Fonts. GLOBAL GRAPHICS SOFTWARE Navigator RIP version 8.1

PDF

Document

Fonts

11

Whenever the RIP processes a job that uses fonts, they must be available in memory. Fonts are loaded into the RIP from the disk automatically whenever they are required. However, the fonts must have been installed first, or they must be embedded in the job that uses them. Installation is a once-only process where the RIP configures the font for its use and puts it in the appropriate place. This chapter discusses how fonts are installed and then used by the Navigator RIP.

The RIP provides a suite of facilities that let you manage fonts easily and efficiently. This suite includes commands that will:

• Install fonts in the RIP.

• Tell you which fonts are currently installed.

• Produce a proof of any font currently installed.

• Remove fonts from the RIP.

The Navigator RIP also provides facilities for font substitution and font emulation. For more information see:

•

“Font substitution” on page 299.

•

“Font Emulation” on page 301.

11.1 Supplied fonts

The Navigator RIP comes with the 35 standard fonts found in most versions of the Apple LaserWriter and many other PostScript language capable printers. The RIP font folder also includes several special-purpose fonts:

• The Harlequin font is used only for the Navigator RIP logo.

• The HP-Times-Roman and HP-Courier fonts are used for PCL emulation. PCL is the Printer

Control Language used in Hewlett-Packard laser printers.

• The NotDefFont font is used by composite fonts.

• The Stick font is used for HPGL emulation. HPGL is a plotter language used by some Hewlett-

Packard laser printers. The Navigator RIP supports HPGL2 with this font.

The RIP supplies the 35 standard fonts and the special-purpose fonts installed in the fonts

folder in the

folder.

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11.2 Types of font

There are several different types of fonts that can be installed and used with the RIP. See “Installing fonts in the Navigator RIP” on page 293 for details about installing fonts.

• Type 1 fonts—these are the most commonly used fonts. Type 1 fonts can contain hints that can subtly change the shape of the characters. Hinted fonts can improve the appearance of text rendered at low resolution or at small sizes on higher resolution devices: for example, hints can affect 11 point text at resolutions up to 2000 dpi.

Note: The font downloaders supplied with many Type 1 fonts actually install Type 1 fonts as

Type 4 fonts.

• Type 3 fonts.

• Type 0 (composite) fonts—these are special fonts designed to support large character sets such as Japanese or Chinese. Type 0 fonts can use any base font format (Types 1, 3, 4, 32, 42) and

CID fonts. Type 0 fonts can support multi-byte character encodings. Older Type 0 fonts had multiple sub-fonts and as such used a lot of memory however, the new CID-keying method is much more memory efficient.

• Character identifier (CID) composite fonts, together with associated character map (CMap) files are used to produce CID-keyed fonts, which exist only in the memory of the Navigator

RIP (or other RIPs).

There is not easy method of determining whether a TrueType font should be installed as a CID font or not. If installed as a CID font, the order of characters in the font is not easily predicted.

Improvements to this are expected in future releases.

• Single-byte PC format TrueType fonts or OpenType fonts with TrueType outlines.

• The RIP also supports installation of native TrueType, Type 42, raw CFF (Compact Format) and OpenType/CFF fonts. Multiple-font CFF or OpenType/CFF fonts will be installed as Font-

Set resources, but these will not appear in the

Proof

Delete Fonts

menus, or in the font

List

Note: The font resources created when installing CID fonts are CID-keyed fonts and are created automatically by the RIP. These font resources are created when CID fonts or CMaps are installed using the

Install Fonts

option in the Fonts menu, and are deleted when CID fonts are removed using the

Delete Fonts

option from Fonts menu. Font resources may also be created or deleted on startup, if the available CID fonts or CMaps have changed since the last bootup.

Installing a CID font over AppleTalk with a font installer will not automatically create font resources; the RIP must be quit and restarted to do this.

The created font resources may be deleted using the

Delete Fonts

option on the Fonts menu, and will not be re-created by the RIP.

