Font Foiblesby John Tyler "Using what there is to best advantage almost always means using less than what is available." This is true in many situations, but here Robert Bringhurst, one of Canada's most highly regarded typographers and book designers, is talking about the number of fonts that those new to DTP like to scatter upon a page. Computers have opened the once fairly exclusive club of typography to desktop jockeys who are now put in charge of designing the office newsletter, annual report, or company Christmas card. And because we can load up our computers with hundreds, or thousands, or fancy, funny, and downright frightening typefaces, we can feel the urge to show them off. The Mac, especially, long associated with creative types, has helped along the use and abuse of fonts. Managing your fonts It is not only a concern for aesthetics, though; there is the matter of achieving optimum performance on your Mac. English fonts can be unwieldy in the sheer numbers available, while Japanese fonts -- with their myriad kerning tables and supporting doc uments for kanji, kana, romaji, and alphanumerics -- can be stifling in their overbearing size. So, what do you do if you want to handle Japanese and English fonts practically and pragmatically? You use a font manager. The two most common applications (actually extensions) for the management of fonts are MasterJuggler and Suitcase. Professionals who use a lot of Japanese fonts -- the designers, output centers, and print shops -- generally prefer Suitcase over Master Juggler because it allows them to open pre-defined sets and, on a Japanese system, the dialog box appears in Japanese (although it is an English extension). The release of the new PCI Macs brought a temporary end to that because Suitcase wouldn't work on them. However, version 3 (to be released in Japan by press time) is said to cure the PCI blues. Even though my personal preference is MasterJuggler, I ha ve to admit that it doesn't work well in a Japanese system. To plug, or not to plugIf you don't use either of these managers, you're probably using your Mac as the manual suggests: placing all your fonts into the Font folder within your System folder. While this epitomizes the Mac's Plug-and-Play, hands-off philosophy, it is a poor solution to font management, one that affects both your productivity and your computer's efficiency.If you keep fonts in your system's Font folder, you have by necessity placed them all in individually. That is, you have not grouped the Midashi Gothic faces, including the PostScript version and bitmap version (also known as printer and screen versio ns) into a Midashi Gothic folder within the Font folder. Instead, you have a Midashi face sitting next to a Zapf face sitting next to an ITC Anna face.... This isn't productive because you will find it hard to remember which name represents which face. Your Mac also suffers. The more elements that reside in the System folder, the slower your system will perform. This is true whether we're talking about extensions, startup and shutdown items, or fonts. A large number of fonts in your System folder ca n slow down your machine considerably. If you use a font manager, you streamline the system by placing all your fonts in their own family folder, and all the family folders somewhere else on your hard disk (in a folder called My Fonts, for example). Then, through the font manager, you can open the faces that you want, when you want. This method eases the load on the system, and it allows you to have available all the fonts you own yet "turn off" those you don't need right now. Who needs it? The truth is, though, that most users don't use font managers. In an office where you should only have 10 or 20 typefaces, the font manager is sometimes considered an extra, interfering extension. But if you've got even five extra Japanese fonts residing in your system's Font folder, you may have up to 50MB of data clogging the system. Using a font manager will help you to avoid the potential problems of mixing and not-matching a whole boatload of different fonts while enabling your machine to operate in as efficient a fashion as possible. With a font manager, you have the chance to pile on as many fonts as your machine can handle. Just don't try to show off by using them all on the same page. John Tyler is a Tokyo-based editor, designer, and writer who has been Mac-ing since 1988. He can be reached at jltyler@gol.com, or through his Website at www.fastnet.or.jp/mortal.
Font converters If you work in a cross-platform environment or have to output a page to a TrueType laser printer but have only PostScript fonts, you'll sometimes need to convert your fonts. Converting from Windows to Mac fonts, or from TrueType to PostScript, is as ea sy as trying one of these utility programs. Search an online site such as www.shareware.com or, if you want a commercial font manager, try a search for font companies. Popular font converters include: * Ares FontMonger * ttconvert * PC Font Access (comes with Fontographer 4.0) * Meta Pro * Metamorphosis
MasterJuggler, available from Alsoft, Inc., can be located through any online utility or font area. Suitcase, from Symantec, has just been released in version 3.0 and can be ordered online at www.symantec.com. |