Just updated to Dorico 6 Pro and on opening my first project following the upgrade I was presented with the missing fonts dialogue.
Is that expected? I have never seen this before and wondered why it should be OK in Dorico 5 but suddenly not OK in Dorico 6.
Thanks for any help.
There are a couple of possible answers to this.
If you’re on Windows, you might try rebooting. It is not uncommon for Windows apps to need a reboot after a program installs fonts. This would impact default Dorico fonts like Bravura and Academico.
If you’re on Windows and getting this message for other fonts, it may have to do with a change in D6 regarding font handling on Windows. Here’s a good explanation of the issue.
In short: you need to look at exactly what it’s telling you.
Most likely, it’s saying that you’re missing the Bold version of a font like Petaluma Script, which doesn’t have a Bold style.
Dorico 6 is stricter about not allowing Bold and Italics that don’t exist!
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That’s a nice concise way of explaining this!
A reboot hasn’t resolved it.
Yes I understand what it is telling me, but why would it be OK in Dorico 5 and not Dorico 6. Certainly not what I expected.
How is this best resolved - should I just click OK in the missing fonts dialogue? I’m no expert in fonts.
Thanks
Can you show us a screenshot of what it says?
If you check the link I shared in my previous post, that should explain it.
Basically, D5 (and other Windows apps) let you select bold and italic for fonts that don’t really have them, and would “fake” the effect. D6 behaves in a more cross-platform manner and will tell you that the bold font you used doesn’t exist. (There are other possible scenarios, but this is the most probable.)
In the Missing Fonts dialog, you should choose a substitute for each of the listed fonts and click OK. Dorico will then remember your choices and will pre-populate the dialog when you open other projects. Or you can click Cancel and then make your own font substitutions in Font Styles and Paragraph Styles.
To add on to @asherber’s explanation, the reason this is an issue is a score might look correct on the machine it was made on, because the OS is being friendly. But if viewed on a machine with an OS that doesn’t behave the same way, you get display issues, because the font doesn’t exist and OS doesn’t fake it. Dorico 6 strives to make sure that when you set the font, this situation can’t happen.
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This is what I am seeing
I have used the same Windows machine and never messed around with fonts other than what came ready with previous Dorico versions.
It’s just a little unsettling to be faced with an error message out of the blue as it were.
There’s no such font as Finale Jazz Text Italic or Finale Jazz Text Bold. They simply don’t exist.:
Windows may have faked it for you in D5, but as others have said, this will cause cross-platform, font embedding, and printing issues, so D6 is trying to eliminate those conflicts.
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Finale Jazz Text does not have italic or bold styles, only regular. D5 let you choose bold and italic, and Windows “faked” the style for you. You’ll need to pick some other font to use in D6 – or use Finale Jazz Text regular.
OK thanks all for explanation. It doesn’t seem to have caused any problems for others as far as I can see so I will press on as advised.
Still find it unsettling to work on a project one day, and then to find it has errors the next day. Maybe I missed something in the upgrade notes!
This is noted in the Version History. Search for “Extended font family support on Windows”.
Edit: Actually, that paragraph is talking specifically about another impact of this change that has to do with font families that have many styles. I guess it doesn’t address this issue (families with not enough styles), which is kind of the reverse.
I think this is something the Team has been fighting against since version 1, because of the way Windows treats the fonts. Rather XXth century style. They have finally tackled it. So yes, it might be disturbing the first days, until you’ve set the different fonts accordingly to what they really are (choose fonts with italics if that’s what you need, there are plenty of them now in Dorico 6, which was not the case in Dorico 1, 2, or 3…)
You’ll probably forget about it in one month 
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Already forgotten lol.
Time now to explore the new features in Dorico 6.
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