Tutorial Title: Font Management in Mac OS X
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Topic Title: Introduction
Fonts are an important part of any project. If you are working on a newsletter, advertisement, or book layout, it’s important to be able to easily find, manage, and render all the fonts you need. Whether you use TrueType or PostScript fonts, as a design and print professional, you’ll really enjoy the font management capabilities built in to Mac OS X.
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Topic Title: Practicing Good Font Management
Mac OS X comes with more than 100 fonts, plus you can add your own. With that many fonts, it can be difficult to find the right one. To find your fonts more easily, you might want to create additional folders for storing them by customer, project, or font type.
Using the Finder to manually organize your fonts is one way to manage them. You can also use the Font Book application built in to Mac OS X or one of many third-party font managers. No matter which tool you use, you will still want to have a strategy for managing your fonts.
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Step-by-Step Section: Practicing Good Font Management
When organizing your fonts, remember the following:
| Remove any fonts you know you will not need (except fonts used by the operating system). This will help you find fonts more quickly. |
| If you use several fonts regularly, store them in separate folders organized by customer or project. |
| When you don’t need a particular set of fonts, remove it from your Fonts folder so that the fonts won’t show up in your applications. |
| Font management applications, such as Font Book, can make it easier to organize your fonts. |
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Tips Section: Practicing Good Font Management
Where your fonts are stored
Mac OS X stores fonts in several locations. If you store your fonts in the Fonts folder in the Library folder in your home folder, only you will have access to them. The Fonts folder located in the Library folder on your hard disk and the Fonts folder located in the System Folder folder are accessible by every user on your Mac, and you’ll be able to use them in any Mac OS X application. In these locations, you can create folders to organize your fonts by project, customer, or the application you use them in.
Fonts required by Mac OS X
Mac OS X stores fonts that are required by the operating system in the Fonts folder contained in the Library folder in the System folder of your hard disk. Fonts in this folder should not be deleted or modified, however, you can disable many of these fonts in Font Book if you have alternate versions of the fonts elsewhere on your Mac. For example, you should always have a copy of Lucida Grande and Helvetica active.
Remove fonts you don’t need
When organizing your fonts, you can delete those you know you will not need to make it easier to find the ones that you use regularly. As you install applications, you might find that some of them install their own fonts. Removing the ones you don’t need will help keep your Font menu uncluttered, making it easy to find the font you want. In Mac OS X, you can safely remove the fonts in the Fonts folder found in the Library folder on your hard disk as well as the fonts stored in the Library folder in your home folder without affecting the system.
Classic fonts
Fonts used by Classic applications are found in the Fonts folder in the folder named System Folder. There are five fonts that are required by the Classic environment: Charcoal, Chicago, Geneva, Monaco, and New York. Any other fonts that you need for Classic applications should go in this folder. Mac OS X applications will also use fonts used by Classic applications, so you don’t need to store the same font in multiple locations.
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Topic Title: Incorporating Font Book Into Your Workflow
Font Book is the built-in font management tool for Mac OS X. Font Book allows you to install fonts in specific folders without having to know the path to the folders. With Font Book you can create sets of fonts, disable and enable fonts as needed, and control access to fonts by storing them in the User collection. If you disable a font in Font Book, that font will not be listed in any application that helps in manage your font lists and dialogs.
In addition to being easy to use, Font Book allows you to preview fonts so that you will always know what a font looks like before you use it. Font Book also allows you to preview your own text so there will be no guess work when it comes to what a word, sentence, or paragraph will look like in a particular typeface.
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Step-by-Step Section: Incorporating Font Book Into Your Workflow
Use Font Book to view your fonts by following these steps:
| 1: From the Go menu, choose Applications and then double-click the Font Book icon to open the Font Book application. |
| 2: n the Collection column, click the disclosure triangle to the left of All Fonts. |
| 3: Click each of the items and notice the different fonts that are stored in each category. |
| 4: Click a font in the Font column. Notice that a preview of the font appears in the column on the right. |
| 5: In the Font column, hold your pointer over the font. Notice that a help tag appears, letting you know the name of the font and how many typefaces it has. |
| 6: Find a font with multiple typefaces, and then click the disclosure triangle to the left of the font. |
| 7: Click the different typefaces to preview them. |
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Tips Section: Incorporating Font Book Into Your Workflow
Enable and disable fonts
The first time you use Font Book, every font you see will be enabled. To disable a font, simply click the Disable button below the list of fonts. If you want to disable an entire collection, select the collection and then click the Disable button below the list of collections. By default, disabling a collection does not disable the fonts in a collection. From the Font Book menu, choose Preferences and then select “all fonts in the collection” if you want to disable all the fonts in a collection when disabling the collection.
Find out where a font is located
When using Font Book, you may want to know where a font is installed on your hard disk. If you hold your pointer over a particular font typeface, you can see the Font folder in which the font is located. This can be useful if you have multiple fonts with the same name and you want to make sure you are using a specific one.
Resolve duplicate fonts
If you have multiple fonts with the same name, you will see a bullet next to the font in Font Book. You can choose to have Font Book resolve the duplicate fonts or you can manually disable or delete any duplicate fonts. This can be useful if you want to be sure you are using a specific version of a font in your documents.
