Real World Mac OS X Fonts, First Edition

By Harry {doc} Babad

Author: Sharon Zardetto Aker Publisher: Peachpit Press http://www.peachpit.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321498372&rl=1 Series: Real World Released: Feb 14, 2007 Pages: 360 $32 USD, Street $26.40; CND $40, UK £29 ISBN-10: 0-321-49837-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-49837-3 Audience: All but über-expert level font users.
Strengths: From introduction to Mac OX X font basics to advanced troubleshooting. If you use more than TextEdit to create type containing documents, this is a must have book. Weaknesses: None I could credibly identify. Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Introduction

With the advent of Tiger Mac OS X, fonts, in my eyes turned from a minor collecting vice, to an instrument or torture. With a little bit of reading other Tiger related books, I had learned that there were at were 4 places (folders) the operating system stashed fonts.

These are, as Sharon Zardetto Aker notes:

• In the System directory (/System/Library/Fonts)
• At the "shared by all users" level (/Library/Fonts)
• In your home directory (~/Library/Fonts)
• In the Mac OS 9 System Folder (/System Folder/Fonts) if you've installed Classic.

Indeed all of these folders have a reason for existing. They serve to accommodate the operating system, and fonts shared by all users. In addition, individual users on a shared Macintosh can have their own captive fonts. Furthermore, you guessed it; there are the Classic font collections. What I was only vaguely conscious of was that applications like those in the MS Office Suite install their own fonts, but that the new version of MacKiev’s ThePrintShop for Tiger does not.

From Ms. Aker’s book I leaned that Adobe's Creative Suite (and Acrobat Pro) adds another Fonts folder (in/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts) – Yep, it’s there, despite the fact that I’m only have Acrobat 8 and Adobe PhotoShop Elements on my Hard Drive.

And of course without knowing any better, I committed the cardinal sin, at least according to Ms. Aker’s Tid-Bits article; “Of the many (font related) misunderstandings and management mistakes users make, one stands out as the most common: consolidating fonts into a single Fonts folder” http://db.tidbits.com/article/8546/.

No I didn’t quite do that, I let my systems fonts alone, still at 32 font labeled items. That’s still two more than Ms. Aker recognizes. However, in some late night moment of madness, I worked to consolidate all my other fonts in my user folder and perhaps elsewhere, into my Harry‘s Tiger/Library/Fonts folder. After all, I don’t share this computer with anyone else, so what harm?

I don’t remember what I did with my Microsoft Fonts. Hmmm — time to check. They’re still in my Office application folder (/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts) but seem also to be duplicated in my Harry‘s Tiger/Library/Fonts folder. (That’s exactly where the book said they’d be.)

I do indeed, at this time, have 156 items in my and none in my Harry‘s Tiger/Users/Harry/Library/Fonts folder. So far, I’m not having any font related problems in MS Word, but that may be more a blessing that pre-ordained based on the mucking around I’ve done with my fonts. I suspect its time to straighten this mess out. Sharon Zardetto Aker’s book Real World Mac OS X Fonts provides me with just the guidance I needed, so that’s the first thing I did.

Publisher’s Summary

“As someone who works with fonts every day, you need to know exactly how fonts work in Mac OS X. Long-time Mac author Sharon Zardetto Aker has the answers you need. Explaining where your fonts reside, why they are there, and what to do about duplication and long Font menus. Once that’s under control, you’ll learn things like the ins and outs of different font installation methods; how to use Font Book to manage, validate, and organize fonts; ways of dealing with legacy Mac OS 9 fonts; and how to make the most of character-rich Unicode fonts.

“And to help with those maddening font problems, Sharon provides troubleshooting steps and real-world advice for solving problems fast. If you’ve experienced seemingly inexplicable trouble with characters displaying incorrectly, an inability to type a particular character, fonts missing from Font menus, confusing behavior in Microsoft or Adobe programs, Font Book crashing, or Character Palette misbehaving, Real World Mac OS X Fonts has the help you need.” I agree.

In this book…

Okay, I’ve messed my font organized up by moving thing around. I needed to put things back where they belonged. Therefore chapter 2 Organize Your Fonts (step by step guidance) was a good place to start. The good news, I was able to make things right, over several hours. The bad news, it seemed to make no difference on how either MS Word, Acrobat or other fonts using applications worked.

After experimenting with organizing my fonts I did a little experimentation with Installing few fonts (Chapter 4) that I’ve recently collected, and also tossed some non-critical fonts (see Appendix C) I hadn’t used since I installed OS X Tiger. I no longer have Classic installed on my computer so all those fonts went into to the trash along with all of my classic applications.

Following the instruction provided, I was able to work my way through the first seven chapters of the book. The remaining chapters, although interesting, were not information I was going to immediately use, so I read them with voyeuristic interest.

Somewhere along the way, I destroyed Font Book and am now chasing a new updated copy for my Mac OS X 10.4.9 system. This had nothing to do with Ms. Aker’s suggestions. Rather during writing the remainder this months review and trouble shooting other problems, that glitch occurred. This is for me is another case of Murphy’s gremlins, which aperiodically appear on my much stressed operating system.

Note: When my Macintosh starts doing weird things, Mike a knowledgeable troubleshooter has often given me the following advice. Either do my macC testing on another startup hard drive or at least to set up another account just for testing. What me listen?

