Does Entourage support OpenType fonts?

[Jolly Roger]

Hi folks,

So I downloaded this really nice monospaced font from here:

<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>

Then I ran /Applications/Font Book, chose File > Add Fonts, and
selected the file I downloaded, Inconsolata.otf.

Font Book placed the file into ~/Library/Fonts/Inconsolata.otf

I want to use this font for plain text messages in Entourage.
Unfortunately, while the font does show up in the font menu of a slew
of other programs (all of them, AFAICT), it does *not* show up in the
Entourage font menu. : (

According to the MVP site, Office does indeed look in the ~/Library/Fonts menu:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>

And I've seen various Office version release notes that state that
other applications in Office (Powerpoint, Word) support OTF fonts:

<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14980&vid=167494>

The question is: Does Entourage support OTF fonts?

 

[Jolly Roger]

Ok this isn't making sense.

So just for grins, I quit Entourage, and used FontForge
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FontForge> to generate two TrueType
versions of the font:

Inconsolata.dfont
Inconsolata.ttf

I opened these with Font Book to view them and they appear fine.

I placed them into ~/Library/Fonts.

When I ran Entourage again, I expected to see at least one of them in
the font menu, but neither one is there!

 

[Jolly Roger]

Ok this isn't making sense.

So just for grins, I quit Entourage, and used FontForge
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FontForge> to generate two TrueType
versions of the font:

Inconsolata.dfont
Inconsolata.ttf

I opened these with Font Book to view them and they appear fine.

I placed them into ~/Library/Fonts.

When I ran Entourage again, I expected to see at least one of them in
the font menu, but neither one is there!

Ok I figured out that Entourage does *not* look at the fonts in
~/Library/Fonts. I quit Entourage, moved the OTF font to the
/Library/Fonts folder, and ran Entourage again, and it showed up in the
Entourage font menu.

I suggest adding a note to
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html> stating that
Entourage does not appear to look at fonts installed into
~/Library/Fonts, which is, unfortunately, where Font Book puts them by
default.

 

[Diane]

Jolly,

Where exactly did you get the Inconsolata fonts? What is the exact text you
click on to download the font on the referenced page?

<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>


One other thing. Let's include this thread in the Office newsgroup. There
are several MVPs there that are knowledgeable on general Office questions
that would be able to add to this discussion

--
Diane

-----------------------------------------------------------

Below are three messages from Jolly Roger on fonts:

Hi folks,

So I downloaded this really nice monospaced font from here:

<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>

Then I ran /Applications/Font Book, chose File > Add Fonts, and
selected the file I downloaded, Inconsolata.otf.

Font Book placed the file into ~/Library/Fonts/Inconsolata.otf

I want to use this font for plain text messages in Entourage.
Unfortunately, while the font does show up in the font menu of a slew
of other programs (all of them, AFAICT), it does *not* show up in the
Entourage font menu. : (

According to the MVP site, Office does indeed look in the ~/Library/Fonts
menu:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>

And I've seen various Office version release notes that state that
other applications in Office (Powerpoint, Word) support OTF fonts:

<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14980&vid=167494>

The question is: Does Entourage support OTF fonts?

Ok this isn't making sense.

So just for grins, I quit Entourage, and used FontForge
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FontForge> to generate two TrueType
versions of the font:

Inconsolata.dfont
Inconsolata.ttf

I opened these with Font Book to view them and they appear fine.

I placed them into ~/Library/Fonts.

When I ran Entourage again, I expected to see at least one of them in
the font menu, but neither one is there!

Ok I figured out that Entourage does *not* look at the fonts in
~/Library/Fonts. I quit Entourage, moved the OTF font to the
/Library/Fonts folder, and ran Entourage again, and it showed up in the
Entourage font menu.

I suggest adding a note to
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html> stating that
Entourage does not appear to look at fonts installed into
~/Library/Fonts, which is, unfortunately, where Font Book puts them by
default.

 

[Jolly Roger]

Where exactly did you get the Inconsolata fonts? What is the exact text you
click on to download the font on the referenced page?

<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>

Click the "OpenType file" link to download the "Inconsolata.otf" font
(it's an OpenType font) to your system. Then use Font Book's File >
Install Fonts menu command to load it and use it.

But as I found out (see my initial posts), any font will do. Entourage
seems to simply ignore any fonts in the user domain
(/Users/*/Library/Fonts/). The only way I found to get the font to show
up in Entourage was to move it to the local domain (/Library/Fonts/).

One other thing. Let's include this thread in the Office newsgroup. There
are several MVPs there that are knowledgeable on general Office questions
that would be able to add to this discussion

Fine by me!

 

[Diane]

Click the "OpenType file" link to download the "Inconsolata.otf" font
(it's an OpenType font) to your system. Then use Font Book's File >
Install Fonts menu command to load it and use it.

It's opening a page with the text showing. How do you get this to download
as a file?

 

[Jolly Roger]

It's opening a page with the text showing. How do you get this to download
as a file?

Right-click it and choose Download Linked File (Safari) or Save Link As
(Firefox) to download it to your hard disk.

Note that Safari, stupidly, gives it the .txt extension, which you will
need to remove before using the font.

 

[William Smith]

On 2007-09-11 10:05:21 -0500, Jolly Roger <[email protected]> said:

Ok I figured out that Entourage does *not* look at the fonts in
~/Library/Fonts. I quit Entourage, moved the OTF font to the
/Library/Fonts folder, and ran Entourage again, and it showed up in the
Entourage font menu.

I suggest adding a note to
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html> stating that
Entourage does not appear to look at fonts installed into
~/Library/Fonts, which is, unfortunately, where Font Book puts them by
default.

Hi JR!

Entourage should use all system fonts locations. I'm not really sure if
it can discriminate since it should be the Mac OS passing along the font
information.

Did you restart your machine to update your font caches? Did you try a
font cache cleaner yet?

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Jolly Roger]

Entourage should use all system fonts locations. I'm not really sure if
it can discriminate since it should be the Mac OS passing along the
font information.

I'm not so sure about that. Like I said, other applications saw the
font just fine - Entourage wouldn't see it until I moved it out of my
home folder into the local domain /Library/Fonts folder.

Did you restart your machine to update your font caches? Did you try a
font cache cleaner yet?

No. To tell you the truth, once I figured out that Entourage saw the
font in /Library/Fonts, I left it there and went about my business. ; )

--
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JR

 

[William Smith]

No. To tell you the truth, once I figured out that Entourage saw the
font in /Library/Fonts, I left it there and went about my business. ; )

Just like me. If it works, it works. ;-)

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>