with all available parameters contained in the Captions area.

The UI is divided into two areas - Available Fonts and Font Information.

Available Fonts: In the area highlighted in yellow you can...

• Search for a font by entering the font name in the search field [13]
• Select a previously installed font [14]
• Upload a new font from your system [15].

Font information: In the highlighted area in turquoise - all font information is displayed in the font list. The following information can be found there:

• The name of the font family [11].
• The Weight of the selected typeface [12].
• A listing of installed Weights [16] of the selected font family.
• The alphabet including digits [17] for the selected font.
• The metadata [18] for the selected font style
• The Delete "xxx" Button to delete [19] the selected font style.
• To end your session using the Font Manager, press the Close button [20].

Figure 4: The Font Manager which is only accessible in the Impose Editor when a Default Caption is selected.

To upload a desired font, proceed as follows:

1. If the font collection is already open, simply click on the + symbol [15].
2. This opens the native file management system.

Figure 5: The open native file management dialog with a selected font file in OpenType format.

3. Select the desired font file and click Open.
4. The upload process starts automatically and the font is added to the database in the Master Data.
5. Select the uploaded font to check if this font can be used. If the error message from the illustration below appears, the font cannot be used.

Figure 6: The Font Manager shows a warning message when a font is not usable.