Beginner Font Question

[mdh]

I was trying to determine if it is installed by MS or Apple or ?

Use Font Book.
Select the Font you're curious about and then select "Show Font Info"
from the preview screen.
Here is the info on the "Palatino" installed on my system (MacOSX
10.4.11, Office X, 2004, 2008 installed):

PostScript name Palatino-Roman
Full name Palatino
Family Palatino
Style Regular
Kind TrueType
Language English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian,
Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
Version 3.8
Location /Library/Fonts/Palatino
Unique name Palatino; 3.8; 2006-02-23
Copyright Copyright © 1991-99, 2006 Apple Computer, Inc. Copyright ©
1991-92 Type Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
Trademark Palatino is a registered trademark of Linotype AG
Enabled Yes
Duplicate No

Matt

 

[Tim Murray]

Location /Library/Fonts/Palatino

In your case, what was the file name?

 

[Norm]

Well, Norm, I think we've all enjoyed the conversations that have followed
your innocent question about Palatino! ;-)

OP back. I enjoyed and learned lots from the last thread so I'm back
with a couple of questions.

I've been trying out Book Antiqua and Constantia. However, I still
prefer Palatino. I like Book Antiqua but the spacing seems different
especially in some lists. And I personally didn't like the
digits/numerals in Constantia.

I assume I'm testing correctly ..... I just have several MS Word docs
and I switch from one font to another.

Question:

Looking at Font Book info, most if not all say "True Type". If I
purchase a Palatino, do I look for a certain type of Palatino?

I'd just keep using Palatino that is on my Mac. Not sure the source of
any of the fonts. But lately in some Word and Excel programs, when I
bold the Palatino some letters look very strange. Not sure what is going
on.

I think that was one of the primary reasons I first asked the question
about whether to stay with Palatino or not. That and the fact that I'm
switching from Office v.X to Office 2008 and also trying out Pages 09 as
an alternative to Office 2008.

Thanks for any additional education/recommendations.

 

[Tim Murray]

Looking at Font Book info, most if not all say "True Type". If I
purchase a Palatino, do I look for a certain type of Palatino?

I'd just keep using Palatino that is on my Mac. Not sure the source of
any of the fonts. But lately in some Word and Excel programs, when I
bold the Palatino some letters look very strange. Not sure what is going
on.

When you say just plain Palatino, those who know fonts generally refer to the
Linotype version of Palatino, distributed by Adobe, in a Type 1 format. Dump
the Palatino shipped with Mac OS for years, with its mix of Type 1 and
TrueType in the same suitcase and no outline files to go with it.

Palatino Std is Adobe's OpenType version. Be aware that if you have documents
using Palatino and you buy Palatino Std, your software will tell you that it
can't find Palatino ... because it's a different name.

Palatino is $100 alone. The best way to get it is to buy Adobe Type Basics,
Type 1 Edition, at
http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-
US&event=displayFontPackage&code=934

It's also $100, but it has all the faces that have been shipped on nearly
all, if not actually all, PostScript printers since the days of the
LaserWriter, plus a few others.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

OK, the magic incantation you are missing is "Unicode" Essentially what
we are talking about is the "street map" that tells the computer where to
find the characters.

Palatino was standard on Macs up to OS 10.3.9, when Apple took it out.

The old version is a code-page font that will give you problems if you use
it in modern applications.

In the new Unicode/OpenType standard, the characters are all assigned
numbers in a long continuous string. That string contains potentially
1,114,111 characters, which should be enough for most folks.

The old way of doing it was to assign "code pages" which each contain 256
characters. The application had to specify font, code page, and character
number to get something on the screen.

The two methods are not compatible, which is why your Palatino looks a bit
odd in Word. Being a modern Unicode application, Word looks in your copy of
Palatino for the character. If it can't find it, it pulls in the character
from the most similar font it has that does contain the character. So you
are getting some characters from different fonts. This issue is endemic in
the old code page system. Unless you know the font well, you can't be sure
which code page certain characters are in (each font contains multiple code
pages). Sadly: the code page for a particular character (glyph) can vary
between the Mac and PC versions of the font. So if you send a document to
Windows, they may see the wrong characters. The other problem is that some
of these fonts are "Type 1" PostScript. Unless they have a real PostScript
printer, the other user may not be able to print the characters at all.
These problems are not as bad as I make them sound, but they're frequent
enough to be annoying.

The cure to all of this is to switch in a Unicode version of the Palatino
font.