As a result I was able to read but able, past chapter 7, to implement or test some of the other suggestions Sharon made in this book. I don’t feel badly about this because I really have very little interest in Master Menu Fonts, Font character(s) Identification, and other advanced topics in fort awareness and control. These are all necessary to the success of those who do desktop publishing and page design, which I don’t.

In addition, since I’m using primarily fonts provided with my operating system Adobe and Microsoft, I don’t find myself in trouble with passing on my simple documents to other PC or Macintosh users. However if you need to synchronize (your documents) with the Rest of the World, I highly suggest you read Chapter 12.

For now working without Font Book, all is not lost. Although available w/o Font Book, I dislike Keyboard Viewer and don’t need Apple’s Character Palette. I use two other tools that allow me to work with my fonts. PopChar X 3.1 and Unsanity’s FontCard 1.4. Note: because I did not know whether the later might interfere with Apple’s Font Book, I turned it off during my font reorganization and other book related test activities.

What’s In The Book? — In this book, you’ll find the answers to questions like these:

What types of fonts can I use with Mac OS X? In what order does Mac OS X access fonts from all their possible locations? How can I figure out what characters are available in a Unicode font? How can I minimize font-related troubles when sharing documents across platforms? How do I go about troubleshooting a font problem? How do I enter special characters? How do I print font samples? How do I work with legacy fonts?

Ms. Aker’s discussion (see the book’s TOC) includes: Font basics, font organization, an overview of Font Book, installation of new fonts, removal of unwanted fonts, disabling fonts and dealing with duplicate fonts. Read about Font Book collections and libraries, updating legacy fonts, mastering font menus and formatting, characters in fonts. There detailed information on controlling character entry, preventing and analyzing problems, and solutions to specific font problems.

In addition the well organized and complete index make the book’s contents easy to find. The information appendices (A-G) and augment the font users knowledge on subjects ranging from font specs and tiger fonts to Mac OS X Font samples.

Adam Engst noted in a Amazon.com review of this book: “…then came Mac OS X, which introduced a plethora of new font types, font behaviors, and font folders. Since Mac OS X, I've struggled every time I run into a problem with fonts, whether it's not having the right font for a document or having a conflict between similar (but not quite identical) fonts in different font folders. Despite having read the text of this book several times in editing passes, font problems still flummox me, but at least now I know where to look for the answer.”

Whether a user of the basic fonts provided by your operating system and applications, or a designer with a computer full of added fonts, probably the most important chapter in the book, in case of font problems is Chapter 13, Prevent and Analyze Problems. In addition to Chapter 13,

Chapter 14 deals with solving more narrowly defined specific font problems. For example, those associated with Apples Character Palette or Keyboard Viewer, PostScript Fonts, MS Office, Adobe Applications, and/or Safari. These chapters, even if you a knowledgeable of fonts in Macintosh OS X Tiger are well worth the price of the book. This is truly so if your time is worth more then minimum wage.

Minor Discomfort

Although Appendix G contains a section on Mac OS X font samples, what I would have like was a brief appending on the general types of fonts, comparable to the brief description provided by Robin Williams in either the Non-Designers Type Book (Peachpit Press.)

Conclusion

I am always delighted by Sharon Zardetto Aker's ability to explain the most complex topics in a user-friendly way. Whether I run across a tid-bit or read a book she’s authored, complex topics become understandable when penned by Sharon’s hand. For a purported technophobe — now where did I read that — she has created a logically organized book on working with fonts in Apple’s Tiger environment moving from the simple to complex potential user problems when using fonts in they every-day computing life. She is both knowledgeable, as demonstrated in her two Take Control eBooks (Take Control of Fonts in Mac OS X: Tiger Edition, and Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS X) as well as her contributions in my well thumbed though Macintosh Bible. This is an exceptional book, and a great resource. It is full, of easy-to-use flow charts to help trouble shoot all sorts of font problems. The flow charts are accompanied not only by step-by-step guidance, but sidebar comment why the method proposed is necessary, when compared to what seem to be simpler alternatives.

Although I find Sharon’s humor less captivating than Scott Kelby’s my favorite techno-comic, Real World Mac OS X Fonts is an easy book to browse or better yet, when facing font problems, read, and implement her sage advice.

Author BIO

Sharon Zardetto Aker has been writing about the Macintosh professionally since 1984. She has authored nearly a thousand articles for Macintosh magazines, starting with articles in the earliest issues of Macworld and the premiere issue of MacUser. Her book writing credits span over 20 books, and include several editions of the best-selling Peachpit compendium The Macintosh Bible, along with The Mac Almanac.

Recommendation

This is an exceptional book, and a great resource. Whether you simply want to make sure your Apple and MS Office fonts behave optimally or you are a heavy user of fonts and need to deal with font collections that support desktop publishing or other advanced layout application — this is a book that you need to have in your references collection

Additional References to read while waiting for your book to arrive:

Apple’s Mac 101: Font Book — http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304764

Get Acquainted with Font Book: Informit.com Mar 16, 2007 By Sharon Zardetto Aker http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.asp?p=705690&rl=1 A sample chapter form the Real World Mac OS X Fonts book.