Note: The RIP supports the use of a variety of other fonts, for example, when they are embedded in

PostScript language, XPS or PDF jobs. The embedded fonts can include Compact Font Format,

Type 42, and Type 32 fonts.

Note: The font data cache is not configurable, but takes 0.5 MB for all fonts. So, for CID, native TrueType, CFF, and OpenType/CFF fonts, 1 MB extra RAM should be sufficient.

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11.3 The DLD1 format

11.2.1 Font resource directories

The Font resource directories can be changed. The default locations are:

• Font resources are installed in

SW/fonts

• FontSet resources are installed in

SW/FontSet.

• CID fonts are installed in

SW/CIDFont

• CMap files, which are placed in the

SW/CMap

folder.

Throughout this section these are the directories referred to when font resources are mentioned.

11.3 The DLD1 format

The Navigator RIP will convert Type 1 fonts (and Type 1 fonts contained within composite fonts) into its own DLD1 font format.

The DLD1 format stores font data far more efficiently than do standard storage formats. Access to font data, and operations upon fonts, are made much faster, while the amount of PostScript language virtual memory consumed by the font is reduced dramatically.

The benefits of using the DLD1 format include: a DLD1 format font occupies less disk space; and this format can require under 10% of the memory space of other formats. This table shows some typical figures for the disk and memory requirements of a font in DLD1 format, and for the corresponding font in Type 1 and Type 4 formats.

Table 11.1 Disk and memory requirements for font types

Font type

DLD1

Type 1

Type 4

Disk space (KB) Memory (KB)

100

Note: It is difficult to give corresponding estimates for Type 3 fonts because they are inherently so flexible, but they are not particularly efficient.

11.4 Installing fonts in the Navigator RIP

If a job requires a particular font, the font must already be installed in the RIP before the job is processed, unless the job itself contains the font definition. If the font is not found, the RIP will instead

print the text in a selected substitute base font (see “Font substitution” on page 299), or issue an error

message, depending on the setting for

Abort the job if any fonts are missing

in the Page Setup

Options dialog box. See “Abort the job if any fonts are missing” on page 140 for details.

Depending on the font type, you can install a font into the RIP in one of two ways: by using the

Install

Fonts

command or by downloading the font to the RIP.

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All fonts may be embedded, and all fonts may appear in the fonts

and

CIDFont

resource directories.

Most font formats can be installed using the

Install Fonts

command, including, Types 1, 3, TrueType,

Type 42, CID Types 0, 1, 2, 4 (same as Type 32), CFF, OpenType and CMap resources.

The

Install Fonts

command and downloading fonts to the RIP are described in the next two sections.

See “Removing fonts” on page 298 for details about deleting the fonts you have installed.

11.4.1 Install Fonts command

When you choose

Install Fonts

from the

Fonts

menu, the RIP displays the Install Fonts dialog box

shown in Figure 11.1.

Figure 11.1 Install Fonts dialog box

To install a single font, do the following:

1. Select a font in the list box.

2. Click

Install

Note: PC format files with a *.pfa, *.pfb (Type 1), *.otf (OpenType), *.ttf (TrueType) extension are visible in the upper list box. If your fonts are not in this format, select

All Files

from the

Files of type

drop-down list.

Use the

Look in

drop-down list to use other directories or drives.

You can also select several fonts and install them together.

Shift

To select a block of several files, select the first file in the block, and then hold down the Shift key and select the last file in the block.

Ctrl

To select several unconnected files, hold down the Control key while making your selection.

A successfully installed font produces the message:

Installed font ’font_name’ in TrueType format

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11.4 Installing fonts in the Navigator RIP

Note: The format type will be reported in this way for single-font packages only (not FontSets). The type reported will be TrueType, Type 42, Type 1, DLD1, Type 2, Type 3 and so on.

The

Install Fonts

command will install into the RIP Type 1, Type 3 and s ingle-byte PC format True-

Type fonts or OpenType fonts with TT outlines.

OpenType/CFF is supported. Single-font

OTTO packages will install as a single font or CIDFont as appropriate. Multiple-font packages will install as FontSet resources.

