What Causes Font Errors on the Server?

When a Pagflex project uses a font that has not been installed on the website's Pageflex server engine, an error is generated every time that font is used. Such errors typically prevent the live preview from displaying on the screen when users fill out a form. This is because fonts used in a project must match the font family name and style name of fonts installed on the website's Pageflex server engine in order to work.

What's Installed on the Server?

We have the entire Adobe Font Folio 11 set installed on the Pageflex server engine. If your project uses a font from the Adobe Font Folio, that project will not produce a font error. Periodically, projects use fonts for which a suitable Adobe equivalent can not be found. In those cases, we will also upload that font to our server. To see a complete list of the fonts on our server, please visit fontlist.marketingideasforprinters.com

How Can I Prevent Font Errors In My Projects?

There are three ways to avoid such errors:
1. Use Adobe Font Folio fonts whenever possible. This is definitely the most expensive approach, and is also the most reliable. As of 3/31/2011, the price of Adobe's Font Folio is $2599. But by working solely with Adobe fonts, you can be assured that they are installed on the server and ready for use. Of course, you don't have to get the entire portfolio: it's also possible to buy individual fonts on an as-needed basis.
2. Change the family names of your local fonts. You might need to renew your "geek license" for this one, but if you have a font editing program, you can change the "family name" of your local fonts to the name of an equivalent font that is installed on the server. For instance, a local copy of "Optima" can be changed to its Adobe equivalent, "Optima LT Std". Changing the family name (and only the family name) provides the Pageflex server with the reference information that it needs to locate the installed font that it needs. This is generally the simplest approach. Please note, changing the family name is not the same as changing the file name of the font. And as always, be sure to save a copy of the original font and make your changes to the copy. It's important to leave your original font untouched, because changing the family name has the potential to cause the font to operate in unexpected ways in other applications.
3. Change the font references in your local .xdt and .tsl files. If you open up the Pageflex templates in a text editor, you will see that they are just a bunch of stylized text with formatting rules that are used by Pageflex. And so, you can change the font references by doing a search-and-replace operation. For instance, replacing font_name="/Helvetica" with font_name="/Helvetica LT Std" will go through the entire document and change the Helvetica fonts with the Adobe-friendly version. However, please note that directly editing the files in this way can break them irreparably if done incorrectly. If that should happen, we'll be happy to do our best to repair those files. But such repairs will be billable, as it is beyond the scope of our normal support.