Font Mapping - Re Mapping

[MattG]

Here is an interesting one, and I feel I should have been able to figure this out but I think I know the answer.

 

I use a set of custom fonts on a lot of drawings.  I use them 1 because I like them 2 because they are condensed that lets notes not be so large etc.

 

I sent a file to someone who did not have these custom fonts.  There were just going to look things over.  They ended up making some changes but because they did not have the custom fonts they ended up mapping the fonts to something else (Arial).

 

Now when I look at the drawing all my annotations and most of the text overall looks odd.  Is there some way to look back into a file to have what was Font 1 that was mapped to font 2 be remapped to its original font 1 without too much issue? I can go through and try to manually fix everything, but that seems silly.

Edited October 3, 2018 by MattG

[Kevin McAllister]

45 minutes ago, MattG said:

Now when I look at the drawing all my annotations and most of the text overall looks odd.  Is there some way to look back into a file to have what was Font 1 that was mapped to font 2 be remapped to its original font 1 without too much issue? I can go through and try to manually fix everything, but that seems silly.

 

How does it look different? My understanding is that Font Mapping doesn't actually change the text objects, it just displays them in a different font. When you reopen the file on a machine that has the proper font it should automatically display correctly since it doesn't need to map it. If the other user physically changed the font assignment you would see that. You might also see changes in how the text wraps if they made some edits or added hard returns. There may also be some random wrap issues depending on how your original text blocks were formatted (alignment, text box widths etc.) especially if the other user used a different OS. I sometimes see this when I use Cloud Services (Windows) to process my files (Mac).

 

Kevin

 

[ericjhberg]

We have had this happen, where suddenly the program doesn't recognize our selected font and then uses a Font Mapping to change the appearance of everything to Arial (the default font selection in mapping). This is only a problem because Arial has different spacing and will respace several of our very finely controlled annotations and text boxes.

 

Is there a way to en-masse change the fonts in a particular file? Not necessarily size or font style, just font? This sounds dangerous, but indeed may be more time efficient that going and finding all of the remapped fonts that are incorrect when this problem occurs.

 

If VW would get their text game even a little better, problems like this wouldn't be as prevalent. I've added wishlist items for better text handling for years now, but the program is still only slightly better than MS-DOS mode for handling text.

[MattG]

Yep that is basically exactly my issue.  So most noticeably we have a disclaimer for liability on our drawings.  I have some fonts we use part of adobe typekit.  I use the condensed versions for things like that that really no one ever actually reads to make them occupy as little space as possible.  Then arial or whatever comes into play and not anything like that looks all silly.  In a perfect world, the program would remember what it was set up to originally and just default back to that when the original font is available and only map when the defined font is unavailable.

[rowbear97]

On 10/3/2018 at 12:05 PM, ericjhberg said:

We have had this happen, where suddenly the program doesn't recognize our selected font and then uses a Font Mapping to change the appearance of everything to Arial (the default font selection in mapping). This is only a problem because Arial has different spacing and will respace several of our very finely controlled annotations and text boxes.

 

Is there a way to en-masse change the fonts in a particular file? Not necessarily size or font style, just font? This sounds dangerous, but indeed may be more time efficient that going and finding all of the remapped fonts that are incorrect when this problem occurs.

 

If VW would get their text game even a little better, problems like this wouldn't be as prevalent. I've added wishlist items for better text handling for years now, but the program is still only slightly better than MS-DOS mode for handling text.

@ericjhberg Have you considered that it's not VW but its Windows ;-)?

[MattG]

I don't see how this issue would be OS specific?  It seems pretty straightforward it is font based.  I don't necessarily think it is "broken" on VW's part, but I do think it is something that would be nice to be addressed. 

 

Matt

[Kevin McAllister]

6 minutes ago, MattG said:

I don't see how this issue would be OS specific?  It seems pretty straightforward it is font based.  I don't necessarily think it is "broken" on VW's part, but I do think it is something that would be nice to be addressed. 

 

Matt

 

It could be OS specific. I see it when using Cloud Services to create PDFs. I have my font files in my Cloud Services folder so its using the same fonts as I have on my machine. Cloud Services runs on Windows and I use Mac. There are often word wrap, baseline shift and other issues in PDFs created by Cloud Services.

 

Kevin

 

[ericjhberg]

We’ve only experienced it going between two different Windows machines.

[MattG]

I don't think you are understanding what my issue is if you think it is OS specific.  I certainly can see why there would be issues with the cloud services.  That is I believe a separate similar issue.  I have had odd luck with cloud services and have my own grievances with how that is currently working.  

 

Below is a super simple video of what is happening.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkxorko4evtzomf/Font Mapping.mp4?dl=0

 

I have a file with font 1 using fonts on a local machine.  I generally don't share all fonts because some are purchased fonts and I do not think that is right.  I also use a lot of Adobe Typekit fonts because I work in InDesign a lot and like to keep all that consistent.

 

The file goes to machine 2 that does not have that font.  That font is replaced with font mapping to whatever that user uses or defaults to.

 

I get that file back I want it to return to the original font. 

 

What I want is a way to be able to have some sort of a digital fingerprint or something that says that font was originally font "x" and whenever font "x" is available it should use that.  Right now any reference to font 1 is lost when that font is remapped.  I definitely could file that as a bug, and probably will, but I was curious if anyone else had any great workarounds for when this may come up in their workflow.

 

I think the 2 obvious answers are to use text styles, but this still has some issues or to share all fonts, but I don't particularly like the idea of that.

[Kevin McAllister]

28 minutes ago, MattG said:

I don't think you are understanding what my issue is if you think it is OS specific.  I certainly can see why there would be issues with the cloud services.  That is I believe a separate similar issue.  I have had odd luck with cloud services and have my own grievances with how that is currently working.  

 

I have a file with font 1 using fonts on a local machine.  I generally don't share all fonts because some are purchased fonts and I do not think that is right.  I also use a lot of Adobe Typekit fonts because I work in InDesign a lot and like to keep all that consistent.

 

The file goes to machine 2 that does not have that font.  That font is replaced with font mapping to whatever that user uses or defaults to.

 

Are both machines running the same exact and build of VW? Do they both have the exact same version of Arial installed? Its likely a font ID issue. In my quest to solve my Cloud Services issue I spent a lot of time trying fonts on both platforms and on different machines. Personally I would try creating a file with Arial type in it (not mapped). Move that file to the second machine and see if the font is still Arial or mapped to Arial (the easiest way is to delete all the mappings, then you'll get a warning if its mapped).

 

28 minutes ago, MattG said:

I get that file back I want it to return to the original font. 

 

What I want is a way to be able to have some sort of a digital fingerprint or something that says that font was originally font "x" and whenever font "x" is available it should use that.  Right now any reference to font 1 is lost when that font is remapped.  I definitely could file that as a bug, and probably will, but I was curious if anyone else had any great workarounds for when this may come up in their workflow.

 

^ What you're describing is Font Mapping, or at least my understanding of what Font Mapping should be doing. There's a bug somewhere, either with the font, VW or the OS.

 

Kevin