When you add fonts to Connect Fonts, the scanning process and the information collected help you clean up your font library and make sure all your fonts are usable. Connect Fonts does not allow orphan bitmap or orphan outline fonts, so they are not an issue. However, corrupt fonts, duplicate fonts, and missing fonts may still cause problems.
Corrupt fonts
Corrupt fonts can be the source of document problems as well as cause operating system issues. Extensis defines a corrupt font as any font for which the font resources cannot be opened, appear to contain inconsistent information, or have incorrect values in important fields of the font file resource.
Most of the time, if a font is corrupt, it cannot be repaired. However, there are certain types of minor problems that can be corrected, and there are certain types of problems that can be safely ignored. The scanning process identifies corrupt or problem fonts and, depending on the type of problem, the Connect Fonts desktop app either fixes the problem and adds the font to the library, or gives you the option to add the fonts in place.
Adding fonts in place means they are not added to your font vault and are not uploaded to the Connect Fonts server, so they will only be available on the desktop computer you are adding them from. This keeps potentially harmful fonts out of your organization's workflow, but makes them available for you to continue working with.
If you choose to add any potentially corrupt fonts in place, they are put into a new date-stamped set named “Problem Fonts” so that you can review them and take appropriate action.
Adding potentially corrupt fonts in place does have risks. Corrupt fonts may still not activate properly, and may cause potential printing problems. The ability to add corrupt fonts in place is only provided as a convenience if you are absolutely unable to obtain a fresh copy of the font from your backups or from the font foundry. It is highly recommended that you remove a potentially corrupt font from your library as soon as it is no longer needed.
Duplicate fonts
In Connect Fonts, a “duplicate font” is a font with the same Font Sense ID—meaning the exact same name, foundry, type, version number, FOND ID, kerning table, and outline file size as another font.
There are no “true” duplicates stored in a Connect Fonts Font Vault. If you are storing all of your fonts in the Font Vault, and you try to add a font that would be considered a duplicate, it is not allowed into the Vault. If you are adding fonts in place, you can add the same font from multiple locations, and it is definitely possible to have the same font in Connect Fonts multiple times.
Since the criteria for duplicate fonts is so specific, and fonts can only be added to the Font Vault once, if you see several fonts with the same name in a library it’s either because the fonts were added in place, or that you have different versions of the same font. For example, you may have two versions of a font, one that contains the Euro glyph, as well as an older one that does not. In this case, you may want to pare your libraries down to one version of each font.
To locate duplicate fonts, click the Duplicate Fonts Smart Search near the bottom of the collections pane. (You may wish to disable family groups when viewing duplicate fonts; chooseView > Group Fonts by Family if the menu item is checked.)
The built-in Duplicate Fonts Smart Search searches all your libraries. If you want to narrow the search to a specific library or selection, use Advanced Find.
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Choose Edit > Find Fonts.
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At the top right of theAdvanced Find pane, choose the scope of the search:All,Selected Libraries and Sets, or a specific library.
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In the find criterion, choose Duplicates from the first pop-up menu, and choosePostScript Name from the second pop-up menu.
Try to determine the differences between the duplicate fonts. If you need to display more information for a font, select it and choose View > Show Info.
Once you determine the differences, decide which font to keep and remove the other font from the library. See Adding and removing fonts.
If you need multiple versions of the same font in a library—for example, in a library for advertisers’ fonts—you can leave “duplicates” in the library.
Missing fonts
The Connect Fonts desktop app notifies you if you attempt to activate or preview a font that is missing. Fonts are considered missing if they are added in place and then the original font file is moved or deleted.
To indicate a missing font, the desktop app displays a red circle with a white question mark for the activation status icon.
To locate and re-link missing fonts:
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In the Fonts pane, select the missing fonts.
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Choose Edit > Locate Missing Fonts.
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Navigate to the folder where you want the desktop app to look for the missing fonts.
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Click Locate.
The Connect Fonts desktop app searches the selected folder and all subfolders, and will re-link any of the missing fonts that it finds. If some of the fonts are not found, the desktop app will display a message and you can search a different folder.
Font conflicts
If you attempt to activate a font that conflicts with an already open font, typically Connect Fonts deactivates the currently active font and activates the requested font instead.
You can control how Connect Fonts reacts to font conflicts by changing the settings in the Connect Fonts Preferences.
To change how Connect Fonts handles font conflicts:
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Choose Connect Fonts > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Windows).
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Under Activation Options, select either:
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Activate the requested font to always activate the font that you requested or was requested by an auto-activation plug-in, or
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Keep the current font active to prevent the new font from deactivating the currently active font.
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