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> 1. Paragraph Designer lists available fonts by name, but how to know if they're Postscript or TrueType?

You can't tell from Paragraph Designer. You need to look at your 
installed fonts in Control Panel > Fonts.

> 2. How to ensure that Framemaker can access all installed fonts? My psfonts folder includes:

Framemaker (and all the other programs on your computer) can access 
nothing but all of your (properly) installed fonts. There's not a way to 
make installed fonts inaccessible.

> GDI_____.PFB

Just because you have a font in your psfonts folder doesn't mean it's 
installed. If Adobe Garamond Italic shows in Control Panel > Fonts, it's 
installed. If you View Details, you should be able to see if 
GDI_____.PFM is really Adobe Garamond Italic. Note that properly 
installed Type 1 fonts will show the PFM in Control Panel > Fonts, not 
the PFB (although both are really there).

> 3. If a TrueType and Postscript font have the same name, what does Framemaker do?

I'm not sure what Frame does, but you should try really hard to avoid 
this situation. It can cause some strange things to happen, like you can 
use the font, but when you print Courier gets substituted. Again, go to 
Control Panel > Fonts and look through the list. If you have two fonts 
of the same name, you should remove one. This most often happens with 
Symbol, which comes in Truetype (with MS Office) and Type 1 (with older 
Adobe products).

If you've really installed a font (through Control Panel > Fonts) but it 
doesn't show in Frame (and you've already made sure you don't have two 
with the same name installed), try deleting the font, rebooting, and 
then installing it. Before you delete it, make sure you have the font on 
its original media so you can install it again.

-- 
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Control Panel > Fonts shows 21 fonts whose names begin with AGaramond (all .pfm), while Framemaker's Format > Font (and Paragraph Designer) have just 8. (One example.)

I'm assuming I should see a separate listing for AGaramond italic, and not just select it via Angle: Italic in Paragraph Designer? AGaramond Bold is there, but not AGaramond Italic.

I've found the page below and am working my way through it, but so far no luck:

Certain installed fonts don't appear in the Font menu (Adobe applications)

 <http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=322050>

How many fonts is "too many?" Somehow over the years I've collected 1000+ files in the fonts folder.

Jan Axelson

Jan,

FrameMaker tries to show font families, not fonts. However, it doesn't 
always do a good job. Forget what is shows in the font menu, since good 
FrameMaker practice is not to use it. Try to use the character designer 
which can show all of the fonts using the sorted variations available. 
Create a new character tag, for each font you want to use.

Mike

I think I understand how it all works now. This article was very helpful:

 <http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=328508&sliceId=2>

especially its link to:

 <http://www.adobe.com/type/pdfs/Type1-2-OpenType.pdf>

Thanks for the comments, which led me on the right track.

Jan

> I'm assuming I should see a separate listing for AGaramond italic,

Why are you assuming that? Try formatting some text in AGaramond with 
Angle set to Regular. Now format some text next to it in AGaramond with 
Angle set to Italic. Are you getting true Adobe Garamond italic? (Hint: 
check a lower case a or f--the letterforms are completely different.)

Here's how my Adobe Garamond family breaks down:

AGaramond-Regular (gdrg____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-Italic (gdi_____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-Semibold (gdsb____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-SemiboldItalic (gdsbi___.pfm, .pfb)

These four show in Frame as one family: "AGaramond". To get ital, bold, 
and bold ital, you have to change angle and weight.

AGaramond-Bold (gdb_____.pfm, .pfb)
AGaramond-BoldItalic (gdbi____.pfm, .pfb)

These two show in Frame as one family: "AGaramond Bold". To get bold, 
you have to change weight.

In addition to those six weights (in two families), I also have 13 more 
AGaramond expert fonts that would show up in (I think) seven families. I 
don't have them installed right now. The important point is that in 
Frame's list of fonts you should be seeing a list of font *families*, 
not individual variants. You could very easily have 21 fonts showing in 
eight families.

This naming system does not always seem logical. Often they're offset: 
Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic in the first family and Demibold 
and Demibold Italic in the second family. Futura, for instance, has (at 
least) 12 fonts in 4 families: The Futura family has Book, Book Oblique, 
Bold, Bold Oblique. The FuturaMedium family contains Regular, Oblique, 
Heavy, and Heavy Oblique. And there's a Futura Light family (Light and 
Light Oblique) and a Futura Extrabold (ExtraBold and ExtraBold Oblique). 
Adobe Indesign is much better at listing all 12 fonts, in the proper 
order, in one family. But most other DTP apps (on Windows) organize 
fonts the same crazy way Frame does.

> How many fonts is "too many?" Somehow over the years I've collected
> 1000+ files in the fonts folder.

In Windows 98 and earlier, it was important to minimize the number of 
fonts loaded (and printers installed) because the name and path of each 
font went into win.ini, and the OS would only load the first 64 kb of 
win.ini. Install too many fonts (or too many printers, because each one 
had its own list of fonts) and win.ini would exceed 64 kb and fonts 
would just start dropping off the list.

Beginning with Windows 2000, this was no longer an issue. I have well 
over a thousand fonts loaded here, although I periodically weed out the 
ones I'm not using just to keep the list manageable.

-- 
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com