🚀 go-pugleaf

Unfortunately, I don't quite know what you mean by Graphics RIP v5.5 to 7.0. Who actually provides this RIP?

The squares you see printing are indeed the .notdef character used primarily in both TrueType and OpenType fonts to designate accessing a character that is not defined or mapped.

The fact that the problem is intermittent and non-repeatable -- I assume from the same content repeatedly sent to the RIP -- is indicative of a RIP issue, not with the output from InDesign. It is possible that what you are seeing is some side effect of your RIP trying to optimize performance by caching glyph renditions from fonts and not necessarily being intelligent about same.

Even more mysterious is the symptom of not seeing the same occur when doing output from Windows. Assuming you are outputting PostScript from InDesign or creating PDF and then printing the PDF from Acrobat and that you are using the same software versions on both platforms, the behaviour your describe makes little sense. Adobe applications generate their own PostScript and do not rely on the operating system's drivers for same. And we generate the same PostScript whether on the Mac or Windows.

Two suggestions:

(1) See if your RIP has any controls for clearing its cache and/or using a less aggressive caching strategy for fonts.

(2) If doing PostScript output directly from InDesign, specify the full fonts are to be output, not subsets, and definitely check the box for "PPD fonts to be downloaded."

- Dov