The price of fonts

Mac OS X boasts far greater versatility when it comes to supporting font formats, but has this greater power come at the expense of simplicity of installation? By Andy Benedek.

Of the many claimed advantages of Mac OS X, those regarding fonts are, to my mind, both valid and demonstrable. Not only does Mac OS X support a much wider range of font formats, but included in those formats are Unicode-based TrueType and OpenType fonts with their extensive character sets and multi-lingual support.

No longer is it necessary to repeatedly change fonts when setting say, the odd Greek or Cyrillic word in English text. Of course, the font in use must have the appropriate Greek or Cyrillic characters within its character set, but with Adobe having converted nearly all its fonts to OpenType format, this is very much less of a problem than it used to be.

Further, the automatic ligature substitution capabilities of OpenType coupled with Mac OS X's multi-lingual support, enable, for example, Arabic and Hebrew with their right-to-left reading direction to be set with ease. Similarly, text can be set in languages with vertical reading directions and extensive character sets, for example Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Most capable

Such are the capabilities of the Macintosh when running Mac OS X that it is now extremely difficult to argue with the statement that, typographically speaking, this configuration of computer and operating system, is the most capable of any desktop computer. Add to this the ability to move documents from the Macintosh to the Microsoft Windows platform without any of the problems that have dogged such moves in the past, and we have the stuff dreams are made of.

And how has this come about? It is because Mac OS X supports both cross-platform OpenType fonts and TrueType fonts created in the Windows format. The very same fonts function on both platforms without amendment.

However, the ecstasy engendered by all this is somewhat tempered by the rather complicated manner in which fonts are installed into Mac OS X. Delve into the intricacies of this task and one is left wondering whether the developers of Mac OS X worked according to the maxim of 'never making things simple when you can make them complex'. Unlike previous versions of the Macintosh's operating system (that is up to Mac OS 9.2.2) in which fonts were installed in a single Fonts folder situated in the System Folder, fonts can be installed in any of a number of different Fonts folders in Mac OS X. The exact number of Fonts folders present, depends upon the particular configuration of the system and the applications installed.

In the case of a Mac running Mac OS X and with Mac OS 9.2.2 present to run Classic applications, there are up to five different font folders to consider. With InDesign installed, there are up to six. Why so many? Well, it is a matter of access. Different font folders have different access privileges.

Classic fonts

When running Classic applications written for Mac OS 9.2.2 the computer is said to be running in Classic mode and the older System Folder is referred to as the Classic System Folder. Fonts can be installed in the Classic fonts folder just as they always could be in the past. Furthermore, Classic fonts, as they are referred to, are available for use by all users and applications whether running under Mac OS X or Mac OS 9.2.2. Fonts can be added to and removed from this folder by any user.

The drawback of installing fonts in the Classic fonts folder is that the newer data fork fonts which Apple has introduced with Mac OS X (with the appendage .dfont) are not usable, nor are Windows formatted TrueType fonts. Only Macintosh formatted PostScript and TrueType fonts are usable with their theoretical maximum of 256 characters.

Of the numerous Fonts folders in Mac OS X, that with the least access to users is the folder in the Library folder inside the System folder (System/Library/Fonts) has the least access. This Fonts folder contains only fonts essential to the correct functioning of the operating system and display. As such, fonts should not be added to, or removed from this folder during the normal usage of the Macintosh and its presence can be safely forgotten. Fonts in this folder are referred to as 'System' fonts.

Fonts accessible to a specific user, and to no one else, are stored in the Users/specific user/Library/Fonts folder. They are referred to as 'User' fonts. A newly installed Mac OS X system has no fonts present in this folder, but they can be added, or removed, only by the specific user. In fact, no one other than the specific user can access or even see this folder and User fonts only become available for use when the specific user has logged on.

Highest level

In the Library folder, at the highest level of the hard disk Mac OS X is installed on, is another Fonts folder containing fonts which can be used by any user who has logged on, but are not available to networked users. Fonts present in this folder are referred to as 'Local' fonts and include all the fonts necessary for multi-lingual support. This folder is where fonts for use with all applications are installed, usually by a administrator.

Fonts in the 'Network' folder, on a Macintosh set up as a file server, are available to all users on the network. This Network folder is not installed on standalone Macintoshes nor on networked Macintoshes configured as 'Clients'. Fonts are normally installed into the Network folder by a network administrator.

In addition to these five font folders, others may be added when applications are installed. Typical of these are Adobe's applications such as InDesign. When using the likes of InDesign, fonts in these folders override other fonts with which they may clash. Such folders, like Mac OS X's System fonts folder, contain only fonts essential to the functioning of the application and as such, should be ignored.

Having so many folders begs the question as to how best to manage fonts. Well, there are two ways. Fonts can either be manually added to, and removed from, the various folders or a font management utility such as Extensis Suitcase can be used.

Convenient groups

In the former case, fonts should be prepared for use by organising them into convenient groups in folders within a folder entitled for, example, 'Inactive Fonts'. They can then be moved to one of the above mentioned Font folders as required by users with appropriate access, whereupon they become immediately active, ie available for use, applications may require restarting in order to update their font menus. It is important to move the fonts, and not aliases of fonts, to the appropriate fonts folder because aliases do not work. In general, single users who run only Mac OS X applications should place fonts in their own specific 'User' fonts folder. Multiple users of a single computer who run only Mac OS X applications should place fonts in the 'Local' fonts folder whilst users of both Classic and Mac OS X applications should place compatible fonts in the 'Classic' fonts folder.

Of the two most popular font managers available, namely MasterJuggler and Suitcase, only the latter has been updated to be compatible with Mac OS X. Suitcase, in being updated, is now an application rather than a system extension and, as such, needs to be up and running all the time in order to activate fonts and maintain their availability.

In use, Suitcase does not work by moving fonts into, and out of, the various fonts folders. Fonts already installed in any of Mac OS X's fonts folders are available for use with access as described above: fonts activated by Suitcase are in addition to those. To activate or deactivate fonts with Suitcase, users simply click on selected individual fonts, families or sets of fonts, in the Suitcase window. The fonts can be situated anywhere on the Macintosh as long as they are accessible.

Suitcase is a very useful utility, even with relatively small font collections: it becomes almost essential for handling large font collections. Mac OS X brings with it the capability for superb typography, much more so than earlier operating systems, coupled with unparalleled multilingual support.

But all this power and versatility comes at a price. Long gone are the days of simplicity. I would wager that if, in 1984, the MacPlus had been introduced with Mac OS X installed instead of System 3.2, it would have been dead in the water. Now computer users are much more sophisticated and, as a result expect much more. As Matthew Carter said at a Monotype Conference in the mid-1980s, words to the effect that "For hundreds of years readers lived without kerning. Now they riot in the streets if an A does not fit snugly under a W". Where will it all end?