If you try to install a file that does not contain a font, or that contains a font of another type, the RIP displays a message in the RIP Monitor. This will not harm the RIP or the file in any way—the RIP just refuses to install it.

Using the installer, TrueType fonts only install as non-CID fonts. They therefore have to be manually moved to the

CIDFont

resources directory to make them appear as CID fonts.

If a font is of Type 1, it will be converted into DLD1 format before being added. This can then be loaded into the RIP whenever necessary.

Installation is performed on a copy of the font, so your original font file remains intact.

11.4.2 Downloading fonts to the RIP

This section describes how to download fonts to the RIP.

• Multiple Master fonts

Multiple Master fonts may be downloaded over AppleTalk from a Macintosh using the downloader supplied with them.

• Composite fonts

Composite fonts vary greatly, and so the procedure for installation is likely to be different for each one: there is no industry standard for this at present. Almost all composite fonts now come with their own AppleTalk installers; however, there is still a small number that are shipped as a collection of self-installing PostScript language files. Contact your font supplier for more detailed information about using particular composite fonts with the RIP.

• TrueType fonts

No downloader is needed for TrueType fonts. Using a downloader makes them less efficient if converted to Type 42 format. TrueType fonts should be installed using the

Install Fonts

command.

• CID fonts

If your CID font is supplied with a downloader, install the font and any relevant CMap file over AppleTalk using the supplied downloader. If no downloader is supplied, use the

Install

Fonts

command. At present, however, CID fonts have to be manually moved to the CIDFont resources directory to make them appear as CID fonts.

All installed fonts are placed in the fonts

resources directory, except for CID fonts and CMap files, which are placed in the

CIDFont

and

CMap

resources directories respectively.

Leaf fonts and composite fonts are sub fonts of Type 0 fonts and are installed elsewhere.

OpenType fonts containing CFF data use the tag “OTTO”

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11.5 Pre-loading fonts

The Navigator RIP always pre-loads the 35 standard fonts, since one or more are likely to be used by most jobs. If you frequently use a particular set of other fonts, you can ask the RIP to load them automatically upon start-up.

The RIP will take slightly longer to start-up, but once loaded, the fonts will be in memory when jobs require them. This saves time when processing jobs, since the RIP does not have to stop interpreting to wait for a font to be loaded. The time savings can be considerable—if a job requires a composite font, the RIP could be waiting for a few seconds to load it. By having it pre-loaded, you will save this time with every job that uses it.

Note: You can use this method to pre-load composite fonts, so long as they have been installed

according to the instructions in “Downloading fonts to the RIP” on page 295.

To pre-load a font, add a new line to the Navigator RIP initialization file,

HqnOEM

, and restart the RIP.

This initialization file is in the

Sys

folder in the

folder.

You must add one line of PostScript language code for every font you want to load. For example, the following lines load ZapfChancery-MediumItalic and ZapfDingbats into the RIP:

/ZapfChancery-MediumItalic HQNloadfont

/ZapfDingbats HQNloadfont

The RIP may take slightly longer to start up, but any jobs using these fonts will run considerably faster. Pre-loading a composite font takes longer than pre-loading other types of font, but saves more time for each job using it.

11.6 Producing a list of installed fonts

Sometimes you will need to know whether a particular font is currently installed in the RIP. You can produce a list of all the currently installed fonts by choosing

Fonts > List Fonts

Note: The

List Fonts

option does not show FontSet resources.

This list will appear in two places:

• The Navigator RIP window—this lets you see immediately whether or not fonts are installed.

• The file

LOGFILE

in the

folder—this provides a more permanent record of which fonts were installed at a particular time.

The date and time accompanies every list.

11.7 Proofing fonts

Sometimes you may want to produce a formatted listing of all the characters in a particular font— known as a proof. This would normally entail writing a special PostScript language job to produce the listing, but the RIP allows you to produce a proof of any installed font automatically.

Note: The RIP can proof CID fonts only in long format. Also, the RIP will not use a substitute font in short format. If you do not choose long format, the RIP reports:

CID fonts cannot be proofed - try Proof fonts in long format.

