InDesign Font conflicts
Posted by Dan FHow does InDesign prioritize fonts when font names conflict? There are three kinds of name conflicts in InDesign that cause fonts to potentially not show up in the font menu.
1) Duplicate PostScript FontName
2) Duplicate menu name (as shown in InDesign)
3) Multiple “regular”-like styles in a single family
Duplicate Postscript Fontnames
If two fonts have the same Family and Style name, but different PostScript FontNames, both fonts are shown in the menu (an abbreviation is added to the menu to indicate font type).
When two fonts conflict in their PostScript FontName, InDesign will
- not
show both, regardless of format
If two fonts have the same Family and Style name and the same PostScript FontName, the following rules are followed to determine which font is used.
The rules are priority from highest to lowest. If a given rule does not decide between the two fonts, go to the next rule, until one of the fonts is chosen, your brain explodes, or you run out of rules, whichever comes first.
0. Prioritize font installed in an OS font folder over font installed in a private Adobe font folder. (New rule added for InDesign CS3.)
1. Choose font that is not a bitmap font.
2. Choose font not in Adobe:Fonts:Reqrd: folder (Macintosh only rule)This means that fonts under user control get to override fonts hidden away in Adobe’s “required” fonts folder.
3. Choose font that is not a dfont (Macintosh only rule)This means that in InDesign, Type 1 fonts will outrank Apple’s system dfonts when they have conflicting names (as they often do). Note that this does not address the problem for other applications.
4. Choose the font with more glyphs
5. If same number of glyphs, choose the font with preferred technology using this orderType 1 (“PostScript”) / OpenType CFF (Compact Font Format)TrueType (including OpenType with TrueType outlines)CID-keyed Type 1Adobe Type Composer fontBitmap
If none of these rules can be applied, then the first font enumerated by CoolType is chosen. This situation would most likely occur when the same font is resides in two separate locations. If this is the case, it will not matter which font is chosen.
Multiple master fonts contain Type 1 outlines. OpenType fonts can contain either Type 1 or TrueType outlines, and are prioritized based on the type of outlines they contain.
REGULAR AND ITS SYNONYMSA quite distinct conflict occurs with families that have more than one member of a font family whose style is one of the following:
R, Roman, Regular, Book, Plain or Normal. Basically, only one of these members of the family will show up in the font menu. Even though technically, there is nothing wrong with the font. Why does this happen? Well, it turns out that InDesign tries to keep track of “synonyms for regular” so that when you switch the selected family, it can map from one “regular” font (by whatever name) to a differently-named one in the other family.
Which is great and often useful, except that in the current implementation, it means that InDesign can’t accept having more than one “regular” font (using that earlier list of synonyms) in a family.