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Take Control of Fonts in Leopard
Install, organize, and use fonts with ease in Leopard!
In this essential ebook, long-time Mac author Sharon Zardetto reveals all the details about how fonts work in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. She explains what folders your fonts reside in, in what order they load, and how to deal with font duplication. You'll also learn the ins and outs of different font installation methods; how to use Font Book to manage, validate, and organize fonts; how to make the most of character-rich Unicode fonts; and more. Whether you work in a font-intensive profession, use Unicode fonts for non-Roman languages, or want to wrangle the numerous fonts that have ended up on your Mac, you need this ebook.
Snow Leopard? Although the differences between Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard are not huge when it comes to fonts, we are working on a 10.6 Snow Leopard edition, and we plan (but do not promise) a March or April release. If you buy this ebook PDF now, the Snow Leopard edition will be free to you. Please see the first entry in the Blog tab below for details.
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"What a splendid guide! Zardetto seems to sense exactly what you might need to know at just the right moment, but yet does not overwhelm you with a lot of detail all at once." —DFT, reviewing the Tiger edition
Read this ebook to learn the answers to questions such as:
What's new with fonts and Font Book in Leopard?
What types of fonts can I use with Leopard?
How does automatic font activation work?
In what order does Leopard access fonts from all their possible locations?
How can I figure out what characters are available in a Unicode font?
Which fonts can I remove from my system safely?
How can I best organize the fonts stored on my Mac?
What is the logic and organization for Adobe's various CS products?
How are fonts from Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 stored?
How should I handle fonts from Apple's iLife and iWork suites?
How can I minimize font trouble when sharing documents across platforms?
What aspects of using fonts have changed between Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.5.5?
"I am always astonished by Sharon Zardetto's ability to explain the most complex topics in the most user-friendly way."
—musiclover88, reviewing the Tiger edition
Book Info
227 pages
Version 1.1
Updated 12-Dec-08
7.7 MB download
ISBN: 1933671262
Free sample with Table of Contents, Introduction, Quick Start, and section starts.
About the Author
Sharon Zardetto has been writing about the Macintosh professionally since 1984, including nearly a thousand articles in Macintosh magazines and over 20 books. She's best known for writing several editions of The Macintosh Bible, along with The Mac Almanac.
This book tells you everything you need to know (and then some!) about fonts on your Mac: what and where they are, how to organize them, how to access the hidden wealth of characters inside some of them, and how to use the Mac OS X font tools—Font Book, Keyboard Viewer, and Character Palette. It demystifies Unicode, explains how to get your font collection under control, and more. This ebook was written by Sharon Zardetto, edited by Tonya Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.
Introduction
It's utterly astonishing that the Macintosh, a computer platform whose initial claim to fame was not just its interface but its use of different fonts, celebrated its almost-20th anniversary with an operating system that totally ignored the importance of fonts, pretending the difficulty—or total inability—to install and manage fonts didn't matter.
As a Mac fanatic from way back (1984, to be precise), I hate to admit that it took Mac OS X years to get its act together concerning fonts, and that I also totally ignored the issue for as long as I could. I know I felt frustrated; I think I also felt insulted. But that's well in the past.
Under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, fonts became manageable with Font Book, and their Unicode-inspired wealth of characters and advanced typographical features became more accessible. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard brought a smarter Font Book (with font auto-activation), a sturdier approach to fonts (no more corrupted caches), and another step toward all-round advanced fonts (Mac TrueTypes replaced by Windows TrueTypes).
You'll find all the basics of font management in this book: what font types are supported, installation, removal, verification of font file integrity, and the Font Book how-to (and why). You'll learn background details on Unicode and its ripple effect on almost every font-related thing you do, how to manage an unruly collection of fonts, and how to access foreign-language characters and keyboards.
Due to space constraints and timeliness, I don't review font management software or round up font-related shareware utilities; instead, I discuss what to look for in font management beyond Font Book, and I highlight a few especially good utilities in context of related topics.
