Font substitution for ALL missing fonts

[migo33]

This feature as been on QuarkXpress and InDesign for years. Not sure if it's working properly or something is wrong with my file.

My files has many copied text items from another application. There are hundreds of single lines and paragraphs. However, when the missing font window comes up (on launch and preflight) it only suggest substituting one line, work or paragraph at a time. I would assume that the Font Substitue function would suggest replacing ALL text with the missing font not just one by one.

 

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, migo33 said:

I would assume that the Font Substitue function would suggest replacing ALL text with the missing font not just one by one.

Why?

Each of the missing fonts probably looks different from all the others, and I would probably want to select a different font to match each missing font as closely as possible.

[Alfred]

6 hours ago, migo33 said:

when the missing font window comes up (on launch and preflight) it only suggest substituting one line, [word] or paragraph at a time

Where do you see anything indicating that the substitution for that particular font will not be global?

[migo33]

No, the file I copied was from InDesign and some text was MyriadPro font. However, when running Preflight and clicking Fix for the missing fonts there is no option to substitute and change the font. Just 'Locate' and 'Close. see screenshot. so it basically fixes nothing just suggesting to replace the font. Can that be right?

[Alfred]

20 minutes ago, migo33 said:

there is no option to substitute and change the font

I don’t understand. Your screenshot shows that MyriadPro-Regular is missing and that Arial Regular is suggested as a substitute. The substitutions for font family and style are presented in dropdown lists, so you can easily change either or both.

Please note that substitutions are only temporary, allowing you to use the original fonts when you reopen the document on a machine  where those fonts are available. If you want permanent replacements, use the ‘Find & Replace’ command.

[migo33]

I don't understand this font substitution tool. If the font is missing and a substitution is suggested than it should have a button to replace the font. What's the point of a font substitution dropdown if I can't actually change the font directly from this window? Maybe I am missing something?

[walt.farrell]

You can change the font that will be used as a replacement if you export.

However, that does not fix the problem that you actually have a missing font. The Export will not look as you intended originally when you specified the font that is missing. You will need to use Find and Replace to actually change the font if you want to do that. Otherwise, make sure you have a "good enough" substitute declared in the Font Manager, and simply ignore the Preflight errors.

[Alfred]

17 minutes ago, migo33 said:

What's the point of a font substitution dropdown if I can't actually change the font directly from this window? Maybe I am missing something?

I think what you’re missing is simply that the app will use whatever substitution is listed when you close the dialog. So if you change it your preferred font and style will be used, and if not Arial Regular will be used.

[migo33]

Thanks all,

I think I simply misunderstood the 'fix' preflight tool. I thought it will replace missing fonts as many other creative apps do.

Thanks

M

[Alfred]

10 hours ago, migo33 said:

I think I simply misunderstood the 'fix' preflight tool. I thought it will replace missing fonts as many other creative apps do.

I thought it would have been clear from my earlier reply that it doesn’t work that way:

21 hours ago, Alfred said:

Please note that substitutions are only temporary, allowing you to use the original fonts when you reopen the document on a machine  where those fonts are available. If you want permanent replacements, use the ‘Find & Replace’ command.

 

[Bryce]

On 3/18/2021 at 7:53 AM, Alfred said:

Please note that substitutions are only temporary, allowing you to use the original fonts when you reopen the document on a machine  where those fonts are available. If you want permanent replacements, use the ‘Find & Replace’ command.

I understand what migo is asking for. When you open a PDF it offers to replace the missing font with a substitute and it can be permanent if you choose. Once you are past importing the pdf, you can only substitute the font each time the file is opened. Other programs due allow the permanent change of fonts with a click.

I do like how Affinity handles it but having a permanent option would be nice too so it doesn't tell you fonts are missing when in fact you have already chose a substitute that you would like to be permanent.

Alfred, you offered a solution with "Find & Replace". How do you make a substitute font change to a permanent font in all of a document's font usage as permanent? I don't see such an option there.

[Alfred]

54 minutes ago, Bryce said:

How do you make a substitute font change to a permanent font in all of a document's font usage as permanent?

The Find and Replace panel allows you to find and replace formatting (via the cog icons).

[Bryce]

Considering Serif already has this ability built in when a PDF is imported, this does not seem to be an intuitive way, even if it worked.

I say this because I tried it and it does not work to change the fonts in the document. At best it can change the text in one text block.

