InDesign CS4 dropping text

[Lukas Engqvist]

Validating Arial on another machine is irrelevant. (I wrote a long post and lost it, so I'm a bit weary to type the explanation again atm). Basically was saying till you isolate the problem you can't bark up a tree since you don't know where the cat is.

Arial MT is a MonoType font, and it could be that there is an inconsistency/flaw in the font, in the version you are using. There are differences in the encoding of the Type1 Arial MT and Arial.ttf wich is the truetype that includes the extended characters that are necessary for a global comunity.
If the names of the symbols depicting the glyphs are not standard or the wrong code page is referenced you will find that you may end up pointing to characters that do not exist, and this is why you are loosing text. InDesign CS4 assumes that fonts are correct, where InDesign CS3 is more tollerant with inconsistently encoded fonts.
Also like to know what language system are you operating on?

Searching my mac i found several versions of Arial, the font info from font book reveals;

PostScript name ArialMT
Full name Arial
Family Arial
Style Regular
Kind TrueType
Language English, Swedish, Norwegian Bokmål, Danish, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew
Version Version 3.00
Location /Library/Fonts/ARIAL.TTF
Unique name Monotype:Arial Regular:Version 3.00 (Microsoft)
Manufacturer Monotype Typography
Designer Monotype Type Drawing Office - Robin Nicholas, Patricia Saunders 1982
Copyright Typeface © The Monotype Corporation plc. Data © The Monotype Corporation plc/Type Solutions Inc. 1990-1992. All Rights Reserved
Trademark Arial® Trademark of The Monotype Corporation plc registered in the US Pat & TM Off. and elsewhere.
Description Contemporary sans serif design, Arial contains more humanist characteristics than many of its predecessors and as such is more in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century. The overall treatment of curves is softer and fuller than in most industrial style sans serif faces. Terminal strokes are cut on the diagonal which helps to give the face a less mechanical appearance. Arial is an extremely versatile family of typefaces which can be used with equal success for text setting in reports, presentations, magazines etc, and for display use in newspapers, advertising and promotions.
License NOTIFICATION OF LICENSE AGREEMENT

This typeface is the property of Monotype Typography and its use by you is covered under the terms of a license agreement. You have obtained this typeface software either directly from Monotype or together with software distributed by one of Monotype's licensees.

This software is a valuable asset of Monotype. Unless you have entered into a specific license agreement granting you additional rights, your use of this software is limited to your workstation for your own publishing use. You may not copy or distribute this software.

If you have any question concerning your rights you should review the license agreement you received with the software or contact Monotype for a copy of the license agreement.

Monotype can be contacted at:

USA - (847) 718-0400 UK - 01144 01737 765959
http://www.monotype.com
Enabled Yes
Duplicate Yes

for the version that has arabic, hebrew cyrillic and more

and

PostScript name ArialMT
Full name Arial
Family Arial
Style Regular
Kind TrueType
Language English, Swedish, Danish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Portuguese
Version Version 2.60
Location /Library/Fonts/Arial
Unique name Monotype:Arial Regular:Version 2.60 (Microsoft)
Manufacturer Monotype Typography
Designer Monotype Type Drawing Office - Robin Nicholas, Patricia Saunders 1982
Copyright Typeface © The Monotype Corporation plc. Data © The Monotype Corporation plc/Type Solutions Inc. 1990-1992. All Rights Reserved
Trademark Arial® Trademark of The Monotype Corporation plc registered in the US Pat & TM Off. and elsewhere.
Description Contemporary sans serif design, Arial contains more humanist characteristics than many of its predecessors and as such is more in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century. The overall treatment of curves is softer and fuller than in most industrial style sans serif faces. Terminal strokes are cut on the diagonal which helps to give the face a less mechanical appearance. Arial is an extremely versatile family of typefaces which can be used with equal success for text setting in reports, presentations, magazines etc, and for display use in newspapers, advertising and promotions.
License NOTIFICATION OF LICENSE AGREEMENT

This typeface is the property of Monotype Typography and its use by you is covered under the terms of a license agreement. You have obtained this typeface software either directly from Monotype or together with software distributed by one of MonotypeÕs licensees.

This software is a valuable asset of Monotype. Unless you have entered into a specific license agreement granting you additional rights, your use of this software is limited to your workstation for your own publishing use. You may not copy or distribute this software.

If you have any question concerning your rights you should review the license agreement you received with the software or contact Monotype for a copy of the license agreement.

Monotype can be contacted at:

USA - (847) 718-0400 UK - 01144 01737 765959
http://www.monotype.com
Enabled Yes
Duplicate No

for another version that only has the basic latin character set (less than 256 characters).

[jmcarthy]

No, if you open the document in CS4 and the text is missing from the boxes, when you export out for CS3, the text isn't there. If you open the CS4 file and see all of the text and then export out, the text stays. When you open in CS4 and all of the text is there, when you update the fonts some of the text disappears. Or some of the text is already missing when you open the document.
No matter what, this sure looks like it is a problem with CS4.

You said you have to update the fonts. IMHO there is a problem there if ID is not seeing the font to begin with. We have a couple G5's running Tiger and one machine has trouble seeing fonts at times and the others don't. You go to the other machine and load the fonts ID sees 'em right away. Been having this since we got the machines. I found that if you load the fonts in the app's font folder ID will always pick them right up. The same holds true for all the Adobe app's on one of our machines. The other machines we have will always pick them up. IMHO if ID doesn't read the font and you have to update it that is where your problem starts.