Font Menus Behaving Badly

[revdlc]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

Anyone understand why some fonts don't show up on the font menus? I have a font (Berkeley) that I use often, but it is nowhere to be found on either the font menu in the menu bar or the font menu that pops down from the formatting toolbar. The fonts do, however, appear on the font menu in the Character window (probably because that menu does not show the appearance of the font??)

Also, the font menu in Word 2004 included at the top the most recently used fonts. Word 2008 doesn't. Is there a way to add that functionality back?

And finally, the Font Collections sub-menu includes another sub-menu called "Windows Office Compatible," which includes, presumably, all the fonts that a Windows user would have available. There are quite a few fonts, but they are in no discernible order, certainly not alphabetical. Even fonts within the same family (like Lucida fonts) are scattered up and down the list, making it less than useful. What's up with that?

Thanks for any help/insight the mactopia community can provide!

 

[John McGhie]

This is going to be a three-part answer

Parts 1 and 2 are "It's a bug".

You have discovered the work-around: display the fonts on a menu that does
not attempt to display a preview.

What we suggest is: Create styles for the fonts you use. Then you never
have to look at the font menus again.

Part 3: "Windows Office Compatible" fonts are fonts that Microsoft has
tested to produce the same appearance on Windows as they do on the Mac.

The fonts supplied with Mac Office 2008 have actually been engineered so
that they look the same on the Mac as their Windows namesakes look on
Windows.

If you are sending documents to PC users, particularly PC users that will
not have large font collections (and that's most of them...) I recommend
that you should try to develop your documents using the Windows Compatible
fonts. Otherwise, you WILL get complaints

The vast majority of Windows users (all 900,000,000 of them...) do not have
ANY fonts that they did not get free with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft
Office Buying "fonts" went out of fashion many years ago on Windows.

There is just no point in sending documents containing Bodoni or Futura or
Mona Lisa to a Windows user. They don't have the fonts, and they will never
notice. Most Windows Office users do not have the authority to install
fonts on their work computers, even if their company would spend the money
to buy them. Which it won't!

Windows Word will silently substitute the closest-looking Windows Office
Compatible font and the Windows user will never know that has happened. If
they click on text you set in Bodoni, Windows Word will say "Bodoni" and
that's what the Windows user will think they are looking at. But Word will
actually slide in something like Cambria or Times New Roman. Without a lot
of technical knowledge, the Windows user won't be able to even find out that
this has happened. They will just complain that the document doesn't look
right

If the appearance of your customer's documents matters to you, send the
Windows Office Compatible fonts, and at least you will then know that you
will see what they will see.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

Anyone understand why some fonts don't show up on the font menus? I have a
font (Berkeley) that I use often, but it is nowhere to be found on either the
font menu in the menu bar or the font menu that pops down from the formatting
toolbar. The fonts do, however, appear on the font menu in the Character
window (probably because that menu does not show the appearance of the font??)

Also, the font menu in Word 2004 included at the top the most recently used
fonts. Word 2008 doesn't. Is there a way to add that functionality back?

And finally, the Font Collections sub-menu includes another sub-menu called
"Windows Office Compatible," which includes, presumably, all the fonts that a
Windows user would have available. There are quite a few fonts, but they are
in no discernible order, certainly not alphabetical. Even fonts within the
same family (like Lucida fonts) are scattered up and down the list, making it
less than useful. What's up with that?

Thanks for any help/insight the mactopia community can provide!

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

And finally, the Font Collections sub-menu includes another sub-menu called "Windows Office Compatible," which includes, presumably, all the fonts that a Windows user would have available. There are quite a few fonts, but they are in no discernible order, certainly not alphabetical. Even fonts within the same family (like Lucida fonts) are scattered up and down the list, making it less than useful. What's up with that?

My Win Office Compatible are alphabetical (Word 2008 12.0.0 on OS
10.4.11 PPC). I think something may be glitched on your machine, though
it could be that the font bugs are different in Leopard than Tiger.
Well, they definitely are different in Leopard (e.g., the ligatures
bug), but I'm not sure this is one of the them that *should* be different.

You could try wiping the Office font cache. Quit all Office programs,
then find:
[username]Libraryreferences:Microsoft:Office 2008:Office Font Cache (12)

Drag it to the desktop, relaunch Word, give it time to rebuild the font
cache, see if it helped. Might not, but should only take a few minutes
to try.