Comments on: Fonts 101: A Font Primer

By: Jonas Smithson

Jonas Smithson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:26:48 +0000

In Mac OSX Finder, in list view, how should I distinguish between TrueType files and the bitmap (screen) files associated with PS Type 1 fonts? They both appear with an icon that says “FFIL” and are both identified in the Kind column as “Font suitcase”. Currently I guess which are the PostScript screen fonts because I see similarly named PS outline files adjacent to them in the list, but is there a more precise way to tell the two kinds of files apart?

By: Weldon Dodd

Weldon Dodd — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:01:18 +0000

Hard to know exactly what the printer is asking for, but is the writing in your PDF file an image or is it selectable text? If it’s an image, then they want you to redo the layout with actual text so they can get a better print on the canvas totebags. If the writing is already text, then they want you to change the font used to something that they can work with.

By: Bev

Bev — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:39:55 +0000

I stumbled on this posting researching how to fulfill a request by a printer to resend a graphic with the text in “outline font.” As a novice, I’m a bit confused as to my options since I thought a PDF would serve the purpose for this job. Can someone tell me what they mean by outline font for printing a job (graphic and text onto canvas totebags) and my font options for reformatting the text on a MAC. Thanks for the font lesson!

By: The OS X-files » Whip your Fonts into Shape

The OS X-files » Whip your Fonts into Shape — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:48:13 +0000

[...] Fonts 101: A Font Primer [...]

By: Tales of a Minnesota Geek » Blog Archive » links for 2009-03-16

Tales of a Minnesota Geek » Blog Archive » links for 2009-03-16 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:04:39 +0000

[...] Fonts 101: A Font Primer – TheAppleBlog (tags: macosx fonts) Post a Comment [...]

By: Weldon Dodd

Weldon Dodd — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:23:04 +0000

@harold – thanks for chiming in! I had a really hard time keeping the word count reasonable on this one, as you noticed. Thanks for adding to the discussion with the details on OpenType flavors. I didn’t know that about how some Windows programs only support the TrueType flavor of OpenType. I hope you will come back and comment on the rest of the series.

@jbelkin – Absolutely. That sentence about organizing Office fonts should not be read as an open license to just jump in and start moving fonts around. Anyone who wants to do so should really pick up Sharon Zardetto’s e-book. It provides step-by-step instructions for Microsoft Word fonts.

@sandbaggerone – Thanks! I hope you’ll come back.

By: sandbaggerone

sandbaggerone — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:01:04 +0000

Great post. Looking forward to the rest of this series.

By: Tuesday Morning News - MacTalk Forums

Tuesday Morning News - MacTalk Forums — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:43:00 +0000

[...] new Time Capsule. Same as the old one, just with two radios now and a guest network feature. Yup. The Apple Blog gives us a quick introduction to the types of fonts around. If it aint OpenType, I don’t wanna know about it. Do you like crosswords? Well hot damn, you’ll [...]

By: jbelkin

jbelkin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:08:00 +0000

You should point out to people that as much as you would like to clean up MS typefaces/fonts from MS Office – DO NOT move them. Ms apps will stupidly break even if you do NOT use the font – it needs it for some stupid reason that is MS.

By: Harold

Harold — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:28:17 +0000

You may have (intentionally) overlooked the fact that the opentype specification allows for opentype to be based on either postscript outlines or truetype outlines (referred to as “flavors”). Postscript-flavored opentype fonts have an otf extension. Truetype-flavored opentype fonts have a ttf extension which makes them extremely difficult to distinguish from a plain old truetype font. The Mac OS provides no visual or written distinction between the old ttf fonts and new truetype-flavored opentype fonts. It reads them both as “Win Truetype” fonts. This causes many Mac graphics people to freak.

There are subtle pros and cons to each “flavor” of opentype (otf and ttf) however they both work equally well for Mac OS X users. Truetype-flavored opentype offers compatibility with some Win programs that do not support postscript or postscript-flavored opentype.

This might seem too esoteric for general publication but as tech support employee for a major font distributor, I can assure you that much confusion surrounds this particular issue. Other than this oversight, you’ve done a good job (so far :)