If you wanted to do the job properly, you would go buy Adobe's version,
which is an entire font pack and contains the widest range of Unicode values
(and hence: characters). It is very unlikely that any application will have
to go looking for a character it can't find, if you are using the Adobe
version.

However, if funding is a consideration, there are ways to solve this
Both Apple and Microsoft provide a "free" version of Palatino Linotype
Unicode.

The Apple version is in iWork. It appears to be a TrueType CodePage version
from 2006.

The Microsoft version is a beautiful Unicode flavour you will find in
Windows 2000 and later (and for free download on the Internet if you Google
around for it...)

If you happen to be passing a Windows computer with your USB key in your
pocket {grin} distract the user for a moment and hop into the
C:/Windows/Fonts folder. The files you are looking for are "pala.ttf",
palab.ttf, palai.ttf, palabi.ttf.

Grab the one from Windows Vista if you get a chance, it's a more recent
version. Just copy those files into your Fonts folder on the Mac ‹ they'll
work

Of course, if you already have Windows on your Mac, simply copy those files
out of its Fonts folder into the Mac's Font folder (BTW: That's
"legal", in that you already own the font, so you can use it on your Mac...)

Cheers

OP back. I enjoyed and learned lots from the last thread so I'm back
with a couple of questions.

I've been trying out Book Antiqua and Constantia. However, I still
prefer Palatino. I like Book Antiqua but the spacing seems different
especially in some lists. And I personally didn't like the
digits/numerals in Constantia.

I assume I'm testing correctly ..... I just have several MS Word docs
and I switch from one font to another.

Question:

Looking at Font Book info, most if not all say "True Type". If I
purchase a Palatino, do I look for a certain type of Palatino?

I'd just keep using Palatino that is on my Mac. Not sure the source of
any of the fonts. But lately in some Word and Excel programs, when I
bold the Palatino some letters look very strange. Not sure what is going
on.

I think that was one of the primary reasons I first asked the question
about whether to stay with Palatino or not. That and the fact that I'm
switching from Office v.X to Office 2008 and also trying out Pages 09 as
an alternative to Office 2008.

Thanks for any additional education/recommendations.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Norm]

When you say just plain Palatino, those who know fonts generally refer to the
Linotype version of Palatino, distributed by Adobe, in a Type 1 format. Dump
the Palatino shipped with Mac OS for years, with its mix of Type 1 and
TrueType in the same suitcase and no outline files to go with it.

The Font Book app reports the following. It is whatever came with Mac OS
or Microsoft Office or iWork. I've never purchased a font.

PostScript name Palatino-Roman
Full name Palatino
Family Palatino
Style Regular
Kind TrueType
Version 3.8
Location /Library/Fonts/Palatino
Unique name Palatino; 3.8; 2006-02-23
Copyright Copyright (C) 1991-99, 2006 Apple Computer, Inc. Copyright
(C) 1991-92 Type Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
Trademark Palatino is a registered trademark of Linotype AG

Palatino Std is Adobe's OpenType version. Be aware that if you have documents
using Palatino and you buy Palatino Std, your software will tell you that it
can't find Palatino ... because it's a different name.

Then what will happen?

Palatino is $100 alone. The best way to get it is to buy Adobe Type Basics,
Type 1 Edition, at
http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-
US&event=displayFontPackage&code=934

It's also $100, but it has all the faces that have been shipped on nearly
all, if not actually all, PostScript printers since the days of the
LaserWriter, plus a few others.

Thanks for that suggestion. I was looking at Adobe's Palatino Std 1.
Assume that is what you reference. I'll take a look at Type Basics.

Appreciate the help.

 

[Norm]

If you wanted to do the job properly, you would go buy Adobe's version,
which is an entire font pack and contains the widest range of Unicode values
(and hence: characters). It is very unlikely that any application will have
to go looking for a character it can't find, if you are using the Adobe
version.

Got it.

Since, as I've said, I'm a beginner, how does one add another Palatino
and work with the current one? Or do I delete that one first?

However, if funding is a consideration, there are ways to solve this
Both Apple and Microsoft provide a "free" version of Palatino Linotype
Unicode.

The Apple version is in iWork. It appears to be a TrueType CodePage version
from 2006.

Hmmm. It appears that I have the same Palatino (wherever it came from)
now as I did before installing iWork/Pages 09 and Office 2008. Does that
make sense? If so, what is the source of the Palatino?

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Norm]

Thank you. See inline ?s below.

Hi Norm:

It would appear that you have the "latest" version of Palatino on your
system.

What is meant by "latest"?

