Typophile

OSX font help!

russ

Hi everyone!

I'm so used to OS9 with ATM deluxe - but I've purchased a Powerbook with OSX (which contains Fontbook.) I'm getting so stressed out about it, lots of work to do but I'm extremely limited on the fonts I can use at present.

I'm running Quark 4 (soon to receive 6 for Xmas!) and have fonts from my OS9 system.
The fonts I have are mainly Postscript, of which they won't work with fontbook, or OSX as a whole. I can install them but that's as far as it gets - they don't appear within Quark.
Some others do but they appear corrupted!

I know that OSX will use TTF fonts, so I can use my Windows ones on there, but I only have limited amount of TTF fonts from my Windows PC.

I don't want to start breaking license agreements, but can I not use a font convertor program to change the Postcripts into TTF? If so, where can I get it. I've tried a few freebie programs but they aren't effective, or just difficult to work out.

Will postscripts not work with OSX at all? or am I being a little retarded?
I admit I'm not the biggest font expert in the world - which you can see clearly!

Look forward to any help you can offer! Thanks in advance guys (and gals!) And my apologies if you've had post like this before.

porky

TransType by FontLab is an excellent tool for converting fonts between platforms and formats, but it costs $99. (Thats about

russ

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly David!

russ

Can anyone help me? I hate being a novice!

Mark Simonson

FontBook can be handy, but it's useless if you want to use fonts in Classic applications.

Only fonts which are placed in the Fonts folder of the OS9 System Folder will be active in Classic applications. FontBook only puts fonts in the usual OSX font locations, the upshot of which is that they are only available to OSX applications.

So: The fonts you want to use in Classic applications should be placed in System Folder:Fonts: . (Note: Fonts placed there will be available to all applications, including OSX ones.)

As for PostScript fonts, you need to make sure you include both the Font Suitcase and the PostScript Type 1 font file, just like in the old days. ATM is still needed for Classic applications just as with OS9 and earlier, but not for OSX applications as PS Type 1 support is built into OSX.

If you want to know more, I would recommend downloading Apple's guide to font management in OSX which can be found here:

http://www.apple.com/pro/archive/creative/fonts/

A word of advice: If you can avoid using Classic applications, font management in OSX will be much simpler.

russ

Thanks Mark!

Clears that up for me! Think I'll put in ATM for Classic - that is until I get my hands on Quark 6. Things could become simpler then!

(Apologies for the repetitive posting - not sure why that's happened... I only posted it once.)

Mark Simonson

> repetitive posting - not sure why that's happened

It's a bug in the script they use here for posting messages. If you post a message and it seems like it's not going through, 99 times out of 100 it has. Each time you cancel and attempt to post again, another copy of your message will be posted.

As near as I can tell, the bug happens when the script tries to display the page you posted to and it gets hung up. The part of the script that posts the message works fine nearly all of the time.

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