Free sample

by Sharon Zardetto

Ebook: $15.00

Print: $29.99

• More Info
• Contents & Intro
• What’s New
• FAQ
• Blog

Questions you'll find answers to include these:

• What's new with fonts in Snow Leopard?
• What types of fonts can I use?
• How does automatic font activation work?
• In what order does my Mac 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 fonts in 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?

Book Info 225 pages Version 1.0 Published Aug 10, 2010 2.4 MB download ISBN: 9781615420889 Free sample with Table of Contents, Intro, Quick Start, and section starts. iPad & Kindle An EPUB is not currently available for this ebook. A Mobipocket file is not currently available for this ebook.

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.

Book Reviews Contact us for review copies Reviews of Previous Editions MacCompanion (4.5/5) Author Interviews Contact us for interview requests

Table of Contents Read Me First Introduction Fonts Quick Start Learn Font Basics Get Acquainted with Font Book Install New Fonts Validate Fonts Enable Automatic Font Activation Create and Edit Collections Use Libraries to Control Your Fonts Disable (and Enable) Fonts Deal with Duplicates Remove Fonts with Font Book Print Font Samples Master Font Menus and Font Formatting Control Character Entry Find Misplaced Fonts Organize Your Fonts Appendix A: Font Tables Appendix B: Users and Accounts About This Book

Read Me First 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 Viewer/Palette. It demystifies Unicode, explains how to organize your font collection, and more. It was written by Sharon Zardetto, edited by Tonya Engst with help from Caroline Rose and Jeff Carlson, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.

Introduction

Mac OS X was a major leap forward in the Macintosh interface (and its working guts), but a backward step when it came to fonts and their management. As a Mac fanatic from way back (1984, to be precise), I still 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.

By Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, fonts had become manageable but were still problematic. Font problems—some predictable, some not so much—cropped up on a steady basis. The support for new font formats was certainly a Good Thing, but it wasn’t necessarily an Uncomplicated Thing. With the introduction of 10.5 Leopard, the majority of common font problems disappeared, Font Book became a stable utility, and users could breathe a sigh of relief in that department. With 10.6 Snow Leopard, the transition to twenty-first century fonts and font management continues, relatively free of problems.

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).

 

Fonts 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.

Begin with the basics:

• 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 in Where Mac OS X Stores Fonts learn about the oh-so-many places you can store them.
• Find out about the now-standard approach to modern fonts in Explore the Unicode Universe. Discover the wealth of characters stored in fonts with The Joy of Character-Rich Fonts, and get up to speed with the latest font buzzword (and important concepts) in The World According to Glyphs.

Install and manage fonts with Font Book:

• If you'd like just a minimum introduction to Font Book, jump to Tour the Font Book Window and its following topic, Set Font Book's Preferences. If you'd like more than a passing familiarity with this invaluable utility, read the entire Get Acquainted with Font Book section.
• For details on specific Font Book functions, read Validate Fonts, Disable (and Enable) Fonts, Create and Edit Collections, and Use Libraries to Control Your Fonts.
• To learn about installing all types of fonts, with and without Font Book, see Install New Fonts. 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.

Work with fonts and type 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, Control Character Entry describes how to:
• Put Character Viewer and Keyboard Viewer in your menu (Turn On the Keyboard and Character Viewers).
• Type basic accented characters (Use Keyboard Viewer to Help Enter Accented Letters) and those beyond the very basics (Type More Accents with the U.S. Extended Keyboard).
• Enter (and find!) the zillion other characters in modern fonts (Find and Enter Characters with Character Viewer).
• If you want to type entirely in another language, or with a different "system," like the Dvorak method, read Use Different Keyboards for Foreign Languages or Other Special Input.

Organize your fonts:

• If you have fonts scattered around your drive, learn how to easily track them down with Find Misplaced Fonts.
• 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, see Organize Office 2008 Fonts. That section, and Deal with Office 2004 Fonts, address the duplications between the respective Office packages and Mac OS X.
• If you're drowning in fonts from Adobe Creative Suite programs and don't want all of them, or don't want all of them in all of your Font menus, see Organize Adobe-Application Fonts in Organize the Library Fonts Folder.
• If you'd like to sort out fonts donated by iLife and iWork, read Organize the Library Fonts Folder.

What's New in This Edition

This book has a 1.0 version number because it has a new title; however, it is effectively the third edition in a line of ebooks that includes Take Control of Fonts in Mac OS X, Tiger Edition and Take Control of Fonts in Leopard. Because the changes from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to 10.6 Snow Leopard are small compared to other improvements in the ebook, this book covers fonts in both Leopard and Snow Leopard.

General changes include:

• Some condensing of information, and outright deletion of some background material (such as the more historical aspects of different font types) to streamline the book.
• A total reorganization, with the major Organize Your Fonts section now located at the end of the book instead of near the beginning.
• The fonts from Adobe's Creative Suite 5 are now included in the Organize Adobe-Application Fonts topic.
• The issue of what to do when a software upgrade adds duplicates of fonts you've organized by moving them elsewhere is covered in Upgrading Software after Organizing Your Fonts.
• A new, streamlined approach to organizing your fonts. Not only have I approached the "what to keep/what to toss" assessments differently, but instead of your selecting fonts by checking against the lists in this book and tediously clicking on the umpteen items you need, I've provided you with blocks of text to use as search terms in the Finder so you can let the Mac find the fonts for you. This is such a superior approach over the old one (if I do say so myself) that it inspired me to create this combined Leopard-Snow Leopard volume so that readers running Leopard could use it instead of the process described in the previous edition. I'm also advising the use of a two-folder approach to Adobe-application fonts to cut down on unnecessary Font menu clutter.

Additions and changes specifically for Snow Leopard include:

• Changes regarding which fonts, and what font formats, are included with Mac OS X are detailed in Appendix A: Font Tables.
• New descriptions and figures for the 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.

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.

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Update Plans

June 2011 - At this time, we do not plan to create a Lion edition of this ebook. Instead, we plan to take a break from font-related topics like this one, so that we can focus on other areas of interest.

—Tonya Engst 

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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 

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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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