Here is the video: 

 

[Alfred]

5 hours ago, Bryce said:

At best it can change the text in one text block.

F&R in PagePlus has options to search in the current ‘story’ (i.e. unlinked text frame or set of linked text frames) or in all stories, and Publisher should have those, too. Having said that, if you use text styles you won’t have this problem.

[Wosven]

I just had to replace some missing font this morning, and I should add it's not really well implemented in S&R. I had to use regular expressions. And since I wasn't able to select "bold", since the app didn't know the font and its variants, I had to click on each result and decide if I wanted or not to replace the font.

Fortunately, I had less than 20 text frames of few words.

 

Being able to definitely replace fonts in the Font manager, with a warning (to distinguish from simple visual substitutions) would be more useful, since the panel already get all the needed lists to choose fonts.

[Wosven]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

Having said that, if you use text styles you won’t have this problem.

You won't have styles when opening a PDF.

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, Wosven said:

You won't have styles when opening a PDF.

That’s true. I’m afraid I lost track of the fact that @Bryce was asking specifically about PDF import.

[jweitzel]

I want to support with all I can do, that Affinity Publisher *needs urgently* a dialogue, which has rightly the name "Font Manager".

The menue item "Font Manager" is in fact NOT a *manager*, because no one can manage here fonts! It only shows what I am missing...

In the last 4 weeks, I initialised a total move off Adobe towards Affinity Suite and Apple silicon. I am graphics designer since 25 years, and I have hundreds and hundreds of design files, which I saved in those weeks one by one as .idml in order to move to AFPub. (I know, there is an "extension" by markzware...)
Furthermore 90% of my fonts from old days are Postscript Type 1 fonts – which are all lost because T1 is abandoned and has be replaced/substituted by .otf or .ttf!

In reading that thread about Font replacement, I got a real horror that I did wrong in deleting the Adobe Suite...

I think, the developers of AFPub should see not so much the "theory" about missing fonts, but the *praxis* of typesetters and graphic designers:
It is very urgent, that we have a dialogue to replace globally any font in a document by an other one (Helvetica Italic –> Helvetica Neue Italic; MT Garamond Regular –> Palatino Regular). And that can't be done with search&replace! If you have 340 pages of a book with ("fluffy" typeset) parental advices, you will get crazy.

 That would be *really* important!

Best wishes from Germany
Johannes

[xman]

I was looking for this as well. Thankfully it's in there, just hidden a bit and I used his suggestion to fix all instance of a font in my doc. Not sure if you have tried it jweitzel, but it's only in Publisher I think.

See walt farrell comment

 

 

[jweitzel]

Many thanks, xman, for your answer and your hint. After so many days having posted my thoughts here without answer, I assumed I've posted in a "dead" thread. The find & replace dialogue was known to me, but thanks again to you! I think we are all spoiled by .indd and .qxp, softwares which give you such a dialogue direct when openeing a document with fonts not available and asking "fonts are missing, by which other fonts you may want to replace them?". The font manager in AFPub is not a manager, but a means to see, which fonts are missing – but not to solve that situation basically. Not-sustainable or "automatic" font substituion is a very, very dangerous thing: The printing company my wife was working at had to re-print the total run of a softcover book because of unfortunate "font substitution". The client did not accept the other typesetting.

All in all, on the one side I am excited about Serif and it's work! really. But rather often I have the impression that there are al lot of young, excited programmers at work, which think their own way – but it lacks of "old sacks" (practitioners) like me

It is off topic here, but since two days I try to understand the construction of layers/the function of the layers panel in AFPub. It seems to me absurd. And I'm lost there.

Johannes

[Criss]

In search-replace, the gear menu doesn't allow selecting a missing font. Someone said they have to do a regex.

My complaints are on text boxes with [no style] that technically have no font (no text content), but were set to MinionPro by (old InDesign), which (now) doesn't exist. So basically I have hundreds of text boxes to change because those boxes are doing something else right now. Obviously they shouldn't have been text boxes (with no text in them) in the first place, but that's a lot of (unnecessary) work to do that could have been solved by Affinity realizing the box has no actual text in it and thus there's no effect to be alerting a "missing font" over.

And even if one should use Search-Replace, could it include a gear or other button to pop up the search-replace with the (missing!) font in it to be found so you can do the global search/replace from there? Because you can't "find" a font that doesn't exist in the document or on the computer.

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, Criss said:

In search-replace, the gear menu doesn't allow selecting a missing font.