Category: Text and Type (Composite fonts issue specific to Japanese workflows)

Composite fonts are a feature of the Japanese version of InDesign, widely used in the workflows of Japanese publishers.

Currently, InDesign identifies composite fonts only by their names. When multiple documents containing composite fonts with the same name but different settings are opened at the same time, InDesign forcibly duplicates and renames them (e.g. “FontName 2”, “FontName 3”, …). As a result, the number of composite fonts grows uncontrollably, making font management extremely confusing.

This behavior causes serious workflow problems:

• It prevents efficient switching between projects.

• It makes collaboration with external partners painful, since documents brought back from subcontractors often contain duplicated composite fonts with the same names.

• Users are forced to manage unnecessary duplicates, even though they did not create them.

Request:
Please assign a unique ID to each composite font internally (or identify them by name + definition hash), so that composite fonts with the same name but different settings can coexist in the application without being duplicated or renamed.

This issue has been reported for years but remains unresolved.
In Japanese publishing workflows, it causes serious inefficiency and confusion.
We strongly request that Adobe review this behavior and provide a structural fix, not just a workaround.