User Guide

Appendix B
Answers to commonly asked
questions
Macromedia’s Technical Support has compiled answers to
our customer’s most commonly asked questions. If you
have any other questions, just give our technical support
department a call at [phone], contact the
MacroFacts faxback at [phone], or check out
Macromedia’s web site at http://www.macromedia.com.
I’ve made a PostScript font using Fontographer and
have printed it to my printer. I then made some changes
to the font and tried printing again, but the changes
didn’t show up on the second printing. What is going on
here and what can I do about it?
Built into all Adobe PostScript printers is some software
called a “font cache.” This font cache holds the imaged
bitmaps of each of the characters that the printer has
recently printed, so that it doesn’t have to waste time re-
interpreting the PostScript description of the character, but
can instead pull the already-imaged bitmap out of the font
cache and place it on the page. Fontographer Type 1 fonts
normally have an “Outline ID” which can be changed in
the “Generate fonts” dialog. This ID is the numeric handle
by which the PostScript interpreter references the font
cache images. If you temporarily change the number of
the outline ID to zero (0), then the interpreter will not
cache any of the characters of your font and you won’t
have this problem. Be sure to restore the original outline
ID (or any random number between 4,000,000 and 4,999,
999) when you’re finished with the font and are satisfied
that you won’t be making any more changes. Another way
to get around this is to flush the font cache after each
iteration of your font by either turning the printer off for a
few seconds, then turning it back on (for printers without
hard disks) or by using Adobe’s Font Downloader 4.x (or
later), which can get rid of the font cache on a printer that
Fontographer User's Manual
B: Answers to commonly asked questions Page #1