The main mission of this book is self-evident, but there are two minor ones I'd also like to accomplish: to pique your interest regarding characters buried in many common fonts and to help you achieve a certain comfort level in dealing with Unicode and glyph IDs for characters. To kill both those birds with one stone (and use an awkward metaphor at the same time), where parts of figures need emphasis, I've used characters from different fonts to point, circle, label, or otherwise command your attention. In a special caption, I identify these characters by font name and Unicode or glyph ID (or both).
Quick Start
The material in this book is presented with the mild assumption that you'll read it linearly, but that doesn't mean that you have to read it that way. You could, instead, start with font installation techniques, or inputting special characters.
Beginning at the beginning:
Whether you're a font minimalist with nary a problem, or a font fanatic with nothing but, covering the basics is a good place to start. Check out the Supported Font Types, and the oh-so-many places you can store them, in Mac OS X Fonts Folders.
Explore the Unicode Universe, discover the wealth of characters stored in fonts with The Joy of Character-Rich Fonts, get up to speed with the latest font buzzword (and important concepts) in The World According to Glyphs, and learn how to Utilize Smart-Font Typography.
Whether your font collection is a mess or merely a nightmare waiting to happen, get things in order with Organize Your Fonts, and keep them that way with Stay Organized.
If you're struggling with font overlaps between Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, check Deal with Microsoft Fonts; if you've moved to a newer version of Adobe Creative Suite, learn about their font issues in Deal with Adobe-Product Fonts.
Installing and managing fonts:
If you'd like just a minimum introduction to Font Book, jump to Tour the Interface; if you'd like more than a passing familiarity with this invaluable utility, read Get Acquainted with Font Book.
For details on specific functions, check out Validate Fonts, Disable (and Enable) Fonts, Create and Edit Collections, and Use Libraries to Control Your Fonts.
To learn about Leopard's new Font Book capabilities, check out Enable Automatic Font Activation and Print Font Samples.
To learn about installing all types of fonts, with and without Font Book, see Install New Fonts and, of course, Remove Fonts You Don't Want. To keep track of all the additions to your collection, use the tricks in Font-Tracking Techniques.
Are duplicate fonts driving you crazy? Deal with Duplicates covers both general and Font Book issues in that area. And if you think that duplicates are... well, duplicates, jump directly to All Duplicates Are Not Created Equal.
Working with fonts and typing special characters:
Font menus are not as straightforward as they seem; iron out the wrinkles with Master Font Menus and Font Formatting.
As for typing any of the thousands of special characters available in some fonts:
Start with a survey of "input methods" in Turn On the Tools.
If you need to type accented characters, check out Use Keyboard Viewer to Type Accented Letters and Type More Accents with the U.S. Extended Keyboard.
To learn how to enter (and find!) the zillion other characters in modern fonts, read Find and Enter Characters with Character Palette.
If you want to type entirely in another language, or with a different "system," like the Dvorak method, read Use Alternate Keyboards for Foreign Languages or Other Special Input.
Assumptions
Yes, I know what they say about "assume" but I'm going to anyway. As long as you know what the assumptions are, we can prevent some misunderstandings:
You're working in Leopard: Font management in Mac OS X has changed drastically from one major release to the next; almost nothing in this book applies to versions before Tiger (10.4); it's written specifically for the Leopard (10.5) system software, and I used version 10.5.5. Things also change with minor updates, so if you have something earlier than 10.5.5, you might find some significant differences when it comes to things like searching for fonts or even working in a Get Info window.
You have administrative access to your Mac: I do mention, in a few places, the difference having access (or not) might mean to a font situation, but the general assumption is that you're in charge. (If you're uncomfortable with, or confused by, the very idea of "administrative access," Appendix C: Users and Accounts can ease your mind.)
You're not using third-party font management software: Wherever I discuss Font Book and its use, I assume that Font Book is your font management software. You can't have more than one of these utilities running at a time, so if you're working with a third-party solution but want to try (or go back to) Font Book, you should first disable the third-party manager.
You have Microsoft Office and/or Adobe Creative Suite: (or a standalone Adobe program such as InDesign). That's not to say that you need any of these programs to use this book or that if you use QuarkXPress this book won't help you. It is merely that I generally use Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Word (in various incarnations) as the non-Apple standards of how fonts are handled in Mac OS X; these programs work very well as the extremes of the sublime-to-ridiculous range.
You'll check current compatibility for any software I mention: The tricky part of writing any computer book that mentions more than one piece of software is the "compatibility leapfrog effect": a utility that works with Leopard 10.5.2 might not work with the 10.5.3 update, and the utility's update for 10.5.3 might break under 10.5.5, and so on. So, if you're interested in any commercial software or shareware that I mention—Suitcase Fusion, PopChar, FontDoctor, WhatEver—please be sure to check that it's been updated to work with your current Leopard version.
What Was New in Version 1.0
There were many changes from the Tiger edition of this book to version 1.0 of the Leopard edition, both large and small. The large side:
Leopard includes new fonts and new versions of old fonts, and it has swapped some fonts between the Library and System Fonts folders (to their more logical locations); it also installs all foreign language fonts by default instead of as an option, just the opposite of Tiger's approach. Updated tables in Appendix B: Leopard Font Tables identify all the fonts. The fonts Leopard has in common with Microsoft Office 2004 leapfrogged Office 2004's versions (which were superior to Tiger's), leading to a rewrite of the section about organizing your fonts; if you use Office 2004, make sure you check Office 2004 and Leopard's Multiple-File Fonts.
Font Book has a super new feature that can automatically activate a font if it's used in a document you're opening; check out Enable Automatic Font Activation. It also prints font samples (finally!), covered in the aptly named Print Font Samples.
On the smaller side, Leopard's general (not font-specific) changes required modifications of or additions to many sections. For example:
With the Finder's icon preview and Cover Flow view, you don't need to open Font Book to see what a font look likes; see Preview Fonts in the Finder.
Spotlight is not only faster under Leopard, but it also provides new ways of searching, so Find Misplaced Fonts was revised.
I should also note what's missing from this version compared to the Tiger edition:
Information about dealing with corrupted font caches—because Leopard doesn't use font caches, except on a much deeper level, where they rarely become corrupted.
The Classic environment isn't supported under Leopard, so information about updating "legacy" fonts, and running the venerable Font/DA Mover program under Classic to repack suitcases has been dropped. For more details, see my TidBITS article, "Are Your Fonts Ready for Leopard?."
What's New in Version 1.1
The changes in this version include:
Microsoft Office 2008 uses an approach to font storage different from its predecessor, so a new section, Deal with Microsoft Fonts, shows you how to organize not only the 20o8 fonts, but also how to get rid of the 2004 leftovers. Also, some Microsoft fonts were updated to match Leopard's versions, so I made appropriate minor changes to various tables and tips.
Adobe's Creative Suite 3 and 4 both take a different font-storage approach from their forebears, so a new section, Deal with Adobe-Product Fonts , describes how to not only deal with CS3-4's font collections, but how to combine either one with CS2's fonts, which, surprisingly enough, include some fonts that the later versions do not.
Since I'm paying so much attention to third-party fonts and how to handle them, it's only fair that I added advice about dealing with fonts from Apple's iLife and iWork, in Identify and Winnow iLife/iWork Fonts .
Minor updates to Leopard have included unannounced changes to some of the little things—such as how Spotlight searches for fonts, so I've once again updated Find Misplaced Fonts .
With nearly 30 additional pages of font-handling information added to this edition, something had to give; in fact, several somethings: "Solve Basic Font Problems," "Synchronize with the Rest of the World," and "The Zapf Dingbats and Symbol Nightmare." Because those sections were about solving problems, they've been moved into a new companion book, Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard.
Does this ebook cover third-party font-management utilities?
Due to space constraints and a concern for timeliness, the ebook doesn't review font management software or round up the dozens of font-related shareware utilities; instead, it discusses what to look for in font management beyond the tools that Apple provides, and it highlights a few especially good shareware utilities in context of related topics.
Does this book cover how to enter characters from Asian languages?
Mac OS X does provide special input methods for these languages; this book doesn't cover those special methods, but you can check out the basics at several Web sites, including the one at http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this book!
