Typophile

Switching from PC to Mac

lunasoleil

Hi all,

I'm finally biting the bullet and buying a Mac.

Problem: While I've slowly bought up quite a few OpenType fonts over the last couple of years, I still have a fair number of TrueType fonts that I'm quite fond of.

I know there are a million threads and sites out there explaining the differences between PC and Mac fonts. I have actually tried to read as many of them as I can, but my brain is just overloaded right now. So, please, just pretend I'm a five-year-old and dumb it down for me! :)

1. Is there a free way to continue using those TrueType fonts on a Mac? I read somewhere that if you rename TrueTypes as OpenType they'll keep working, but somehow that sounds too simple to be right...

2. If not - what's the easiest solution? Use TransType pro to convert everything to a Mac format or OpenType?

Sorry if this is a 'dummies' level question - I have never been good at comprehending technical information and I'm feeling a bit lost at the moment, lol. Thanks. :)

aluminum

"Is there a free way to continue using those TrueType fonts on a Mac?"

Yep. Copy them over, and stick them in your FONTS folder in OSX.

Aren't Macs great? :o)

lunasoleil

Now I feel like even more of a dummy than I did five minutes ago <_<

I guess I always assumed there were options to download a font 'for Windows' and 'for Mac' for a reason, lol. Thank you for humouring clueless me :)

jessi.long

Yes, Mac OSX supports the following font types:

* OpenType (both Mac and Windows formats)
* PostScript Type 1 (Mac only)
* PostScript Multiple Master (Mac only)
* TrueType (both Mac and Windows formats)
* dFont (data fork TrueType) (Mac only)

OS9 did not support all of these, so you are now free to use your windows truetype files.

jessi.long

This page has some good basic info on the subject http://www.myfonts.com/support/onepage.php?hc=5#hc5

carl

I guess I always assumed there were options to download a font ’for Windows’ and ’for Mac’ for a reason, lol. Thank you for humouring clueless me :)
This is not a dumb question. PostScript Type 1 fonts were for a long time, the industry standard for professional typesetting. These fonts were, and still are, platform specific. For example, a windows PostScript font uses two files with .pfm and .pfb extensions. This is the one format not currently supported by Mac OS at the system level.
There is a way to get these fonts to show up in Adobe applications only, but I would only look into that if you have a real need. Also, to be clear about your first post, you should not rename anything. It probably wouldn't cause a problem, but it's certainly not necessary.

Thomas Phinney

Just to clarify, there do not exist separate Mac and Windows versions of OpenType fonts. There exist OpenType fonts with TrueType outlines, and OpenType fonts with PostScript style outlines; both flavors are cross-platform font files.

As a side note, the dividing line between OpenType fonts with TrueType outlines and Windows TrueType fonts is very thin indeed, and one often doesn't even need to make a distinction between the two.

Cheers,

T

Jason Pagura

Of course, if you have lots of fonts, font management software is very helpful, and a good choice is Linotype FontExplorer X, downloadable freeware for Mac OS X.

lunasoleil

Well, I do have a few Windows PostScript fonts, but I'm pretty sure they all came with my computer and I can't remember using any of them so I think I'll be okay. :)

Thanks for all the information and the tip on the software!

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