by James Klann | Twitter.com/thefndtn
Fonts… you know them, you love them, and sometimes you even hate them. They’re those pesky little files that designers can’t live without, but can cause havoc with Mac OS X. Since the introduction of OS X, back in the halcyon days of 2001, fonts have been a thorn in designers’ sides, making life more difficult that it honestly needed to be on the Mac. For those that are somewhat new to our fair platform, here’s a quick primer on fonts on Macs and how Extensis Font Doctor and other apps can help.
With the advent of OS X, Apple introduced the OpenType font class to their system. Prior to that it was just TrueType and PostScript Type 1. TrueType was developed by Apple back in 1985, as a competitor to Adobe’s Type 1 format. Not appreciating being left out of the party, Microsoft joined in and created OpenType in 1994, intending it to replace both TrueType and Postscript fonts. In 1996 Adobe, sided with MS and by the early aughts Apple finally came on board. The beauty of Opentype fonts is that it simplifies things in that they’re cross-platform compatible and can be used on virtually any platform (Mac, Windows Unix) without modification.
Depending on who and what needs to access the fonts, the files are stored in 3 to 4 places: System/Library/Fonts, Library/Fonts, ~/Library/Fonts and Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts. Items in the System Library are utilized by the Mac OS. Files in Library Fonts are accessible by all users that have accounts on the machine. Fonts that are stored in ~/Library/Fonts are only available to that specific user. Finally, items placed in Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts are only accessible to the Adobe applications.
Like any file, fonts can get corrupted over time, which can result in applications crashing, machines locking up, files not printing and a myriad of other issues. To complicate matters, OS X and the certain applications that use fonts (the Adobe Creative Suite, Quark, MS Office to name a few) create font cache files which can become damaged as well, resulting in similar issues specific to those applications.
So what’s a person to do? Well, first and foremost, clean up the fonts you currently have. Extensis Font Doctor is a great utility that will update font resources for OS X, resolve duplicates and let you know if the files you have pass muster. It’s fairly inexpensive and it also comes free with a purchase of Suitcase Fusion or the Universal Type Server.
Once the fonts have been vetted, you’ll want to a font manager of some sort. Apple’s Font Book is okay but I find it to be a bit cumbersome and problematic. For the home user or designer with very few fonts it’ll get the job done. Unfortunately for those that have an extremely large Font library or have purchased the Adobe Font Folio, you’ll want a more robust app. If you’re an independent designer or are part of a smaller workgroup, Linotype FontExplorer X and Suitcase Fusion 2 are both excellent choices. They support auto-activation and allow for fonts to be enabled on the fly, without having to reboot the system or log out of your user account. Finally, for those of you that are part of a larger workgroup and need to ensure all designers have access to the exact same fonts, Extensis’ Universal Type Server is what you want. It has a cross-platform server application that stores the fonts you upload to it. The server then interacts with the UTS client, which is installed on each design station.
So there you have it, a primer on the sometimes overwhelming world of fonts. Hope it helps you, our fearless readers, as you go forth and do what you do best: create and design amazing things. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at (612) 465-0700. We’ll be more than happy to help you put together the font solution that works for you.
