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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. Bonus: this ebook includes over $70 worth of coupons!
"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
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Contents & Intro
FAQ
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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 minimize font-related trouble when sharing documents across platforms?
"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
217 pages
Version 1.0
Published 26-Oct-07
3.1 MB download
Free 37-page PDF 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 describes a few problems you might run into with your initial Leopard font experiences. 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 as long as I could. I know I felt frustrated; I think I also felt insulted.
But Mac OS X has its act together now. With the release of Tiger, fonts became manageable (literally, with Font Book 2.0), and their Unicode-inspired wealth of characters and advanced typographical features became more accessible. Leopard's release brings 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). So we can quit whining about how bad it was and enjoy how good it is.
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, why document exchanges cause font problems, and how to access foreign- language characters and keyboards. And although it's too early to identify what Leopard's font problems will be when it's let out of its pre-release cage, I do include a brief section on the most likely problems and their solutions.
While I also touch upon font problems in PDFs and on Web pages, you won't find enough information to, say, start creating trouble-free, perfectly encoded Web pages; that's a topic for some other author. And, due to space constraints and timeliness, I don't review font management software or round up the dozens of font-related shareware utilities; instead, I discuss what to look for in font management beyond Font Book, and I highlight a few especially good shareware utilities in context of related topics.
The main mission of the 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 the figure margin, I identify the character by its font and Unicode or glyph ID (or both).
What's New in the Leopard Edition
Leopard introduces many changes—large and small—to Mac OS X, which required rewrites of matching dimensions. On the large side:
Leopard includes new fonts, new versions of old fonts, and 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 A: Leopard System Fonts and Appendix B: Leopard Library Fonts identify all the fonts. Contend with Old vs. New Font Versions describes some of the issues involved regarding Leopard's replacement of old standbys with their new, improved versions. And because the Leopard fonts have leapfrogged beyond Microsoft Office 2004's versions (which were superior to Tiger's) the "Organize Your Fonts" section has been rewritten; if you use Office, 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 has been revised.
I should also note what's missing from this version compared to the last edition:
Information about dealing with corrupted font caches—because Leopard doesn't use fonts caches (hooray!).
The Classic environment is not supported under Leopard, so information about updating "legacy" fonts, and running the venerable Font/DA Mover program under Classic to re-pack suitcases has been dropped.
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 troubleshooting procedures, or why you can't seamlessly share documents with a PC user.
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.
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, and also read Contend with Old vs. New Font Versions.
Are you getting extraneous font-activation requests or dealing with fairly generic Font Book problems? Check the basic troubleshooting procedures in Solve Basic Font Problems.
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 Characters 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 in a different "system," like the Dvorak method, read Use Alternate Keyboards for Foreign Languages or Other Special Input.
Going beyond your Mac:
There's only one sure way to keep fonts in your documents from transmogrifying, and that's to never let them leave your Mac. But when you have to let go, you should know How to Synchronize with the Rest of the World, and especially How toMinimize Document-Exchange Problems.
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.
I noticed that you also have an ebook about solving font problems in Tiger. Will you be updating that ebook for Leopard?
In early October 2007, we are tentatively planning to update the ebook, but first we need to wait 6-8 months, in order to see what sorts of problems arise and what can be done to fix them. We also want to see how font handling goes with the upcoming Microsoft Office 2008.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this book!
We rounded up a collection of coupons to go with this ebook - if you used all of them, you'd save over $70. You'll find them at the back of the ebook:
