| Font Management |
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Working with fonts in Mac OS X is in many ways more complex than it was with Mac OS 9. By default, fonts are located in five locations on Mac OS X and can be of a wider variety of font formats than were previously possible. This report details the current state of fonts in Mac OS X. Where's the font? Fonts in Mac OS X are found in the /Library/Fonts directory for use by the entire computer. More fonts are found at /System/Library/Fonts. Mac OS X also looks inside and offers you the fonts found in your old Classic Mac OS 9 System Folder fonts directory even if you aren't running Classic! These three font locations allow all users of the computer access to these fonts. In addition, each user has exclusive access to fonts found in their own Users directory. The final location for fonts is on the network where fonts are available to multiple computers for an even large audience. Fonts found in the locations just mentioned have priority over any font management software you install. However, the font managers often have the ability to manage these system fonts along with their own font database. In addition, certain programs such as Adobe InDesign have their own fonts folder that contains fonts only accessible within the application. What is this font? Mac OS X supports Postscript Type 1 and Truetype fonts just as Mac OS 9 can. In addition, Mac OS X uses Unix DFonts and the latest type innovation, OpenType. By far the best fonts are new OpenType fonts, a font specification developed jointly by Microsoft and Adobe that bears curious similarity to Apple's failed QuickDraw GX font format from the mid-1990s. You are likely to have a large library of Postscript Type 1 and Truetype fonts you wish to use on Mac OS X. These should work perfectly fine, but fonts that have subtle corruption that did not aggrevate itself under Mac OS 9 are not likely to be accepted easily under Mac OS X which is far more strict about font integrity in an effort to improve OS stability overall. How to Manage my Fonts? Apple ships Mac OS X with Font Book, a fairly functional font manager that will meet the needs of many users. With Mac OS X 10.5, Font Book even is able to auto-activate fonts for you, though this functionality has currently been broken since Mac OS X 10.5.2 and remains broken in Mac OS X 10.5.3. For designers who require more professional font management, the familiar players are available on Mac OS X. Font Reserve and Suitcase have been merged into Suitcase Fusion. Fusion mainly uses features from Font Reserve but then presents them in a familiar Suitcase interface. Insider Software's FontAgent Pro is a new font management software based on a solid font repair product that has been sold for many years. FontAgent Pro cleans and optimizes your fonts prior to adding them to your font collection. This is a critical step in font management that is often overlooked. Another new player to the font field is Linotype Font Explorer, which is a free font manager that is easier to use and more powerful than Apple's Font Book. In many ways Linotype Font Explorer compares well to commercial font solutions, but we have found it lacking in professional situations and recommend it only to those with lighter needs where Font Book is not enough. Suitcase Fusion, Font Book and Font Explorer perform a small amount of integrity checking on fonts, but this pales in comparison to a professional font repair tool such as FontAgent Pro. Suitcase Fusion comes with a copy of Font Doctor which is a solid competitor to FontAgent Pro concerning font repair. While this requires a two step process (first repairing your fonts with Font Doctor and then loading then into Suitcase Fusion) the end results are a clean font collection which you should immediate back up to CD for safe keeping. Font Activation Suitcase Fusion, Font Explorer and FontAgent Pro all perform automatic font activation within the major design programs include QuarkXPress, InDesign, and Illustrator. They each have a different way of handling font activation. FontAgent Pro also has the ability to activate fonts within Adobe Photoshop. Network Fonts Extensis has released a new font server called Universal Type Server. This product is cross platform and uses Open Source standards for robust functionality and is definitely a powerful and scalable font management solution for workgroups. FontAgent Pro also has a server and it additionally offers a mid-range solution with FontAgent Pro Workgroup which uses Apple's Bonjour (formerly called Rendezvous) technology to share fonts between computers seemlessly. FontAgent Pro Workgroup sells for $149 per client versus the basic version that is $99. Reliability For maximum font reliability we recommend you are using the latest versions of the fonts you rely on. Adobe and other font makers now offer OpenType versions of their font collections which will offer you the best quality and features in these fonts. If you are using older Postscript Type 1 or Truetype fonts check the version of these fonts as there might be freely downloadable updates to these fonts that are more compatible with Mac OS X. Finally, you should process your type library through a professional font repair solution such as Font Doctor or FontAgent Pro. In addition, if you have older fonts that you had combined into massive suitcases or removed from their suitcases using a tool such as Apple's Font/DA Mover, you will need to fix these fonts to have them work properly on Mac OS X, especially on Mac OS X Leopard which does not support Classic and therefore will not work with these fonts. To fix these legacy fonts you can run Mac OS 9 on an older computer capable of running Mac OS 9 and use Font/DA Mover or in Mac OS X you can use Font Doctor or Insider Software's Smasher. The reliability of the major professional font tools is a mixed bag. For the most part, they are all quite solid and reliable products. Suitcase Fusion has developed through many updates to be fairly robust. It does require more resources than FontAgent Pro and as was the case with Suitcase you must keep the application open at all times. We have had problems with Suitcase Fusion hanging and requiring a force quit and some compatibility issues with InDesign CS3 have shown up. Currently FontAgent Pro is growing rapidly in features and popularity. In many ways FontAgent Pro is more stable and can faster and more seemless than the other tools. FontAgent Pro has received the most consistent product improvements of all the font managers. System Font Management Many font problems stem from certain popular fonts being installed by Apple or other vendors into your System font folders in addition to the same fonts existing in your font collections being managed in your professional font software. All the font management options provide the ability to manage Mac OS X System fonts for you. Also note that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard addresses this issue by alerting you to required fonts so you don't remove fonts that must be present for the system to work properly. Common font display issues A common issue with incorrectly displaying text often showcasing itself within Apple Mail and Safari can be caused by font conflicts. The following links provide examples and solutions to these problems. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |