Installing and Using Mac OS X FontsMac OS X offers improved fonts and font support as compared to previous versions of the Mac OS. The Quartz Extreme graphics layer renders Mac OS X fonts clearly at any size and makes using special font features such as kerning controls, ligatures, and so on easy. You control fonts within applications using the new Font panel. The Font panel offers several useful features such as the ability to create and use sets of your favorite fonts.
To learn how to work with fonts using the Fonts panel, p. 154. Mac OS X includes a large number of high-quality fonts in the default installation. You can install additional fonts you want to use. You use the new Font Book application to manage the fonts on your Mac. Understanding Mac OS X FontsOne difference between Mac OS X fonts and Mac OS 9 fonts is that in Mac OS 9, fonts contain both a resource and data fork, but in Mac OS X, fonts contain only a data fork. Fonts with the file extension .dfont are single-fork files, meaning all the data for that font is stored in the single fork of its file. This is the native Mac OS X font format. However, under Mac OS X, you can also install and use any of the following types of fonts:
NOTE One advantage of Mac OS X font files being able to provide all their information in a single fork is that these fonts can be shared with operating systems that do not recognize files with resource forks (Windows, Unix, and so on). There are two locations in which fonts are installed under Mac OS X. To make a font available to everyone who uses your Mac, it is installed in the directory Mac OS X/Library/Fonts, where Mac OS X is the name of the your Mac OS X startup volume. Within this directory are at least two types of font files. Those with the filename extension .dfont are the single-fork font files. You will also see fonts whose names do not have a filename extension. NOTE Under Mac OS X, you can install or remove fonts while applications are open; fonts you install instantly become available to the system and any applications you are running. To make a font available only to specific users, it is installed in the following directory: users/shortusername/Library/Fonts. A user's Library directory also contains the FontCollections folder. The FontCollections directory contains the set of font collections available to the user in the Font Book application and the Font pane. NOTE Any user can install fonts into the Fonts folder in the Library folder in her Home directory. If you have fonts installed on a Mac OS 9.2 volume that you want to be able to use with Mac OS X applications, you can use the Font Book to install those fonts so they are available under Mac OS X as well. To make a font available to a Mac OS X application, it must be installed in one of the Mac OS X Font directories; similarly, for a font to be available to Classic applications, it must be installed in the Fonts folder in the Classic startup volume you are using. Configuring Fonts with the Font Book
When you open the Font Book application, you see three panes by default (see Figure 8.11). The Collection pane shows you the font collections on your Mac; collections are a means to gather fonts into groups to make them easier to select and apply. When you work with the Mac OS X Font panel, its fonts are organized by collection. You can use these collections to group fonts into smaller, focused groups to make font selection easier and faster. Many collections are installed by default, and you can create your own collections. The center pane is the Font pane, which shows the fonts that are part of the collection selected in the Collection pane. The right pane of the window is the Preview pane, which shows a preview of the font selected in the Font pane. Figure 8.11. The Font Book application enables you to manage the fonts on your Mac.
To learn how to access fonts you manage with Font Book from within applications, p. 154. Working with Font CollectionsYou can use the default font collections included with Font Book and create your own collections. To view the fonts that are currently part of a collection, select that collection on the Collection list. The fonts it contains are listed on the Fonts pane. You can expand font families shown on the Fonts pane by clicking the Expansion triangle next to that font (see Figure 8.12). Figure 8.12. Here, you can see that I have created a collection called brad's fonts and placed the fonts I use most frequently in it.TIP If a bullet appears next to a font's name, multiple versions of that font are installed. To remove the multiple versions, select the font and select Edit, Resolve Duplicates. This causes Font Book to turn off the duplicate fonts (see Figure 8.12). If you select and expand the All Fonts collection, you see the following three sub-collections:
If you select the All Fonts collection itself, you see all the fonts installed on your Mac, regardless of the sub-collection in which they are stored. Adding a Font CollectionTo add a font collection, do the following steps:
Editing Font CollectionsAfter you have created a collection, you can change it in the following ways:
TIP If you use specific sets of fonts in specific applications, consider creating a font collection for each application and placing the fonts you use within it. Then, you can easily choose fonts from this group by selecting the application's font collection. Configuring the Font Book Using PreferencesUsing its Preferences dialog box, you can configure the following Font Book preferences:
Configuring the Font Book WindowYou can also configure the Font Book window itself in the following ways:
Installing Fonts with the Font BookYou can use the Font Book to install fonts by performing the following steps:
TIP To see where a font is installed, select it and select File, Show Font File (-R). A Finder window opens that shows the file in each location in which it has been installed. |