Problems with font weight

[tristis]

@benwiggy

Have you checked in the PDF whether the correct Style of the typeface is being used?

Ben’s right: this is the easiest way to check which fonts are being used.

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@dankreider

I’ve only ever installed one Minion Pro on my computer. There are lots of different weights available, but I installed only the Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold-Italic.

You’d probably find the other fonts useful: the condensed ones would help with your problems when there’s limited space.

[tristis]

@fkretlow

if the fonts you installed and their version are different formats (otf/ttf) that could explain the different appearance.

Other than Minion Web, I don’t believe Minion’s ever been available as a TrueType font.

[tristis]

@dankreider

The reason I haven’t used “official” Minion Pro is because it has some very strange line leading, IMO.

Leading is generally controlled by the host application and not the font. There is a ‘internal leading’ figure but that has a more technical use and it looks OK for your fonts.

[tristis]

@benwiggy

As I understand it, Windows’ handling of typeface styles is a bit cavalier, though my understanding is limited.

This is not right.

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@dankreider

If anyone wants to try it out, here’s the version of Minion Pro I’m using: Dropbox - minion-pro.zip - Simplify your life

A very quick look at your files and their version numbers suggests that they should be OK (though the file sizes - these do vary - are exceptionally small).

[tristis]

@dankreider

I’ve settled on Regular for Dorico and Medium for InDesign

I strongly recommend that you don’t do this. You need to work out what’s going on or you’ll be asking for trouble in the future.

Regular and Medium are not the same.

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@teacue

As soon as you use a font with more than these 4 styles (and Minion has a lot of styles!) there will be a missmatch and you can almost never know what will be used.

This is not right: I have all 64 fonts installed and it’s obvious in both Dorico and InDesign which font will be used.

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@FredGUnn

InDesign is probably using this font instead of the older knockoff one. As you can see the version #s are different:

This is not impossible but (1) the installed fonts are supposed to have precedence over those in the private folders and (2) I’m not aware that there have been any significant changes to Minion’s metrics over the years.

[tristis]

@FredGUnn

I don’t know enough about font rendering and embedding to know if that makes a visual difference or not

It shouldn’t.

[tristis]

@Rob Tuley

But hey, why am I not surprised that InDesign is doing something that used to be Adobe proprietary technology, and which is now pretty much obsolete.

What is odd about Adobe embedding Postscript instructions from a PostScript font (like Minion) in a PostScript file (a PDF)? In what way is PostScript obsolete?

[tristis]

@FredGUnn

@fkretlow

Just wondering, can you really say it’s obsolete if Adobe is still doing it?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I was assuming Rob was referring to Type 1 PostScript fonts, which were intended to be phased out and replaced by OpenType.

The container has changed but PostScript outlines can still be used. Nothing has really become obsolete.

[Vaughan_Schlepp]

@tristis

@dankreider

I’ve only ever installed one Minion Pro on my computer. There are lots of different weights available, but I installed only the Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold-Italic.

You’d probably find the other fonts useful: the condensed ones would help with your problems when there’s limited space.

Agreed. Minion Condensed makes a good lyrics font: less rhythmic distortion. I’d actually bought the official versions but I prefer the bootleg ones, as the official ones have a higher baseline.

[dan_kreider]

Vaughan, that exactly my experience too. I said “leading,” but I meant “baseline.”

It just looks wrong! That’s why I stayed with the bootleg version.

[Vaughan_Schlepp]

I had this problem when I switched from Stempel Garamond to Minion back in the Finale days. Suddenly all my text blocks, including staff names, lyrics, playing techniques, etc. were shifted up and required adjustment to avoid ugly placement and collisions.

[teacue]

@tristis

@teacue

As soon as you use a font with more than these 4 styles (and Minion has a lot of styles!) there will be a missmatch and you can almost never know what will be used.

This is not right: I have all 64 fonts installed and it’s obvious in both Dorico and InDesign which font will be used.

It is really great that it is working for you.
I guess this has to do with the fact that with the complete collection the grouping of 4 styles for each weight is unambiguous for Dorico.
In other situation and with a Minion collection which is not complete ( as the one provided with Adobe Creative Suite for example) it seems to be a little bit different.

It is already a longer time that I did some accurate tests on my system with this “issue”.
And as I use fonts with dedicated family names as I described in my previous post I do not have font problems.
Out of curiosity and because of what you wrote I again made some tests.
Here are the results, please correct me If I do something wrong or if I miss something.

