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Take Control of Fonts in Leopard
This book has been replaced by Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard.
Using either Leopard or Snow Leopard? We have replaced Take Control of Fonts in Leopard with Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard, which covers both Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. Buy that edition instead.
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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
iPad & KindleAn EPUB is available to purchasers of this ebook; log in to your account to download it. More info... A Mobipocket file is available to purchasers of this ebook; log in to your account to download it. More info... |
About the AuthorSharon 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. |
Book Reviews
Reviews of Previous EditionsAuthor Interviews
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Table of Contents
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Read Me FirstThis 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/.
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle?
There are lots of great ways to read our ebooks on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us or post on our GetSatisfaction site if you have a question about this book!
At the back of the ebook, you'll find two coupons:
- Three free issues of Design Tools Monthly, a $50 value!
- $5 off on a purchase of PopChar X
Send Us Your Comments!
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
August 2010 -- This ebook has been replaced by a new edition, Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard. This new edition merges Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard information with 10.6 Snow Leopard information, plus has newer information about Adobe CS5 fonts and a few other small improvements. (The differences in font handling between Leopard and Snow Leopard are quite small.)
—Tonya Engst
Wrangle Your Fonts with “Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard”
August 12, 2010 --
Managing fonts in Mac OS X is all too often like herding cats (all those Fonts folders!), but you can now corral your serif and sans-serif felines with our new Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard. Written by Sharon Zardetto, this 225-page ebook covers not only everything you need to know about fonts in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard, but also special font situations in software such as Adobe CS4 and CS5, Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, iLife, and iWork.
Important topics covered include:
- Where your fonts reside and in what order they load, and what - if anything - you should do about it
- The ins and outs of different font installation methods
- Using Font Book to manage, validate, and organize fonts
- Making the most of character-rich Unicode fonts
- Using Apple's Character Palette/Viewer and Keyboard Viewer to insert and explore special characters
- The quirks of fonts from Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008, and which ones you should keep around
- Organizing fonts from Adobe CS2, CS3, CS4, and CS5 so they are available where you need them
The ebook costs $15 and includes a coupon worth 20% off on any purchase from Ergonis Software, makers of the font utility PopChar X and other software.
—Adam Engst
MyFonts.com: A Great Place to Shop
March 25, 2008 --
Ebook reader G.M. recently wrote in to tell us about his experience shopping with MyFonts.com, one of the vendors that Sharon recommends in her various Take Control ebooks about fonts. He wrote, "I have purchased numerous fonts through this site over the past several years. They have a policy (which may apply to only some vendors, but perhaps to all) of providing notices about free updates to any fonts that you have purchased. The most surprising such update came not too long ago for a font family (Rayuela) which had been upgraded with several additional weights, all of which was free, even though those weights did not exist when I purchased the family several years ago. Kudos to this online vendor."
—Tonya Engst
Who Knew Fonts Could Be So Funny?
September 12, 2007 --
Sharon Zardetto, author of this ebook, recently stumbled on the Font Conference video at the CollegeHumor Web site. By mid-way through watching it, I was laughing so hard I was crying, and I nearly fell out of my chair. If you need a laugh, and you know your way around the basic typefaces, check it out!
—Tonya Engst
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