Preview your text
When previewing a font, you can see how a specific word or phrase will look in that font by going to the Preview menu and choosing Custom. In the preview pane of Font Book, type the text you want to preview and it will be displayed for you. Use the slider on the right side of the preview pane to adjust the size of the font.
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Topic Title: Adding Your Fonts To Font Book
With Font Book, it’s easy to add more fonts to your existing collection. If you upgraded from Mac OS 9, your fonts are already in Font Book. If you have a set of fonts on a CD or another computer, simply double-click the fonts you want to add to Font Book or drag an entire folder of fonts into Font Book to add them.
Using Font Book to manage your font collection gives you a central location in which to find the fonts that are installed and enabled on your Mac. Limiting the number of enabled fonts allows you to find just the one you want in any application.
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Step-by-Step Section: Adding Your Fonts To Font Book
Add a font to Font Book and then make the font available to Classic applications by following these steps:
| 1: Find a font that you want to add to your font collection. |
| 2: Double-click the font file. |
| 3: In the window that appears, notice a preview of the font is displayed. |
| 4: Click Install Font to add the font to Font Book. |
| 5: Select the font in the list of fonts, and then drag it to the Classic Mac OS X item in the left column. |
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Tips Section: Adding Your Fonts To Font Book
Where fonts are added in Font Book
By default, any fonts you add to Font Book are added to the User collection. If you want others to be able to access these fonts, or if you need them for a Classic application, simply move the font to the appropriate collection. If you want all the fonts you add to Font Book to automatically be available to all users or Classic applications, open Font Book Preferences and select one of the “Installing fonts makes them available” options.
Use the Finder to manually add a font
If you don’t use Font Book to manage your fonts, you can drag any new fonts to one of the Fonts folders on your hard disk. Once the fonts are in the appropriate folder, they can be used by any Mac OS X application.
If you want to use third-party font management tools
There are several third-party font management tools that function similarly to Font Book. Some third-party font management tools even have additional features that will allow you to automatically activate fonts for creative applications, such as QuarkXPress or Adobe Photoshop, and preview multiple fonts side by side.
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Topic Title: Organizing Your Fonts in Font Book
With so many fonts on your computer, you may want a specific group for specific projects or clients to make the one you want easier to find.
With Font Book you can create collections of fonts based on any criteria that suits your needs. For example, you can quickly add groups of fonts to a collection for a project, create the documents for the project, and then disable or delete the fonts when you don’t need them anymore.
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Step-by-Step Section: Organizing Your Fonts in Font Book
Create a new collection of fonts by following these steps:
| 1: In Font Book, click the Add button in the lower-left corner. |
| 2: Type a name for the new font collection. |
| 3: Select the All Fonts Collection, and then hold down the Command key to select several fonts from the Font column. |
| 4: Drag the selected fonts to the collection you created. |
| 5: Select the collection you created to view the fonts you added to it. |
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Tips Section: Organizing Your Fonts in Font Book
The default font collections in Font Book
Font Book comes with several collections you can use to organize your fonts. You can easily remove or rename any of these collections without deleting the fonts in them from your computer. Think of these collections as a starting point for organizing your fonts.
Fonts for Classic applications
By selecting the Classic Mac OS collection, you can quickly view which fonts are available to Classic applications. If you add or remove a font used by a Classic application, you will need to restart the Classic environment before the changes to the available fonts will take effect.
Use the Search field to find fonts
If you can’t find the the font you are looking for, begin typing its name in the Search field. Font Book will display the matching fonts. Font Book will search only in the selected collection, so if you want to search all fonts, make sure you have the All Fonts collection selected.
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Topic Title: Using Fonts in Your Applications
Different clients and different projects require different fonts. And with a tight deadline schedule, finding the right font quickly is important. With Mac OS X, you can use either Font Book or a third-party font manager to organize your fonts. Either way, Mac OS X makes it easy to find just the right font within your applications.
Many Mac OS X applications use the Font panel to give you quick access to your fonts. The Font panel works with Font Book, so you can view all your fonts by the collections you have created, and you will see only the fonts that are enabled. The Font panel also allows you to use font effects and special characters in your documents.
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Step-by-Step Section: Using Fonts in Your Applications
Use the Font panel to add special characters to your document by following these steps:
| 1: From the Go menu, choose Applications and then double-click the TextEdit icon to open the TextEdit application. |
| 2: From the Format menu, choose Font and then choose Show Fonts from the menu that appears. |
| 3: Click the Action button in the lower-left corner, and then choose Characters. |
| 4: Select a character and then click Insert to add the character to your document. |
| 5: To view more information about the character, click the disclosure triangles to the left of Character Info and Font Variation. |
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Tips Section: Using Fonts in Your Applications
Add font effects
The Font panel allows you to add effects, such as underline, strikethrough, and shadows, to the text in your documents. Simply select some text, open the Font panel, and then choose the effects you want to apply.
Preview fonts
With the Font panel, you can preview fonts as you select them. This way, you can see what the font looks like before changing it in your document. To show the preview area in the Font panel, click the Action button in the lower-left corner and then choose Show Preview from the menu that appears.
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