OS 10.3 and Fonts

[RyanPace]

We recently purchased a G5 with OS 10.3. We have always used ATM for our font management on our OS-9 machines. Since no option is available for 10 we bought Suitcase-X1. However, we cannot get the G5 and Suitcase to recognize the majority of fonts we try to install on this machine. We receive hundreds of fonts from our customers all of which work on our OS 9 machines. We do not have installation disks for these fonts they are simply provided on disk for us to output the job. When copied to a customer font folder on the G5 they simply show up as "Font Book" icons (These are postscript fonts/a suitcase and printer font). We open Suitcase and navigate to the folder and the fonts are mostly grayed out and we cannot select them to be installed. We also have a set of several hundred fonts that our repeat customers use. We copied the folder to the G5 and most of the fonts are un-usable. This has all but rendered the new machine useless as we can't get any production done on it.
THis is getting long, Does anyone have any suggestions. I'm losing what little hair I have left daily!

 

[signal49]

I'm on a Quicksilver G4 running Suitcase X1 on Panther and I've only seen that a couple of times.... I think I was able to drag them onto a Set in Suitcase and sort of trick it into installing. Wish I could be of more help.

 

[Claude72]

Hi

I use a G4 with Jaguar and Suitcase 10, and all my fonts are working well on this machine (including some PC TrueType font directly opened by Suitcase!!!). But... I still use an old PM7300 running OS 9 to sort out my font and to check if all the Postscript files have their associated Bitmap files in a valuable suitcase. Infortunately, with OS X, there is no difference between the Postscript and the bitmap icons and its very difficult to do a valuable checking/sorting job.


I'm not sure to understand what you say when you talk about grayed fonts...

First understanding: in an OS X computer, with single user, there are three "Fonts" folders: one in the system: don't touch it, one in the Library folder and one in the User folder: this two last are customisable.
- If you put any font in the "Fonts" folder of the user, this fonts are automatically opened by the system and usable only by the selected user.
- If you put any font in the "Fonts" folder of the Library folder, this fonts are automatically opened by the system and usable by all the users.
The most important thing to know is that all the fonts that are automatically opened by the system, cannot be opened a second time (or closed) by Suitcase!!! So, in the Suitcase's opened-font list they appear "grayed" to show you that this font are open, but they are handled by the system (that was the same with ATM DeLuxe).

Second understanding: as I said above, with OS X, there is no difference between the Postscript and the bitmap icons... but when you try to open a PS1 font with Suitcase, you can select only the Bitmap suitcases, not the Postscript files: that's why the PS files appear grayed. If you see only grayed files in the folders coming from your customers, it's probably because they send you only the PS files: one solution is to check the incoming fonts with an OS 9 computer.

Best regards
Claude

 

[RyanPace]

thanks for the input. Yes I have found that all of the icons are the same with fonts on OSX, this does make it diffucult to tell if the customer has included screen and printer fonts. I do not put ANY fonts in the system font folders. Instead we have created our own company font folder located in the user folder. This folder contains organized sets organized by font type, Serif, san serif etc. We then use suitcase to open these fonts. Putting them in the systems font folder would be a mess as we have thousands and would not want to activate them all. The problem happens when using Suitcase to navigate to this folder and install fonts. I know all parts of the fonts are there as they work fine on our OS 9 machines. The "graying out" happens when using suitcase to look for these fonts. For example all of "univers" would be grayed out and I could not select it in suitcase. The workaround that I have found is to manually drag these fonts onto a suitcase set. This usually works and makes them available to activate. Not sure why suitcase cant see them while navigating, but it appears to be the only workaround we have found.

 

[Claude72]

Hi

In your post, you said:
" Putting them in the systems font folder would be a mess as we have thousands and would not want to activate them all."
Let me explain you something: OS X doesn't works like OS 9. With OS 9 it is possible to put fonts in the font folder of the OS 9, it is not easy to use, but it is possible.
In OS X, the system's fonts folder IS NOT CUSTOMIZABLE. Don't modify this folder, don't add fonts, don't delete fonts.


I remember now, sometimes in the past I got the same trouble as you with Suitcase 10: all the items in the font folder were grayed.
To avoid that problem, I always use another way to open my fonts with suitcase 10: I simply browse the FOLDER containing the font that I want, and I click on the Suitcase's "Select" button... Of course, this way opens all the fonts in the selected folder, but as all my font are sorted out with one folder for each font (containing the screen suitcase and all the associated printer postscript files), that's not a problem.
For example, if I want to open "Univers", I click "Add a font", then in the browser I click successively on the folders "User", "Claude", "Fontes", "QZ", "Univers" and then I click the "Select" button.

If Suitcase really doesn't want to open your font(s), you can also directly drag the folder of the wanted font(s) in the customizable fonts folders of OS X: either in the folder users/yourname/Library/Fonts, or in the folder MacHD/Library/Fonts.
As soon as you have put a font in one of this two particular folders, this font is available in all your open applications, with no need to relaunch them. As soon as you move away a font out of this folders, the font is closed. This way works very well, and sometime I find it easier and faster as Suitcase, but needs that each font is in its own folder, and it's sometimes difficult to remember were to put back the font(s) that you remove... that's why my fonts are sorted out simply in alphabetical order. In fact, with OS X 2, you can manage your fonts easily without Suitcase...: the only use of Suitcase is to allow you creating sets of fonts and to preview the fonts!!! (and to bore the user with some bugs).

Hope it will help you
Claude

 

[RyanPace]

Thanks for the help Claude, I think I am slowly figuring out this whole OSX font thing...
Ryan