TypeTalk: Font Importing Problems

James Fritz Ilene Strizver

TypeTalk is a regular blog on typography. Post your questions and comments by clicking on the Comments icon above. If Ilene answers your question in the blog, you’ll receive one Official Creativepro.com T-Shirt!
Q. I use FontAgent Pro to manage my fonts, but every so often when I try to import new fonts, one or more of them don’t import. Why does this happen, and what I can do about it?
A. Insider Software’s FontAgent Pro is an excellent font-management tool for the Mac and Windows. But older versions had a problem importing fonts with internal names longer than 27 characters. For instance, if you tried to import ITC Stone Humanist Pro Medium Italic with an internal name of StoneHumanistITCPro-MediumItal (30 characters), it wouldn’t import, but with its actual name, StoneHumanistITCPro-MedItal (27 characters), it would import. The current version, 4.0, has fixed this problem.
If you’re not ready to upgrade, you can work around the limitation by dumping the fonts in question into your Fonts folder, which has no limitations on the number of characters in the font names.
Love type? Want to know more? Ilene Strizver conducts her acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally. For more information on attending one or bringing it to your company, organization, or school, go to her site, call The Type Studio at 203-227-5929, or email Ilene at [email protected]. Sign up for her e-newsletter at www.thetypestudio.com.