Font Panels | Designers Guide to Mac OS X Tiger

Thanks to the advent of the OpenType format, there can be more characters in a font than you can access from your keyboard, which is why Mac OS X includes a Font panel. Any Mac OS X application that lets you enter text into a document has access to Mac OS X's Font panel, where you can choose the specific character you want to use. Design applications like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress include their own version of Mac OS X's Font panel.

Mac OS X

Most Mac OS X applications offer access to the Font panel (Figure 2.7) from the Format menu. For example, in TextEdit, choose Format > Font. Mac OS X's standard keyboard shortcut to open the Font panel is Command-T. Some applications, such as Microsoft Word, break this rule. Word, for example, uses the Command-D keyboard shortcut to open its own version of the Font panel.

Figure 2.7. Mac OS X's Font panel lets you search for installed fonts and preview type before using a font, and it also lets you select the fonts you use in your documents.

You can also preview your type styles in the Font panel.

1.	Click the Action button in the bottom left corner of the Font panel.
2.	Choose Show Preview from the pop-up menu.

If you want to search for a specific font by name, use the Search field at the bottom of the Font panel. Your search results appear just above the Search field. Selecting a font makes it the active font. If you highlight text in your document and then choose a font in the Font panel, your selected text changes to match your font choice.

If you need to enter a specific character, you can open Mac OS X's Character Palette (Figure 2.8) from the Font panel.

Click the Action button in the bottom left corner of the Font panel.

Choose Characters from the pop-up menu.

Figure 2.8. The Character Palette lets you find individual glyphs in a font. Some glyphs are available only though utilities like the Character Palette.

The Character Palette shows every character, or glyph, that a specific font contains. If you want to find the Euro symbol, for example, here's what to do:

1.	Choose Currency Symbols from the category list.
2.	Click the Euro symbol.
3.	Choose "Containing selected character" from the Collections pop-up menu.
4.	The Collections pane shows every Euro symbol from all of the currently active fonts on your Mac. In most applications, the character shows up in your document as soon as you click it to select it. In some applications, however, you need to click the Insert button.

If there is a symbol or character you use all the time, add it to your Favorites (Figure 2.9) so that you don't have to search for it all the time.

Find the character you want in the Character Palette.

Click the Action button in the lower left corner of the palette.

Choose Add to Favorites.

Figure 2.9. The Favorites pane in the Character Palette stores glyphs that you use all the time. It's a great place to hold special characters that require hard-to-remember keyboard combinations to produce.

To use a favorite character, do this:

1.	Click the Favorites tab.
2.	Select the character you want to add to your document.
3.	Click the Insert button.

I use the Character Palette's Favorites to store glyphs I use but can't remember the keyboard combinations for. I keep the trademark symbol, copyright symbol, and command symbol here, along with several others.

InDesign

Adobe InDesign includes its own palette for selecting glyphs (Figure 2.10). You can find it under Type > Glyphs. By default, it shows every character in a font, but you can use the Show pop-up menu to choose a subset instead. For example, if you want to look at Avant Garde Pro's stylized alternate characters, choose Stylistic Alternates.

Figure 2.10. InDesign's Glyphs palette gives you access to every single character in a font, including glyphs that otherwise are inaccessible.

The Glyphs palette always defaults to Times. To use a different font, select it from the font pop-up menu in the lower left corner of the Glyphs palette. Next to the font pop-up menu is the style pop-up menu. From here you can choose the font style you want to display. For example, if I want to look at the glyphs for Avant Garde Gothic Pro Book, here's what I do:

1.	Choose your font from the font pop-up menu. In this case, I'll choose ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro.
2.	Choose the font style from the style pop-up menu. Since I want to see the regular typeface, I'll choose Book.

Once you find the glyph you need, double-click it to add it to your document.

Tip

If the InDesign or QuarkXPress Glyphs palette is too small and difficult to see, just click and drag the lower right corner to resize it.

QuarkXPress 7

QuarkXPress 6.5 and earlier versions offer only limited access to the glyphs in OpenType fonts, so we'll talk about QuarkXPress 7 instead. It offers full OpenType support, just like the Adobe Creative Suite applications. To open the QuarkXPress Glyphs palette (Figure 2.11), choose Window > Glyphs.

Figure 2.11. The QuarkXPress 7 Glyphs palette is very similar to InDesign's. It also lets you use characters that can't be generated from keyboard combinations.

The Glyphs palette in QuarkXPress 7 shows your currently selected font, but you can change that by using the font pop-up menu at the top of the palette. Just below that sits the style pop-up menu. The default shows the entire font, but you can choose a subset the way you can in InDesign. Also as in InDesign, double-clicking a glyph adds it to your document.