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11.7 Proofing fonts

Palatino-Italic

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR

1234567890-=!@#$%^&()_*

Figure 11.2 An example of font proofing

You can proof fonts, either on a printer or on your screen, by choosing

Proof Fonts

from the

Fonts

menu. The RIP produces the proof using your choice of Page Setup and fits as many fonts as possible

on a page. Figure 11.2 shows an example of a short-format proof for one font.

When you choose

Proof Fonts

, the RIP displays a dialog box that lists all of the fonts currently

installed, as shown in Figure 11.3.

Figure 11.3 Proof Highlighted Fonts dialog box

First, choose an appropriate Page Setup for proofing the fonts, from the

Page Setup

drop-down list.

Note: If you forget to choose a Page Setup, the RIP uses the one that you chose last time you proofed fonts. If you have not proofed fonts in this RIP session, the first Page Setup in the listing is used. To

change the order of this listing, see “Reordering Page Setups” on page 77.

Select the fonts you want to proof, and click

Proof

. You can select as many fonts as you like.

Shift

To select a block of several fonts, select the first font in the block, and then hold down the Shift key and select the last font in the block.

Ctrl

To select several unconnected fonts, hold down the Control key while making your selection.

The RIP constructs a PostScript language job and then runs it, as if you had used

Print File

to print an existing file. If other jobs are pending, the proof takes its place in the queue.

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By default, proofs only show a sample of the full character set in a font. If you want a proof of the complete set of characters, select the

Proof fonts in long format

check box.

Note: CID fonts can be proofed, but only in long format. FontSet resources cannot yet be proofed.

11.8 Removing fonts

You can remove most font types using the

Delete Fonts

command. The two exceptions to this are composite and CID fonts.

• Composite fonts

We recommend that you remove a composite (Type 0) font using the font downloader supplied with it. This will ensure that the leaf fonts are removed. In many cases this is also the only way to recover a font license if the license restricts you to a fixed number of installs.

• CID fonts

CID fonts which you have installed using the

Fonts

Install Fonts

option should be deleted using the

Fonts

Delete Fonts

option.

Note: If there is a CID font and, for example, a Type 1 font with the same name, the name is listed twice. If you delete such a font, the RIP deletes the Type 1 font first; and then the CID font, if you choose to delete again.

When you choose the

Delete Fonts

command from the

Fonts

menu, the RIP displays a dialog box, as

shown in Figure 11.4, where you can select the fonts to remove. As with the Install Fonts and Proof

Fonts dialog boxes, you can select as many fonts as you want.

When you click

Delete

, the RIP removes the fonts you have selected immediately.

Warning: If you remove a font, and then need to process a job that uses it, you will first have to reinstall it. There is no confirmation dialog box. Before clicking

Delete

be sure that you have the original file from which you can reinstall the font.

Figure 11.4 Delete Fonts dialog box

11.9 Composite fonts (Type 0)

The RIP provides full support for composite fonts. Because of their size, composite fonts are treated specially. You cannot install all of them using the

Install Fonts

option, for example, and there are cer-

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11.10 Font substitution

tain considerations you must make if they are to be used efficiently. See “Downloading fonts to the

RIP” on page 295 for information about installing composite fonts.

Composite fonts are usually very large, and can consume much computer time and memory. Whenever a character is encountered in a job, a RIP must find its definition in the composite font, and then convert it into a bitmap, before it is printed or previewed. If a RIP does this for every character in the job, it will be very slow.

The RIP minimizes the number of character conversions it has to do by storing the results of conversions in a RAM cache store. This means that the first time a character is seen, it is converted it into a bitmap and stored in the cache. When that character is seen next, the RIP does not need to convert it again because it can find the result immediately in the cache store. Significant savings in processing time can be made using this method, especially when dealing with frequently used characters.

The RIP is able to cache more character data when more memory is available to it. We recommend you allow extra memory in the range 16 MB through 32 MB. You will need more memory still if you wish to cache several composite fonts. Try experimenting with memory allocation, as requirements will depend on the fonts and types of job you have.

