Don't See Installed Font - Company Standard

[mwmartz]

Our company has selected Avenir for our corporate standard font. I have this font family installed on my computer and have been tasked with setting this as the primary font family for our online help stylesheet. However, it is not showing up in the list of Installed Families in the Font Family Picker. What do I need to do to add this font to Flare so that I can use it in the stylesheet? I checked the online help, but did not finding anything related to this type of issue.

[KevinDAmery]

What type font is it? I.e. is it Postscript, OpenType, or TrueType. Currently, Flare really only plays nice with TrueType fonts, so if it is using one of the other technologies, that's probably why it isn't showing up.

If it's OpenType, you aren't the first to come across this problem. My recommendation would be to add your voice to the others who need OpenType support by submitting a bug report. If enough people ask for it, Madcap may add support in the future.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

Now, having said all that, remember that with online help the font is not embedded in the help system - as a result, even if you do specify it in your stylesheet, your customers will only see it if they have Avenir installed on their own PCs. If they don't, the font will be substituted according to normal HTML / CSS rules (i.e. if you have specified a font family and they have one of the listed fonts, it will use the first listed font that is installed on their system; if you don't specify another font, it will use the browser default).

[RamonS]

You could embed the font in the HTML pages, see here: http://www.spoono.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php?id=19
Never tried it and it typically can be overruled by local CSS.
Or you can buy it as TT font from here: http://www.linotype.com/72/avenir-family.html
Or you can just use Arial, which to me looks the same and is likely to be installed on most systems.

[KevinDAmery]

You could embed the font in the HTML pages, see here: http://www.spoono.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php?id=19
Never tried it and it typically can be overruled by local CSS.

Also, it appears to only work for IE. I just viewed the spoono page and the example doesn't work in FF 3, but if I use the IE Tab extension it renders fine. So this option is ok if cross browser compatibility isn't critical (not sure what the OP's needs are in this area).

[RamonS]

Thanks for the addition...as I said, I never tried it.

[SteveS]

You can open the ctylesheet in your favourite text editor and add the font to a font family manually.

Code: Select all

font-family: avenir, arial, sans-serif;

That way, even if Flare does not 'see' it, when you open the finished help you should. And so should your managers.

HTH

[LTinker68]

Just make sure you type the font name the way the computer understands it and not the user-friendly name. For instance, one of our corporate fonts that I use in print output is Classic Garamond but it's identified on the system as ClassGarmnd or something like that. And if there are spaces in the font name, enclose the name in single quotes (e.g., font-family: 'Times New Roman', 'Courier New', serif;).

And as Kevin said, if you're building WebHelp output for the general public, then don't use that font because it's not a standard Windows or Mac font. Your corporate standards should take that into account. For instance, we use Humanist 777 and Classic Garamond for print, but Verdana for websites. And you can easily specify different font families for the different types of outputs, so my projects are set up to comply with corporate standards regarding the fonts.

[mwmartz]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I modified the stylesheet in an editor to include Avenir in the font family (followed by Arial, followed by Verdana) since that seemed like the simplest solution. But, I'm a little confused as to how this will work if I want to define a font set for something. For example, I am changing the skin. Corporate wants the fonts in the skin to be Avenir, accepting the caveat that if users don't have Avenir on their systems, they will see the font as either Arial or Verdana. So, one of the items I'm changing in the Skin Editor is the ToolbarItem AccordionTitle. My font family currently is Arial, Verdana. If I just change the name to Avenir, Arial, Verdana (because I can't actually select Avenir in Flare), how will Flare know to assign Avenir to the target?

Mary

[LTinker68]

Not sure what you mean by assign it to the target. If the stylesheet and skin have the font-family set to Avenir, Arial, Verdana, then Flare will use Avenir first if it finds it on the machine where the project resides and where you're building the output from. The only exception might be if it's a font format it doesn't support, like PostScript or OpenType. Even then, it might try to use it but just render it incorrectly. According to a quick search on Adobe's website, Avenir is an OpenType font, so you may not be able to use it yet with Flare. If it is OpenType (I didn't check to see if all versions of the font are OpenType), then make sure you submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx asking for OpenType font support in the topic stylesheets and the skin.