Yes, on an Apple you can have multiple versions of a font on the system, and
you can even have them all "active" at the same time.

How does one activate and deactivate a font?

And is there a way to determine if the font came from OS X or Microsoft
or ?.

However, this is NOT a good idea, especially if you are a little new to font
management. The issue is that if you have multiple copies active, you need
to carefully choose which one you want to be used in a document.

I think it's easier to simply load only ONE copy of each font ‹ the "best"
one ‹ which saves all the confusion. You can go mad with the complexities
when you are working as a graphics designer and have thousands of fonts...

So if I purchased Adobe's Palatino I would "deactivate" the system
Palatino in some way?

However: Since you have only one version of Palatino on your computer now,
we may have an issue with those documents that are showing wrong characters.

You may need to "reset" the font in each of the problem paragraphs, so it
stops looking for the old version of the font.

To do that, select the paragraph and hit Ctrl + Spacebar. That removes any
font overrides in the document and allows the formatting specified in the
underlying style to come through. The style will pick up the current system
copy of the font (whichever copy you have "active" at the time).

Tried that. Still some words that I bold in MS Word have characters that
aren't really bold. And it doesn't look "good."

The interesting thing is if I open that same document in Pages it looks
just fine in bold.

This can get a little confusing ...

I think I am a little confused.

But I appreciate this help.

Thanks.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

I can answer the question about Activate and deactivate.

You go back to Font book select which Font you want to deactivate.
look down at bottom a button with a check mark on it. Hover over it and
it should say deactivate in message. If so click on it.

its listing will suddenly become gray. Indicate its deactivated.

Now try you document.

If thats the wrong version. Go back again select the deactivated font
this time the message in the tool tip (yellow message you see when you
hover over check mark) should show Activate. Click again, now go to the
other version and select and click check mark again quit the try your
document.

Some one might have to tell you how to remove the font cache for word if
you still have problems.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

What is meant by "latest"?

Don't get too hung up on the details here, they are important only if you
are doing this professionally for a living. The version of the font that
you have is the same one I have: it's the latest one Apple puts out.

How does one activate and deactivate a font?

See Phillip's answer...

And is there a way to determine if the font came from OS X or Microsoft
or ?

In Font Book, click "Show Font File" and then right-click the font file and
choose "Get Info".

So if I purchased Adobe's Palatino I would "deactivate" the system
Palatino in some way?

As Phillip described...

Tried that. Still some words that I bold in MS Word have characters that
aren't really bold. And it doesn't look "good."

Send me a small sample: I need to see exactly what the issue is. The
explanation goes on "forever", and there are several possibilities. The
most likely one is that when the document was created, the characters were
not available in the font that was in use at the time, so Word has
substituted for that font. But I need to see the text.

Send it by email, to this address. Don't try to attach it in here (you
can't!)

The interesting thing is if I open that same document in Pages it looks
just fine in bold.

Yep. It's likely that that document has a reference to an old font in it.
I need to see it to be sure.

I think I am a little confused.

Just be thankful I didn't send you the complete explanation, otherwise you
would be "VERY" confused. The number of possibilities grows exponentially
with font, platform, and time

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Norm]

Tried that. Still some words that I bold in MS Word have characters that
aren't really bold. And it doesn't look "good."

Send me a small sample: I need to see exactly what the issue is. The
explanation goes on "forever", and there are several possibilities. The
most likely one is that when the document was created, the characters were
not available in the font that was in use at the time, so Word has
substituted for that font. But I need to see the text.

Send it by email, to this address. Don't try to attach it in here (you
can't!)

The interesting thing is if I open that same document in Pages it looks
just fine in bold.

Yep. It's likely that that document has a reference to an old font in it.
I need to see it to be sure.[/QUOTE]

Will do.

But there is only one Palatino in the Font Book. But maybe that isn't
the issue..... I'm a beginner as the subject implies.

And if I create a new MS Word or Excel 2008 doc I'm pretty sure the same
thing will happen. I'll try and send some examples.

Just be thankful I didn't send you the complete explanation, otherwise you
would be "VERY" confused. The number of possibilities grows exponentially
with font, platform, and time

Thank you for sparing the few bits of grey matter below the grey.

Appreciate the info.

 

[Tim Murray]

Then what will happen?

It's whatever happens when a font it needs it missing. Depends on the
application.

 

[Tim Murray]

The old version is a code-page font that will give you problems if you use
it in modern applications.

