InDesign prints Courier instead of VF

Kris Sowersby
Kris Sowersby Posts: 43
edited February 2022 in Font Technology
For the last few years and versions InDesign prints a weird auto-sloped Courier instead of whichever VF is in the document. The latest version (17.1) does too. Has happened on the last few MacOS versions, and two different printers. PDFs generated from InDesign with VF will print fine from Preview/Acrobat. Almost every other app can print VF fine. 

Does anyone else have this? Are we prudent to recommend that InDesign is still beta with VF and we can therefore not support it?
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,186
    What printer(s) have you tested? Were they Adobe PS, PS clone, or non-PS?

    I just ran a test with the STIX Two Text variable TTF printing direct from InDesign 17.0.1 to my HP LaserJet, and it worked. If you want to test that font, we might be able to determine if your issue is with the printer or with specific variable fonts.
    https://github.com/stipub/stixfonts/tree/master/fonts/variable_ttf



    Adobe’s variable font support in InDesign certainly has some issues. We’ve found their expectations around some STAT and fvar settings to be unusual and contrary to the spec, but that affected roman vs italic confusion in the variations UI, not printing.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    I saw the kind of trouble Kris reports, a couple years ago. But not recently, that I recall.
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,436
    I’ve definitely seen this. 
  • Kris Sowersby
    Kris Sowersby Posts: 43
    What printer(s) have you tested? Were they Adobe PS, PS clone, or non-PS?
    Fuji Xerox DocuPrint P355D, genuine Adobe PostScript 3™. Not that it should really matter…

    We’ve found their expectations around some STAT and fvar settings to be unusual and contrary to the spec, but that affected roman vs italic confusion in the variations UI, not printing.
    Really? Is this behaviour expected to be rectified and brought into line with the spec?

    Here’s a couple of images, the source .png exported from InDesign and the resulting (cropped) print. It’s a mixed bag, some fonts work, some blank, some sub right out. The default instance seems to work for all.

    Fonts are:

    Stix Two Text — Version 2.13 b171
    Source Code Pro — Version 1.018
    Minion Variable Concept — (whatever ships with InDesign v17.1)
    Open Sans — Version 3.000
    Metric 2 VF — Beta
    Inter — Version 3.019





  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    Hah. Source Code is one of Adobe’s own fonts, too.

    Looks like I might need to do a more thorough test—the fact that my current VF project is printing fine does not mean much, clearly.   :(
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,186
    This is the issue I alluded to above (linking to where I came in on the conversation):
    https://github.com/googlefonts/gftools/issues/297#issuecomment-780732615

    I don’t know if this is related to the printing issue, but it is not impossible that this is PS name entry related, since printers will rely on that to identify fonts.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,186
    I have added a ping to that GF issue, with a link to this TD thread.
  • Kris Sowersby
    Kris Sowersby Posts: 43
    Thanks for the info John.

    So, in summary: it’s a known long-standing bug in InDesign’s code that Adobe know about, but seem unwilling to fix? The only workaround is make slightly malformed data within the fonts, which is not good practice?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    John Hudson said:
    This is the issue I alluded to above (linking to where I came in on the conversation):
    https://github.com/googlefonts/gftools/issues/297#issuecomment-780732615

    Aha! I haven’t run into this issue because neither of my most recent big projects had a separate italic variable font. (One has an italic axis, and the other doesn’t benefit from italics at all.)

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