I own the older Adobe Creative Suite 6 and the software comes with 10 Minion styles:
MinionPro-Regular
MinionPro-It
MinionPro-Bold
MinionPro-BoldIt

MinionPro-Medium
MinionPro-MediumIt

MinionPro-BoldCn
MinionPro-BoldCnIt

MinionPro-Semibold
MinionPro-SemiboldIt

These 10 styles are individually available in InDesign under only one font family name: “Minion Pro”.
But as one can see there are not 4 styles for each font weight, and 3 weights have only 2 styles, this is what can confuse Dorico.

In Dorico I can find the 4 Font Families:
Minion Pro
Minion Pro Cond
Minion Pro Med
Minion Pro SmBd

But for each of these families I can choose 1 of the 4 styles: regular, italic, bold and bold italic thogh some of the styles are not there.
At first sight it seems then that Dorico can produce 16 different styles but in fact for each not available style Dorico uses another one which aproximatively corresponds to the combination of the family name and the choosed style.
There is no feedback for this behaviour.
BTW I have no idea wether this comes from Dorico or from Windows or from QT.

Anyway in this special case of Minion on my system Dorico uses:
Condensed Bold for Condensed Regular
Condensed Bold Italic for Condensed Italic
Semibold for Medium Bold:
Semibold Italic for Medium Bold Italic
Semibold for Semibold Bold
Semibold Italic for Semibold Bold Italic

During my test I also had a look to a Dorico project PDF I produced using these 16 styles Dorico offers and indeed in the PDF only the 10 available styles are in use.
A quick visual comparison with a document produced in InDesign with these styles seems to confirm that Dorico does not fake any style but indeed uses a name-similar style instead.

I have vaguely the feeling that this behaviour is different from the behaviour some times ago as I first enconter some fonts problem but I don’t remember exactly.

With this behaviour in this case one can say on one side that indeed if you exactly know which styles are installed on your system there are good chances that you can use the right style if you carefully select the right option in Dorico.
But on the other hand one could say that it is a little bit confusing that Dorico let you chosse a style which does not exist meaning that you must go deeper into font management than “choose a family, choose a style”.

At least I find it good that, from what I can see, Dorico does not seem to create or fake a style.
And there is a logic in what Dorico chooses.

But from the user side and for people who are not used to go deeper into font technic I think it would be nice to have a feedback from Dorico informing the user that the style he is choosing is not available and also telling which font Dorico intents to use instead.

I have not tried with other font families but I can imagine that depending on the font-naming there could be more problems for Dorico to recognize the exact font style.

[FredGUnn]

A few more observations:

1. Dan’s bootleg Minion Pro Regular and the official Adobe Minion Pro Regular are not the same font. Drop them into a site like FontDrop and see what I mean. His version is version 1.021, has 1,397 glyphs and 50 ligatures, while the version that automatically installs on the hard drive with InDesign is version 2.112, has 1,686 glyphs and 59 ligatures. I didn’t look through to see all the ways they are different, but they are not the same. The current official version is 2.115. I don’t know how it differs from the 2.112 version InDesign installs locally.

2. I imagine Dan can continue using his bootleg version in any program without issue except InDesign and possibly other Adobe programs (I haven’t checked all of them). It should work fine in Dorico, Affinity Designer, etc., as they all will be using the locally installed font.

3. The official version of Minion Pro Regular is a required font for InDesign. I can deactivate it from Adobe ID, go to Settings/Personalization/Fonts and either remove or verify neither the bootleg nor the official version is installed on my system, and it will still be available to use in InDesign. It will not be available to use in Dorico. I can still select it as an option in Dorico of course if I have other variations installed, but if only Minion Pro Regular is removed, then the Italic version of Minion Pro will display in Dorico if Minion Pro Regular is selected. Dorico obviously cannot access a font that isn’t installed, while InDesign can apparently access fonts that it requires to work properly.

4. If Minion Pro Regular is not activated/installed, I thought that InDesign might be using the version stored locally at Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign 2020\Resources\Required\Fonts. However, when I copied Dan’s font to that location and tested, the PDF output from Dorico and InDesign still don’t match. I have not found a way to force InDesign to use the bootleg version of Minion Pro Regular.

5. Dan’s Minion Pro typeface collection is also comprised of fonts with different version numbers. The Regular is 1.021, but the Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic are 2.015. Testing another couple at random I see the Display and Caption Regular are both 1.021 too. As mentioned before, the current official version for all Minion Pro fonts is 2.115. I’m not sure how using different versions of fonts within the same typeface family will affect output, but obviously there might be a chance. Certainly collaborative projects will be problematic if some engravers are using the official version and some the bootleg.