Many roadblocks to wider implementation have to do with how advertisers prepare copy, says John Rodney, NAA director of newspaper services. While ad-production workers easily overcome these problems by reaching good procedural understandings with single advertisers, confusion looms when multiple publishers and advertisers become involved. Disaster can result without agreements on protocol, Rodney warns. In some ways, accepting camera-ready ads for publication was easier, he reflects. There never was an issue on how to handle them.
Fonts become particularly bothersome.
Although the Star has purchased the entire Adobe typeface library, advertisers often submit ads with other fonts. An advertiser's font may have the same name as an Adobe font yet be different. In some cases, the font has the same name as one in editorial copy on the same page. Proofreaders usually detect the change, she says. But when they don't, advertisers unhappily wonder what went wrong.