If you are going to use a composite font regularly, you should pre-load it into the RIP. See “Pre-loading fonts” on page 296. Pre-loading makes the RIP slower to start up, but saves a great deal of time

when processing jobs that use those fonts.

11.10 Font substitution

Generally, it is preferable to use the exact font that was used in the design of the document. However, there are times when this is not possible; a font may be corrupt; or the original font may not have been sent with the original file. In such cases the only solution is to substitute with a font that is very similar in design to the original specified font. The customer may ask you to do this to get the job done on time.

If substitution were not available, the RIP would do one of two things: error and refuse to produce the job or substitute a default font, depending on the setting of the

Abort job if any fonts are missing

option, see “Abort the job if any fonts are missing” on page 140. Either result may be unacceptable.

One solution is to open up all the pages in the original application program and search and replace every occurrence of the problem font. This is not ideal as it is time consuming; you may not have the original application and if you miss one or two occurrences where the font was used, the processing time would be wasted.

Having the RIP do the substitution for you “on the fly” is the best solution because all occurrences of a font are guaranteed to be substituted.

In the RIP, the file

SW/Config/FontSubstitution

is automatically run as the RIP boots. You can configure the following information in that file:

• Default font to use.

• Default CID font to use.

• Font substitution table.

• CID Font substitution table.

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In all cases the

FontSubstitution

file has many comments and is intended to be self-documenting.

A font substitution mechanism has been added which is similar (and in addition), to the existing font substitution mechanism (defined by entries in the

SW/Config/FontSubstitution

file).

Whereas the existing substitution mechanism is unconditional, the new mechanism only attempts a substitution if the initially given font name cannot be found. However, if a conditional substitution is made, a message is displayed on the monitor indicating the substitution:

Warning: font <-name-> not found, using <-name-> instead

For example:

Warning: font Arial not found, using ArialMT instead.

You can silence this message by uncommenting the line in

SW/Config/FontSubstitution

which specifies the

/SilentCondFontSub

key.

For more information see the Conditional Font Substitution section in the

SW/Config/FontSubstitution

text file.

11.11 The HqnFontSetStubs start up files

The

Sys/ExtraStart/10HqnFontSetStubs

and

Sys/ExtraStart/20HqnCIDFontStubs

files are run by the RIP at startup and perform the following functions:

Sys/ExtraStart/10HqnFontSetStubs

Generates stub fonts for FontSet resources. The stub fonts will be installed on the

%fontset%

pseudo-device.

Sys/ExtraStart/20HqnCIDFontStub

Generates the CID-keyed resources for newly-installed, and previously undetected CID fonts and CMaps.

Either of these files may be removed if the functionality is not required. The numeric prefix to their names is to force a particular running order; FontSet stubs should be created before CID font stubs, because FontSet stub files may be CID fonts. The files in

Sys/ExtraStart

are run in alpha/numeric order.

11.12 Font backup

The font backup utility allows you to easily transfer fonts from your existing RIP to a newly installed

RIP.

To use font backup, select a default Page Setup and RIP the file:

SW\Utilities\BackupFonts.ps

This creates a file which effectively contains backups of font files, (and some other files) from the

SW folder.

A message appears in the monitor window informing you of the name of the PostScript language file created.

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11.13 Font Emulation

When you have installed your new RIP, you should run this PostScript language file to install those font files on your new RIP.

11.13 Font Emulation

When fonts requested by the job are unavailable to the RIP, some work flows benefit significantly from being able to produce acceptable, readable copy using another font. This is particularly true with rapid turnaround work flows typical of digital printing. To achieve this, emulated fonts are used to produce suitable facsimile text based on the characteristics of the font that is being emulated in terms of style, spacing, height and width. In this way, a suitable readable font with similar characteristics of the target font is used in the place of a missing font.

Font Emulation is often acceptable when digital printing, and can be preferable to the file not being produced at all.

Font Emulation is available from the Navigator RIP Genesis Release

™

and has the following characteristics:

• The ability to recognize the missing font by name

• ts the standard Latin characters

11.13.1 Using Font Emulation

Font Emulation is enabled by checking the

Enable font emulation

option in the Page Setup Options dialog.

