#Feature Sought
21 messages in this thread
Dear Sirs,
I have a feature that I would desperately like to see either included in the
Illustrator software… or as a seperate utility program.
I don't know how prevalant my particular problem is… so I don't quite know
if a significant number of customers would benefit… but I do believe that
quite a few DTPers suffer the same frustration as I do.
First let me give you a little background as to how I use Illustrator 88
(both to give you a better understanding of me as a consumer… and also to
give you some insight as to where my problem comes into play). I'm one of
several Graphic Artists/DeskTop Publishers at a fairly good sized publishing
and marketing firm here in the LA area. The system I use is a Mac II w/
standard color monitor, LaserWriter II NTX w/External Hard Drive, and various
other peripherals (scanner, MS-DOS interface, TOPS network, etc. etc.). We
purchased the LW NTX specifically for two reasons. The second was speed. But
first and foremost, we wanted to store all our Downloadable PostScript fonts on
the printer's external Hard Drive. The increase in efficientcy over our old
LaserWriter Plus was staggering. However, we generally (read always) use the LW
for proofing purposes only. For final output we need 1200 dpi or better.
Although we've pushed and pushed, the VPs and other initials at our company
have axed our requests for a Linotype 200 or 300 output device. So, we've found
a reputable L-300 house nearby that we job-out to… and we're quite happy with
our results. However, the problem arises as a result of our upgrade to the LW
NTX.
The L-300 house, because of their huge base of clients and, thus, fonts,
needs us to callout all the fonts that are required to print the files we give
to them. Since all downloadable fonts are now, for all intents and purposes,
"resident" on our LaserWriter, we get no "Now Downloading Font:Cooper Black",
etc. (which used to be our CheckSum for our files). Now, it takes quite a bit
of time perusing a given file (sometimes multi-paged, multi-layered, and quite
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complex) to make sure we've identified all the pertinent fonts. Especially if
one of us has to prepare a file that one of our coworkers worked on some days
before.
CUT TO THE CHASE: Isn't there a way that Illustrator could scan it's own
files and identify the required downloadable fonts? The output of such a scan
would be most valuable as a text file, so that one could simply print the file
out on a printer and give the hardcopy directly to the outside agency (rather
than try to copy the info from the screen… increasing the possibilty of
error).
I think such an embellishment of the software would be sought after, not
only by firms like ours, but also by the outside printing houses themselves.
The amount of $$, frustration, and time the has been wasted by my company alone
from Linotronic pages that have come back with Courier where Lucida should be
has been quite high. All because the person preparing the file didn't notice
the font and didn't call it out to the L-300 house.
thank you for listening,
I hope something comes of this suggestion,
Carl Steinhilber
Carl:
There's a group of utilities from Varityper that include one that will scan a
pure PostScript file (a file printed to disc) and let you know all the fonts in
the file (provided the code-generating application is well-behaved and didn't
rename fonts for some reason).
The particular utility is called Varityper PSFontFinder. The latest version is
1.3 (I just downloaded it from the Linotronics Owner's Association's BBS which
is out in California). The utilities can also be found in the MacPro forum, I
believe (check the DA and DTP libraries).
–jon
Jon–
Could you post the number for the Linotronic Owners Association BBS? Is the
association aimed primarily at service bureaus or can others apply as well?
Thanks.
John:
LOA can be reached at 415-841-6302 (8-1-N, running up to 9600 baud). The sysop
there, Charles Collier, is a very knowledgeable fellow. It's mainly a West
Coast crowd (lots of hot tub talk and such) but I noticed last time I was on
they had elected David Geller (who regularly frequents this forum) to the Board
of Directors so I'm counting on him to represent the East a bit more.
It's mainly geared at type shop and service bureau personnel (in addition to
Lino, the board handles info on most typesetting equipment, especially
PostScript imagesetters like Cg and Varityper). The libraries have some useful
code and utilities and I've gotten some very technical questions answered there
days before I got a call back from Linotype.
If it wasn't such an expensive call, I'd be on it a lot more often.
–jon
Why would Illustrator be substituting Courier, Jon? I've never had that problem
since the program works with font names. I've run out files with no idea what
fonts it had and everything worked fine. Could it be that the service bureau
doesn't actually have all the fonts on-line on the Lino?
Tripp:
I know a few service bureaus that don't have the full Adobe library loaded on
their RIPs because they use multiple libraries. One bureau has enough RIPs that
they have Bitstream on one, Adobe on two others and are planning a fourth for
URW. Another shop has all the printer fonts on their Mac and they print
everything with the old Command-K routine and spool down to the RIP. If for
some reason the printer font ain't there, you could get a substitution going.
I've got one for you. Had a Quark file come in last night. One of the guys at
the shop downloaded the Bitstream Novarese fonts to disc. Printed the job fro
Quark, the RIP cycled and then when it should have printed the job, it just
returned to "0" as if everything had gone okay. No error message. No printed
job.
Printing to file resulted in a PostScript error (something useless like
"no-string-val"). Finally, after all sorts of contortions, I isolated the
problem at the RIP, removed the Bitstream fonts from the RIP disk and placed
them in memory. The job ran fine (and, at $28 for two hours of my time, the
shop made a fortune).
Anyone hazard a guess as to what the hell happened? Obviously, I'll always load
the non-Adobe fonts into memory, but we've loaded Bitstream to disc before with
no problems. Just curious.