[mwmartz]

[quote="LTinker68"]Not sure what you mean by assign it to the target. If the stylesheet and skin have the font-family set to Avenir, Arial, Verdana, then Flare will use Avenir first if it finds it on the machine where the project resides and where you're building the output from. The only exception might be if it's a font format it doesn't support, like PostScript or OpenType. Even then, it might try to use it but just render it incorrectly. According to a quick search on Adobe's website, Avenir is an OpenType font, so you may not be able to use it yet with Flare. If it is OpenType (I didn't check to see if all versions of the font are OpenType), then make sure you submit a feature request at [url]http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx[/url] asking for OpenType font support in the topic stylesheets and the skin.[/quote]

Thank you. You answered my question, which I probably didn't phrase very well, about how Flare would know to assign Avenir if it wasn't defined in the font set.

Avenir is an OpenType font, so maybe the point is moot. But, I haven't tried the snoopo suggestion posted earlier. All our end users use IE, so cross-browser compatibility isn't an issue for us. I guess that will be my next attempt.

I opened the skin in a text editor and inserted the Avenir font name into all the font families that were previously using Arial and Verdana. So then, for example, when I looked at the AcordionTitle style in the Skin Editor, the FontFamily attribute now says 'Avenir, Arial, Verdana'. Earlier, I was trying to define a font set named 'Avenir, Arial, Verdana" with those three fonts, which of course I couldn't do.

Still not sure how I can use the heavier (i.e., black) version of the font, whether it's Avenir or Arial, though, since the editor only lists 'bold' and 'normal'.

[mwmartz]

P.S. I did post a feature enhancement request to add support for OpenType fonts.

[KevinDAmery]

Still not sure how I can use the heavier (i.e., black) version of the font, whether it's Avenir or Arial, though, since the editor only lists 'bold' and 'normal'.

For topic content, you can create a class in the stylesheet that specifies the black variant (i.e. instead of lising "Avenir" in the font family you list "Avenir Black" or whatever the name of the variant is - make sure you put the font name in single quotes so that it parses correctly). Then you just call that class when you want to use black instead of normal weight.

For the skin, you can do the same thing directly in the skin element (I don't think you need a class in the case of skins - just call the font directly in the skin).

[SteveS]

You can also use the font-weight properties via the cascading style sheet. Set it to BOLD or BOLDER. Not always as pretty as the bold font provided by the font designer, but a useful workaround.

[forfear]

P.S. I did post a feature enhancement request to add support for OpenType fonts.

i did too.
And i am pretty sure the MadCap heads and team would reeeally like to add OpenType font support. I am preetty sure of that.

.NET Framework 3.0/3.5 supports Open Type if i am not wrong.

There lots of advantages for the entire madcap product suite to support it if they did, especially for high quality print output. They are all pretty aware of it.

am pretty sure they'll do something about it if there is enough of a groundswell to tip the balance in favour of breaking compatibility to move the line forward.

[mwmartz]

Apparently, the OpenType font issue has to do with a bug in the .net framework. Here's what I received from MadCap after I posted my feature enhancement request:

Because Flare is built on the .Net(2) framework, the support for open type fonts is very limited (bug in the .net framework).
When Windows 7 releases with full .Net(3) our plans are to migrate in that direction and the open-type fonts are supported on that framework.

Sometimes if you type the font name in the window (from the style sheet and font family picker dialog) - it works, but this is a hit or miss type deal depending on the font type and its properties.

mwm

[RamonS]

Shows again that any bug in the framework becomes your bug eventually. And the excuses here aren't really convincing. That aside, it shouldn't prevent writing code for OpenType support. I don't think the release of Windows 7 will change anything, because Windows 7 is about as irrelevant as Vista.