Missing Fonts in Illustrator 9.0.2

[Barney Bornn]

I'm running Illustrator 9.0.2 under Windows XP, and there are fonts (Avant Garde and Swiss) that are available in other applications (MS Office, Corel, etc.) but don't show in the Illustrator font list. I've read the Knowledge Base document and have done everything that applies — except that I can't find document 321430 and can't paste a shorcut to a font file.

Can anybody help?

[Toni Toomey]

Illustrator uses the fonts that are installed on your XP system (150+ font families in all). In Windows Explore, go to C:\Windows\Fonts, where you'll find a complete list of installed fonts. I've never seen Avant Garde or Swiss on a Windows machine. The MacOS 9 system has an ITC Avant Garde Gothic. But not anything with Swiss in the name. MyFonts.com shows some fonts with similar names that you can purchase.

Are the fonts you're looking for installed somewhere else besides the C:\Windows\Fonts folder? I have no idea where on your hard drive you'd look for those fonts. Nor do I know how you'd install them so that Illustrator can access them. I'm sure it's not hard to do. I've never needed to go beyond the comfort and security of settling for the system fonts.

Hope that helps.

T

[Barney Bornn]

Hi Toni,

Thanks for your response.

I'm not sure what you mean by "installed," but the missing fonts are TrueType fonts located in the C:\Windows\Fonts directory. They are available in Microsoft Office programs, Corel Draw, Jasc PaintShop Pro, and every other program I have that uses fonts — except Illustrator.

Avant Garde is similar to Arial, and Swiss is similar to Helvetica. I like Swiss because there are lots of variations: extended, compressed, heavy, light, etc. … and because I have it, and I don't have Helvetica. :O)

Barney

[Alexander Kogan.]

Barney,

AFAIK, some fonts have the WritingScript value incorrectly set to EastEuropeanRoman instead of Roman, which confuses AI. Such fonts usually appear in the Character palette at the bottom of the list, after a horizontal line.

Scroll down the list to see if there's something there. If this is the case, normally you won't be able to use these fonts (they just won't show as they should be) unless you correct the WritingScript value in the AdobeFnt.lst file. It is easily done with a text editor.

You can search for the file with Windows Explorer's Find, there will be several of them, you'll need the one on your system disk in the Common Files directory (or its analog in XP).

Close AI and open the AdobeFnt.lst with a text editor (WordPad works just well). Use the Replace command to replace all of the appearacnces of EastEuropeanRoman by simply Roman.

I have a shortcut on the desktop to the AdobeFnt.lst file to make the task a bit less tedious, for many's the fonts that cause this sort of trouble.

[Alexander Kogan.]

Barney,

Sorry for not responding, I just missed your mail when revieving my mailbox.

Now, the whole idea of the Forums is to give people that have troubles all possible information about their issues. Hence, it's preferrable to talk here and not by e-mail. I'll put your message here.

Here it goes:

I did a search on AdobeFnt.lst and came up with 7 (count ‘em, seven) files of that name. (Not counting one in my “Recent” folder.)

I edited the first one, which is in C:\Program Files\Common Files/Adobe\TypeSpt, and changed EastEuropeanRoman to Roman in a large number of cases (I have a lot of fonts). The problem now appears fixed; at least I can find the fonts in the Character drop-down, and some are in the Font list. However, the Font list stops at some font whose name starts with R, so the rest of the R’s and the fonts with names beginning with S – Z are not shown. (They are in the Character drop-down.)

Do I need to edit the other copies in the same way? What are they for? (Well, OK, three of them are obviously for Acrobat.) Here’s the list of folders containing AdobeFnt.lst:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\TypeSpt

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts\Reqrd\Cmaps

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\Cmaps

C:\Program Files \Adobe\Illustrator 9.0.1\Required\Fonts

C:\Program Files\ Adobe\Acrobat 4.0\Resource\Fonts

C:\Program Files\ Adobe\Acrobat 4.0\Resource\Cmaps

Frankly, I don't know what the rest of them are for :) The one I edit is also in the TypeSpt dirrectory, so I guess that was the right one.

Also, it's the first time I hear about a cut font list. What do you mean by "the Font list stops"? Does it mean that you're scrolling it with the Up and Down keys and just can't pass some specific font? Or does it mean that the list actually doesn't have anything below that font that starts with "r"?

Try scrolling it up and down with the mouse and see if there's one only list or there's still a horizontal line somewhere that has another list after it.

[Barney Bornn]

Your response time is just fine! I wish I had more time to devote to this, but … <sigh>

All of my fonts are now shown in the Character palette. But there is another list where the last ones are missing.

You get to that list by clicking on "Type" in the tool bar at the top of the page, and passing the mouse over "Font" in the resulting drop down menu.

That gets you a page just wide enough to contain the font names. (It looks like the list you see when you click on Start, then Programs, on your desktop.)

The page has the fonts listed alphabetically, and if there are more than enough to fill that page, there's an entry at the top with an arrow labelled "More."

Pass your mouse over that entry and you get another page; keep doing it, and eventually you should have a list of every font in your system.

But mine stops before then. I get a page where the last font has a name starting with R, and a "More" entry at the top with no arrow.

I suspect that I simply have too many fonts for Illustrator to list, but thought I'd ask in case there were another reason.

[Alexander Kogan.]

Hmm... this looks weird. For if it puts the "More" item in the list, it admits that there're more fonts. But if the item don't have the arrow on it... It's like a door opening inside that doesn't have a doorknob. What's the use of it?..

Have you tried deleting your prefs?...

[Ian A. Wright]

Barney:

Check ALL your fonts to see if one or more is corrupt. Illustrator balks at bad fonts.