CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • March 11, 2018 at 4:21 am #102307
    John Kelsall

    Member

    Hi everyone

    This post is more of a discussion than a problem to answer.

    You see I’m must wondering if, like me, you have found that bugs with Adobe products do not always get solved – or should I say that they are never even looked at? There have been a few bugs over the years that still exist and as far as I’m aware have never been tackled, even though I have informed Adobe of them.

    They may not be major problems, but even so, they can be annoying.

    For example:

    Acrobat
    • Acrobat Pro DC does not tell you the weight of a font. Acrobat XI, the older version of Acrobat does.
    So, sometimes for work I deal with a PDF of an old book and have the brief to match this book for style even though there are no InDesign or Quark files for it. So I use Acrobat to find what the fonts used are and their sizes. However, in the latest version of Acrobat – Pro DC – it will only tell you want the font is, nothing else. So, for example, if some of the setting was set in Meta Pro Book, Pro DC will just show Meta Pro. I need to open the older version of Acrobat XI for it to tell me the true font name, in this case Meta Pro Book. This seems a step backwards with Acrobat.

    InDesign
    • Sometimes in InDesign when you want to insert a vertical guide the vertical measurement guide is greyed out. You have to click the measurement guide first to enable it, then you can move the guide. You go to another page in the document where you have not used the vertical measurement guide and you have to do the same thing again. This has been like this when I first started with InDesign at CS2 and has never been fixed.
    • Sometimes even though fonts are loaded (either with Suitcase or Document fonts) InDesign does not see them when you import a Word file into InDesign and so they have square brackets around the font in the font list. This seems to happen with InDesign CC files onwards. The only way to sort this out is to save the file down as an idml after you have imported the Word file, open it in CS6 or earlier where the fonts are then found, save the file again and then open it in InDesign CC2018, for example, where the fonts are now seen. (I have tried every possible combination to sort this out and have never found another solution. This is not just me but everybody in my office have had this problem at some time or other.)

    In conclusion, I do not think these bugs will ever be sorted out and they should have been by now as they are long standing. There are many more which I cannot remember off hand, but in the course of a day’s work I may come across and think, there’s that stupid bug again, I wished they would sort it out.

    Do any of you agree with me that Adobe do not always listen?

  • March 11, 2018 at 5:22 am #102317
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I called Adobe about a year ago to report that every time I go to print an InDesign document it says there is ‘overset text’ without stating the page numbers. When there is, in reality, overset text, InDesign always states what the page numbers are.

    So when I receive this ‘overset text’ message without page numbers I know it is a bug.

    Last week I finally received an email and a phone message from Adobe. Maybe they are short staffed and it just takes what it takes to attend to these bugs.

  • March 11, 2018 at 10:40 am #102320
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Yes, there is no doubt that Adobe does not (and can not) fix every bug and shortfall in their software. They try, but there are definitely bugs from many years ago that are still unfixed. Don’t take it personally; it happens with all software companies, as far as I can tell.

    John: I just this week switched from Acrobat XI to DC, and it does show me font family information, both in the Properties dialog box and in the Output Preview (object inspector).

    Your fonts problem sounds to me like it may either be your fonts or the InDesign template you’re using… or perhaps even Word. This is an excellent example of a “bug” that is extremely difficult for Adobe to “fix,” because: a) it doesn’t happen to most users, and b) it’s unclear what is causing it. As for the vertical guide problem: It sounds like when you drag out a guide, somehow the guide is becoming deselected after you let go of the mouse button. Perhaps you’re accidentally clicking again somewhere? Here, again, it sounds like its intermittent. I’ve seen it happen, but it’s rare for me.

    Robert: If ID says there’s overset text, then something might be wrong with the document. I suggest exporting as IDML and opening the IDML file to clean up any file corruption. Also, check the Preflight Panel for details of overset text and other issues.

  • March 11, 2018 at 2:10 pm #102324
    John Kelsall

    Member

    Thanks for your comments David. I admire you very much, and so to get an answer from you is an honour indeed.

    I would like to say that in regards to Acrobat DC I was referring to ‘Edit PDF’ where you can conveniently click on any type and find out the size and weight. In DC it will only tell you the font, in XI it told you the font and the weight of it. So DC has gone backwards compared to XI.
    You are correct about using the Output Preview but this seems to me to be an unwieldy way of working when the ‘Edit PDF’ is a quick and ideal way of working.
    As regards the font problem, we have found that this can happen with a brand new file (command-N) where you have not used a template but with the older versions of InDesign this does not happen. The company I work for are typesetters and so we deal with files from authors via publishers and deal with thousands of books a year and so we do have a lot of experience, and we really think that is a bug.
    Again, in regards to the guide problem, I apologise if I did not explain myself very well. What I meant to say was that the measurements down the side of the InDesign file are sometimes greyed out. You sometimes have to click the measurements down the side of the page first to make them not greyed out, and then you can drag out a guide. You should just be able to just click and drag a guide without ‘unlocking’ the measurements first.

    As an aside David, did you ever get anywhere with table creation from the Interset system? It was a typesetting system I worked on in the 1980s that automatically worked out the table column widths and was far superior to anything InDesign and Quark have ever produced in regards to creating tables. They produced a Mac version of the software called ‘Quoin’. You enquired about it a number of years ago and I wondered if anything ever came out of it.

  • March 11, 2018 at 4:26 pm #102325
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Hi John, thanks for the very kind words! I see your point about Edit PDF. I rarely used that feature, so I didn’t realize that was a problem. It’s rather ironic, because Adobe has made a big deal about Acrobat DC being so much better at editing text. Hm. That is a bummer! (That said, when I upgraded to DC, I heard from a number of friends that it was not all going to be better. Sandee Cohen, on Twitter, told me: “Acrobat DC is like coming home from a family dinner and finding that interior decorators broke into the house and rearranged furniture, re-painted rooms, and hidden your important papers. You’ll spend hours trying to find things you know have to be there.”

    On the font problem: I have no doubt that you’re running into some kind of bug. I’m just saying that it sounds mysterious and may be difficult to pin down.

    As for the guides: Oh, the ruler along the side of the page gets grayed out?! That is weird. That would be frustrating. Maybe need to rebuild your preferences? Strange problem.

    Quoin! Yes, I was inquiring about that. No, nothing really came of it. I agree that QX and ID should be able to do much better at creating auto-spaced tables.

• Author
  Posts