Can you give me an example, other than needing a character that's outside of
its set? Because we have 300 people using modern apps and Type 1 faces to set
magazines and tons of marketing literature. Further, I didn't think Mac Type
1 technology supported multiple code pages in the same face.

 

[John McGhie]

Thanks Norman:

I got your samples and spent an entertaining few minutes reading the raw XML
to see what was happening.

There is, in fact, no formatting change on the words you notice that "look
different".

As I explained in my email to you, that's not uncommon on a modern computer
that uses "text smoothing" to make the text look more natural. The text
smoothing fiddles with the colour and brightness of individual pixels to
fool the eye into "seeing" a crisper picture than the display can actually
produce.

I guess eyes as old as ours (I am an old fart, too...) are harder to fool
Every now and then, we "see things". When it happens, have a quick
check to make sure you haven't been drinking... If not, crank the Zoom up
to 500 per cent: the perceived difference will go away.

So the bottom line is: Your fonts are fine, your system is fine, you have
the latest Apple version of Palatino.

It may be that your display has not been calibrated correctly for your
individual room, lighting conditions and eyesight. Here's how to do so:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/colorsync-display/colorsync_1.htm

Hope this helps

Send me a small sample: I need to see exactly what the issue is. The
explanation goes on "forever", and there are several possibilities. The
most likely one is that when the document was created, the characters were
not available in the font that was in use at the time, so Word has
substituted for that font. But I need to see the text.

Send it by email, to this address. Don't try to attach it in here (you
can't!)


Yep. It's likely that that document has a reference to an old font in it.
I need to see it to be sure.

Will do.

But there is only one Palatino in the Font Book. But maybe that isn't
the issue..... I'm a beginner as the subject implies.

And if I create a new MS Word or Excel 2008 doc I'm pretty sure the same
thing will happen. I'll try and send some examples.

Just be thankful I didn't send you the complete explanation, otherwise you
would be "VERY" confused. The number of possibilities grows exponentially
with font, platform, and time

Thank you for sparing the few bits of grey matter below the grey.

Appreciate the info.[/QUOTE]

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Norm]

So the bottom line is: Your fonts are fine, your system is fine, you have
the latest Apple version of Palatino.

I just need to turn back the clock or get some new eyes.

Thank you very much for the diagnosis.

Very much appreciated

 

[John McGhie]

If you find Arial a little heavy, try Calibri. Calibri is the replacement
for Arial, and I have come to prefer it: it's lighter and more compact, and
very legible on-screen.

Cheers

A lot of people seem to be using Arial - and it's nice clean readable
font.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Norm]

OP back with a follow-up question.

Why does the same document in the same font look differently in MS Word
2008 vs Pages 09? Size and line spacing especially, I think the "font"
itself may be identical.

Thanks with help on this beginner question.

 

[Hylton Boothroyd]

You might also look at Cambria and Calibri, new fonts supplied with Office
2008.

And also available in Office 2004 if you have installed Open XML
Converter to allow you to read, and to some extent create, Office 2008
documents (at least this is so on my Intel MacMini with OS 10.4.11).

A very late comment, but I've only just re-read John's comments, tried
out Cambria and Calibri in two of my templates, liked what I saw, and
added them as an alternative to my set of templates.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

The answer to that is "Because they are different applications".

It is easy to imagine that a Word document is like a photograph, containing
precise information that can display or print in only one way.

It's not. A Word document is a collection of "objects," and each
application that displays it has the right to interpret those objects as it
sees fit.

Microsoft puts a lot of work into attempting to get the interpretation the
same between the Mac and PC versions of Word (which are not the same
application).

Apple makes the rules for Pages, and is free to vary the size of things as
much as it wants in order to serve its own requirements.

If you design your document carefully with cross-platform usage in mind, and
override things to specify measurements like Line Height and Kerning
exactly, you might eventually get a document that looks very similar in Word
and Pages. But if you were then to change printer, all the hard work would
begin again, because the printer driver would supply different measurements
as a starting point for the document.

I hope this helps

OP back with a follow-up question.

Why does the same document in the same font look differently in MS Word
2008 vs Pages 09? Size and line spacing especially, I think the "font"
itself may be identical.

Thanks with help on this beginner question.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Norm]

If you design your document carefully with cross-platform usage in mind, and
override things to specify measurements like Line Height and Kerning
exactly, you might eventually get a document that looks very similar in Word
and Pages. But if you were then to change printer, all the hard work would
begin again, because the printer driver would supply different measurements
as a starting point for the document.

I always thought that font size and line height were consistent. Now I
know better.

I hope this helps

It does.

Thank you very much.