Missing Fonts Bug and Workaround

CLM

Newbie Joined: Mar 13, 2018 21:29 Messages: 5 Offline

Solved by

Mar 17, 2018 14:33

Hi all,

So I ran across a bug involving fonts in PhotoDirector. After some detective work, I figured out what the problem is as well as a workaround for it. I thought I should share it since inevitably, others are going to encounter this bug.

Problem:

You install new fonts in Windows, but they do not show up in PhotoDirector's list of fonts you can use for adding text to your photos.

Probable Cause:

There is a bug in PhotoDirector's support for OpenType (otf) fonts that causes it not to recognize fons that use PostScript outlining. To verify that this is is what is causing your problem, open the fonts panel in Windows and double-click on the font you are having trouble with. In the top left of the window that comes up, look for the following:

If it says "Postscript Outlines" the font will not show up in PhotoDirector.

Workaround:

1. Install FontForge (free), which you can get from the following URL: https://fontforge.github.io

2. In the Open Font dialog that appears when you start FontForge, find the .otf file you downloaded and open it

3. In the menu, click File -> Generate Fonts.

4. In the dialog box, make sure you select TrueType as shown in the following:

5. Click the Generate button. You may get some errors about the font being invalid. I've found you can ignore these and tell it to generate the font anyway. Everything seems to still work fine.

6. In the Windows file explorer, right-click on the newly created ttf file and click "Install"

7. Open PhotoDirector and you should find that the font is available now.

Of course, I'll file a bug report about this issue. But in the meantime, I hope this workaround helps someone!

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Mar 17, 2018 18:17

On behalf of all the other forum members, CLM, thank you for the workaround you've provided.

It's true that .otf formatted fonts do not appear in the Slideshow, Layers or Watermark modules of PhD, even though those same fonts might be available in PDR (recent versions, at least). The issue has beeen raised before, including in this thread.

In that thread I linked an online tool that converts fonts between formats.

Thank you again!

PIX PIX YouTube channel

CLM

Newbie Joined: Mar 13, 2018 21:29 Messages: 5 Offline

Mar 17, 2018 20:55

Thanks for the response!

I tried searching the forums for a solution to the problem before I posted this, but I came up empty. I suppose it's because the thread in question was in French.

Some OpenType fonts actually do work in PhotoDirector. The issue is not that it's an OpenType font. The issue is that it doesn't support PostScript Outlines. OpenType fonts that use TrueType outlines work just fine. That's what made the issue so confusing for me at first. Some of my OpenType fonts work fine in PhotoDirector. Other's don't show up at all. Turns out the problem is specifically related to whether the OpenType font uses TrueType or PostScript outlines.

This is clearly a bug, btw. A program that supports OpenType fonts at all should be able to support both TrueType and PostScript outlines.