Fonts 101 What is a Font? In the early days of typesetting, a font was a set of cast metal characters from which text was printed. Each point size and style had its own cast metal fonts. The letters, numbers, and other characters printed from the font composed the typeface — a set of characters sharing a common design. Today the words font, typeface and font family are used interchangeably. All three of these terms mean an actual typeface in all its sizes and styles, such as Geneva in every size and style, Helvetica in every size and style, and so on. The Macintosh knows how to draw the individual characters of a font family in three different ways: Bitmap, PostScript, and TrueType. What are Bitmaps? Fonts designed for screen display or for printing on non-PostScript printers such as the HP DeskWriter are called bitmapped fonts or just bitmaps. Each bitmap is an arrangement of dots (actually pixels or bits). Bitmaps are used to draw characters on the screen. Bitmaps are sometimes called fixed-size fonts, because you need an individual bitmap resource for each size character you want to use. What is PostScript? PostScript fonts are outline fonts--their characters are composed of instructions for forming an outline of each character which is then filled in. The instructions are usually in a programming language called PostScript which was specially developed for this purpose. PostScript characters have no specific point sizes associated with them like bitmaps do. Therefore, if you select the name of a PostScript font from an application's font menu and then select a specific point size, the printer can then draw a character of that size that will look good. What is TrueType? TrueType is Apple Computer's outline font technology introduced with System 7. These fonts are also referred to as variable-size fonts or scalable fonts. TrueType fonts produce smooth characters in any size or style on both the printer and the screen. Unlike PostScript fonts, TrueType fonts are not composed of two. Unlike bitmaps, TrueType fonts do not have specific point sized associated with them. One font file can produce good looking characters on both the screen and the printer. What is Adobe Type Manager? Adobe Type Manager (ATM) is a utility that renders PostScript Type 1 outline fonts smoothly on screen. Technically, Adobe Type Manager is a "PostScript font rasterizer." The rasterizing process involves scaling PostScript outline fonts to the correct size, then converting the mathematical instructions contained in each font program to pixels (for screen display) or to dots for QuickDraw printing on non-PostScript printers. In order for ATM to work, the ATM control panel device, the appropriate driver, outline fonts, and bitmapped fonts must all be correctly loaded on the Macintosh. If any of these files are missing, ATM does not work. Each PostScript font consists of two parts--a screen font and a printer font. The screen font is a bitmapped font that is used to represent the font on screen. Quite often bitmaps in general are referred to as screen fonts. The printer font is the actual set of instructions that get sent to the printer. Adobe Type Manager will display Type 1 PostScript fonts at all sizes without jaggies--the jagged edges around the type. On the Macintosh, ATM is installed in your Control Panels folder of your System Folder. Font File Icon Types Bitmap Suitcase Files A suitcase is a file which contains one or more fonts. A bitmap suitcase file contains images of all the characters in a font so it can appear on the screen. A bitmap file can contain several point sizes of screen fonts for a particular typeface (usually 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24 points). The bitmap suitcase file also contains spacing and kerning information for a font. This information is automatically extracted by an application program when displaying the typeface on screen and printing the font on a printer. Type 1 Postscript® Outline Files Type 1 PostScript outline fonts contains mathematical descriptions of each character in a typeface's character set. ATM can scale Type 1 outline fonts to any point size for on-screen display or to send to a printer. ATM allows rendering of smooth, clean font outlines on the screen, at any size. In conjunction with ATM, you can also print Type 1 fonts on any non-PostScript printer. Type 3 Postscript® Outline Files Type 3 PostScript outline fonts are sometimes referred to as "User Defined" fonts. This format is a very flexible format and has been used by font vendors for many years. A Type 3 font can contain just about anything that can be described in the PostScript language including effects such as color or grayscale fills, stroked path information and complicated composite characters. Type 3 PostScript fonts can be printed by any PostScript printer. TrueType&tm; Suitcase Files Developed by Apple Computer, Inc., the TrueType font format is direct competition for the industry standard Type 1 PostScript format. There are several advantages to the TrueType format. Both character outline information and screen font information are contained in the same document. Clean, sharp screen fonts and output on nearly any imagesetting device are possible without the use of ATM because the typeface rasterizer in build into Macintosh system software version 7.0 and later. TrueType fonts also have the ability to contain large character sets, well beyond the limitations of the 256 character barrier found in standard encoded PostScript typefaces. However, TrueType fonts can only be used on a Macintosh running System 7 or system software version 6.0.7 and the TrueType INIT. Adobe® Font Metrics Files (AFM Files) These files are editable ASCII text files containing width, bounding box, composite element and kern pair data for all characters in a particular font. The AFM file has a standard format developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. for distributing font metric information between different programs and computer platforms. Installing Fonts in System 8.5 Under System 8.5, bitmap fonts, TrueType fonts and PostScript outline files are installed by dragging them into the System Folder. Select the bitmap suitcase file and all of the PostScript outline files in the folder window. Drag the files to the System Folder. A dialog box appears, asking if you want to put the fonts into the System Folder. Click the OK button. Using Fonts The techniques and information presented here can be applied to virtually any Macintosh application that uses fonts. Selecting Fonts After fonts have been installed, they will appear in the font menu of any application you launch. Select a font in the Text or Font menu by dragging the mouse through the font list until you hilite the name of the font you wish to use. Selecting Font Sizes To change the size of any font, select the Size menu from the Text of Font menu of any Macintosh application. Fonts sizes which are installed and may be used are indicated in outline type as seen below. TrueType fonts are available in all sizes. Postscript fonts must have a matching screen font and printer font. Selecting Font Styles Italic and Bold versions of some fonts do not appear in the font menu. Instead, you select the Italic or Bold version in the Style menu. For example, the ITC Garamond family consists of the Light, Light Italic, Book, Book Italic, Bold & Bold Italic fonts. However, only the Light, Book & Bold fonts will appear in the font menu. To access the Light Italic, Book Italic & Bold Italic fonts, you must first select either the Light, Book or Bold fonts and then choose Italic as the style. Fonts that do not have a true Italic version may be italicized, but the resulting font is a low quality, skewed version of the original non-italic font. Special Characters and Accent Marks Fonts contain many characters the do not appear on the Macintosh keyboard. These characters include math symbols, accented characters and other special punctuation. One method of accessing characters that do not appear on the keyboard is to use the Keys Caps desk accessory which comes with System 8.5.