At the back of the ebook, you'll find two coupons:
How could we not publish such kind words? If you'd like to send us your comments (good or bad, though we hope they're all good), just click the Feedback link on the cover of your copy of the ebook. Be sure to let us know if we can publish your comment. Thanks!
Update Plans
October 2009 -- Author Sharon Zardetto has decided to update this ebook for Snow Leopard. If you're curious about what's in store, read along in this (slightly edited) version of an informal email message from Sharon.
It's unbelievable how unheralded changes in the OS ripple through stuff in this book every time—for instance, Spotlight searches for fonts in a different way—AGAIN! And, gee, most OpenType fonts now can't have color labels, so none of that sorting stuff works. Font Book has some almost-missed-it changes—the categories are back in the Search field, but they're different categories from what were there before Apple took them out, and the Resolve Duplicates command works subtly differently...
I've also updated/changed assumptions as to what versions of what programs are probably being used by most readers (CS4 instead of 3; Word 08 instead of 04—older versions still considered, but they're the exceptions rather than the rule, etc).
My crystal ball says that this new edition will be available "sometime in 2010, probably in March or April." It will be a free update to anyone who bought the Leopard edition in September 2009 or later.
January 2010 -- Sharon has put a considerable amount of effort into drafting a new edition, and we are now editing her work. Here are the highlights of what's coming in the new edition:
A new, streamlined approach to organizing your fonts. Sharon provides blocks of text to use as search terms in the Finder so you can let the Mac find the fonts in question. This is such a superior approach over the old one that we decided to create this new edition as a combined Leopard-Snow Leopard volume so that Leopard users could use this improved approach as well.
Revised advice suggesting a two-folder approach to Adobe-application fonts to cut down on unnecessary Font menu clutter.
Changes regarding which fonts, and what font formats, are included with 10.6 Snow Leopard.
New descriptions, and figures, for Snow Leopard's minor change from “Character Palette” to “Character Viewer,” and the more significant change regarding how to put it, and Keyboard Viewer, in your menu bar.
Snow Leopard’s modifications to Font Book. In addition to minor cosmetic changes (such as a yellow warning triangle instead of a dot to mark duplicate fonts), the search field once again has a dropdown menu to set a category for your search term, similar to 10.4 Tiger’s Font Book.
Managing fonts in Mac OS X is all too often like herding cats, but you can now corral your fonts with our latest ebook, Take Control of Fonts in Leopard, and its sidekick, Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard. Written by Sharon Zardetto, these up-to-date ebooks cover not only the various versions of Leopard up through 10.5.5, but also special font situations in applications such as Adobe CS3 and CS4, Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, iLife '08, iWork '08, and Safari. Here's the scoop on each ebook, along with notes on a special money-saving bundle:
Take Control of Fonts in Leopard: In this 227-page 1.1 update, Sharon extends all her useful advice about installing, managing, using, and removing fonts with specific coverage of what has changed with font handling in Leopard since 10.5.0, along with details of how fonts work in Leopard with Adobe CS3 and CS4, Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, and iLife '08 and iWork '08. If you work with fonts professionally or just want to get more out of your fonts, this $15 guide has all the information you need.
Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard: In this new edition, Sharon provides 151 pages of tips for avoiding font problems, troubleshooting advice, and specific steps for solving problems. Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard focuses on font-related issues that might arise generally while using Leopard or while working with fonts in Font Book, Character Palette, and Keyboard Viewer. It also examines font-related oddities and problems you might experience in Adobe CS3 and CS 4, Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, and Safari.
We designed these ebooks with the idea that many people will want to read both, and the problem-solving ebook assumes that readers have achieved some degree of competence with font management. In fact, were we producing traditional printed books, we'd combine all this information in a single title. However, the total length would have approached 400 pages, which is just too long for a PDF aimed at on-screen reading. To encourage you to get both titles, we're selling them together in a bundle for $5 off. To get the bundle, visit one of the linked pages and then look for a "Buy Both" option in the left margin.
If you own one of our previous Take Control ebooks about fonts, look in your email for upgrade information or open your existing PDF and click Check for Updates on the first page.