–jon
With Xpress, it's hard to tell … I've had files that blew up as soon as I
opened them on the Mac. Could it be the customer had set the file up to
download fonts? I've noticed when TOPS tries to download a font when it's
already on the hard disk that things go awry. Also, you might check on your
INITs etc. (although, I'm sure you've long ago cleaned out the troublemakers).
I know we had a similar problem before Lino got around to shipping us their
version of the core screen fonts and when we were running Pyro. All I can
really say for sure is that I know it's perfectly possible to design an
unprintable file in Xpress. It *is* annoying though, to get *no* error message
and *no* repro. When in doubt, kick the RIP!
Interesting to note (I run a service bureau in Columbus, Ohio): Illustrator
knows the printer font names, unlike any other DTP program. This means that
screen fonts need not be loaded for output (no substitution occurs, it's
already done at your level). Just thought you'd like to know.
Nathan-
I'm quite confused. In my experience, even on our LaserWriter, if the screen
font isn't loaded when an Illustrator document is printing, the font either is
substituted (the majority of the time), or, if the font does indeed print, the
kerning and spacing attributes are screwed up. I'd be pretty interested in
knowing how you print files without installing the screen font.
I'd have to admit that we don't use the AFM files in our system (and neither
does our L-300 house)… so that might have something to do with the situation.
Let me know.
-Carl
What you could try is to print Illustrator documents using the Adobe Separator
utility. Unless your customers have a tendency to leave scattered art all over
the page.
Nathan-
Doesn't Seperator call upon DL fonts as well?
-Carl
No. Again: Illustrator documents, be it 88 or otherwise, has the printer name
in the file. You could actually download the Adobe file itself to the PS
printer (providing the origin was placed properly and that you had appended
'showpage' at the end) and everything would be perfect (and a lot faster!)
Nathan-
I'll try DLing the Illustrator PS document… but I really don't think it will
work. I don't know if it's a result of the configuration of our system or
what… but I'm quite sure that our Illustrator documents do not print properly
without the screen font being loaded and active.
-Carl
Carl,
This is a good suggestion for an upgrade for Illustrator. I think this feature
should be built into ALL applications–not just Illustrator. QuarkXPress can
give you such a listing and it's very useful.
^Steve^
I have one other feature that I would like to see added to Illustrator, as
well as most programs in general as well —
A GRID feature, that would allow the user to put a grid with a specified
amount of space between grid lines up on the screen to work with.
I have used other programs that have that feature, with a lock/snap to grid
option available, and it makes precision work much easier on everyone
involved.
Sure in Illustrator you could create a template that is a grid, but that is
not good when you have another template that you want to use at the same
time.
Maybe in the future this will be a feature of a few of the better programs.
Barry
Oddly enough, I found an old version of the original Xpress in our dusty files
just today. I was playing around with it and one of the first things I found
was the Font listing (and font replacing) feature. I thought it was great! I
wonder why the feature was never adopted by other DTP applications. The other
features of the original version were kind of primative (that's why we don't
use it anymore)… but I'm sure Quark has updated it's features now (in the 2.O
versions), and I'll look into upgrading and using IT rather than PageMaker.
I would agree, the Font search feature should be included in ALL
applications… it would definately be a help to us.
If you haven't already, DL the Varityper DAs (PSFontFinder in particular)… I
did by suggestions of other users. I've used them and they DO work. Course, you
have to print a PageMaker file to a postscript disk file in order to scan it.
It's a little more trouble than I really wanted to go through (and a little
more disk space than I wanted to consume)… but the benefits and time saved
are worth it. And then you just throw the Postscript file away after you've
scanned it. You get some erroneous names when you scan PageMaker files this
way… but you just ignore them. And there's a feature to copy the names to the
clipboard, so it's easy to create a nice, readable, comprehensive listing for
your friendly L-300 house.
Thanks,
Carl
Thanks, Carl,
We have PSFontFinder. Nice little tool.
You don't have to throw away the PostScript file. Many service bureaus (ours
included) prefer PostScript disk files because it ensures that the output will
match that of your printer.
^Steve^
Steve-
It's true that a lot of bureaus prefer a postscript file… I don't know about
a PS file ENSURING that the output will match that of our printer… but in any
case, that's another story.
While PS files may be prefered… they are far from convenient, due to their
shear size. We have trouble fitting our whole documents on one disk as it is.
In many cases we have to break them up into 3 or 4 800K files… which takes
some time (unlinking stories, renumbering the pages, etc.). If we were to send
those files as postscript, we'd have to break them into 5, 6 maybe even 7
files…. and that would be far from efficient.
But thanks for the advise,
-Carl
If you have a large file that won't fit in its source form onto a single
diskette, you could print it to several PostScript files, choosing a range of
pages each time. This way, you could have whatever size of file you (and your
service bureau) prefer without having to chop up your original document. I
certainly wouldn't recommend dismembering a file that has continuing stories
and jumps!
Carl–
It's true that PS files become awfully large and unwieldy, but a quick,
relatively low-tech method we often suggest to our customers is to a) use an
archiving utility like StuffIt or ARC to compress the file; b) use your
operating system's Backup utility (BACKUP.COM in DOS or HDBackup on the Mac) to
backup just the contents of a folder/directory containing the file(s) in
question, or; c) a combination of both.
Not elegant, but it allows a big file to be spread over a number of disks.
–Bill