Once enabled, Font Emulation currently catches references to over 1600 fonts. The type of font that can be emulated is not important because fonts are matched by name. If the font name is in the data-

base the font can be emulated. See “Modifying the Font Emulation database” on page 303 for infor-

mation on how to modify the font database.

Note: CID Fonts are not emulated.

If a request for a font returns an error, or anything other than the requested font,

Font Emulation

first looks up the font name in the

FontEmulation

dictionary, and then, if necessary, may go on to look up the font in the supplied database on disk.

If Font Emulation fails to emulate a font (for whatever reason), the RIP will behave as if Font Emulation had not been switched on. That is, if the RIP is configured to abort jobs when a font is missing, the job will abort; if the RIP is configured to substitute Courier for the missing font, Courier will be used.

There are two situations when fonts are emulated these are: when the font requested is not found or when a font error occurs. The following sections describe the two scenarios:

11.13.1.1 Font not found

Font Emulation will be used for PostScript language and PDF files if:

1. The required font is not embedded in the job and

2. The required font is not installed in the RIP and

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3. The required font is not handled explicitly by font substitution.

Font Emulation will only regard font substitution as successful if the font name returned by any substitution is exactly the same name as the requested font. Therefore, in most cases Font Emulation will override font substitution. If however Font Emulation fails, the font previously selected for substitution will be used.

Currently there is not automatic way of excluding fonts selected for substitution from being emulated. If you want to use font substitution instead of the emulated font, that font will have to be explicitly disabled in the

/SW/Config/FontEmulation file

4. Font Emulation is enabled and

5. The required font is not disabled in

/SW/Config/FontEmulation

file and

6. The required font is defined or aliased in

/SW/Config/FontEmulation

or defined in the Font

Emulation database.

11.13.1.2 Font error

Font Emulation will be used for PostScript language and PDF files if:

1. A font error is encountered attempting to use a font embedded in a job or installed in the RIP

(this includes the error produced when selecting

Abort the job if any fonts are missing

in the

Page Setup Options window) and

2. Font Emulation is enabled and

3. The required font is not disabled in

/SW/Config/FontEmulation

file and

4. The required font is defined or aliased in

/SW/Config/FontEmulation

or defined in the Font

Emulation database.

Note: PDF files usually include a PDF

FontDescriptor

for each font required by the PDF file, even for fonts which are not embedded. If Font Emulation is employed for a PDF file, the

FontDescriptor

in that PDF file will be used in place of the emulation data in the RIP. Also, the

FontDescriptor

can be used even if the font is not defined in the Font Emulation database or

/SW/Config/FontEmulation

file.

11.13.2 Messages

When a missing font is successfully emulated the following message appears:

%%[ Warning: Font <...> emulated. ]%%

Note:

<...>

is the name of the missing font.

If Font Emulation's attempt to get the required font returned an error, and the font is unable to be emulated, the following error is generated:

%%[ Error: Font <...> not found. (Emulation unknown) ]%%

However, if the font returned is not what was asked for (for example, Courier), and the font cannot be emulated, the following warning is output but the RIP will continue to use whatever font was returned:

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11.13 Font Emulation

%%[ Warning: Font <...> not found. (Emulation unknown) ]%%

That is, if a font is missing and it cannot be emulated, an error is only generated with emulation switched on if there would have been an error with it switched off.

If the missing font cannot be found in

FontEmulation

or the database, the following message appears:

%%[ Error: Font <...> not found. (Emulation not known)]%%

If emulation is switched off for a particular font, the following message appears:

%%[ Error: Font <...> not found. (Emulation disabled)]%%

If there is an error in the Font Emulation dictionary the following message appears:

%%[ Error: FontEmulation syntax /<...> invalid value. ]%%

In the unlikely event of an internal emulation font being replaced by a normal font, the following message appears:

%%[ Error: Font <...> not found. (FontEmulation installation}]%%

11.13.3 Modifying the Font Emulation database

You are able to add to or modify the Font Emulation database using the file