[Extendflash] RANT: Collect Fonts Button

[clark slater]

Print designers who use QuarkXpress have had an essential utility for years.
They can collect all the fonts used in a project so that when passing the
source file to a bureau for print the exact same fonts are supplied along
with the artwork and layout.

I cannot begin to list all the times we have encountered major pain because
the designer who created a particular FLA has lost the fonts or reinstalled
their operating system or for whatever reason can no longer get their hands
on the fonts. It is such a phenomenal pain in the tits. In terms of
production time this is a VERY costly problem. We have literally wasted
hours screwing around with fonts trying to track down the exact font used in
a particular file. Sometimes the font might be correct version - but
different kerning table means it reflows everywhere. Arrrrggh.

Often made worse by the way that font names are handled differently in Flash
than in other programs using the exact same file. The scope for confusion is
enormous. Even using third party font management tools like suitcase does
not alleviate the problems because of the way that most design applications
will install their own dirty secret fonts into the system fonts folder.

Given the number of FLA files that are shared from designer to developer,
agency to client to agency to freelancer etc. I simply cannot understand why
Macromedia never saw fit to implement a utility like Quark has so it would
be easy to collect all the fonts used in a particular file for handoff to
the next part of the production workflow. The chance of font piracy is not
a strong enough argument to explain why this critical design feature has
been left out. After all anyone wanting to pirate fonts can just swap the
contents of their system fonts folder etc.

Clearly, I sincerely hope this is included in the next version of the Flash
IDE - but I'm not holding my breath as it's been a submitted wishlist item
since version 3 or 4! In the meantime it would be great if there was a way
to handle this with JSFL. Unfortunately I can't see any way to access the
fonts used property of a document.

I'm sure we are not the only agency nearly driven to dementia with these
kind of Flash font related issues. If anyone else out there shares our
anguish please speak up, we need to convince Adobe to include proper font
management in the next Flash IDE. And on the offchance that anyone has found
a funky solution to this most annoying of problems, I will at the very least
buy you a case of your favorite beer. And if anyone has any insights to how
this could be pulled off with JSFL I would be very interested to discuss.

OK anyone that made it this far thanks for listening to my ranting.

Maybe we're the only Flash agency lame enough to be so badly affected by
such font problems coz I don't really see this discussed anywhere, or maybe
there's some really slick or simple solution that everyone else is
using...but I'm betting not. In which case it seems like an extension that
could fix this would be a *really* shit hot item for someone to develop and
offer to the Flash community as a whole.


Clark Slater
www.bayinteractive.com
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