Fonts and OS X: Displaying "graphic" fonts; "Opening" font files in Finder; Displaying PostScript fonts

An trio of tips and queries regarding fonts in Mac OS X:

Displaying "graphic" fonts in Cocoa applications For several weeks now, we have been a bit mystified by the fact that we could not select nor display graphic fonts (e.g., Symbol, Wingdings, Webdings, Zapf Dingbats) via the Font Panel in TextEdit (and other Cocoa applications). Coincidentally, we just saw the explanation and solution posted on macosxhints.com and based on this PDF document (OS X Multiple Languages). Essentially, to use these fonts, enable the keyboard layouts for Symbol and Dingbats from Keyboard Menu tab of the International System Preference. To actually use the font, you then need to switch to the desired keyboard layout - either by selecting it from the Keyboard menu or by rotating through the enabled menus by typing Command-Option-Space.

The Keyboard Menu Options includes and option called "Font and keyboard synchronization." This sounds like it is designed to automatically select the appropriate layout when you select the font (e.g., switch to the Symbol layout when you switch to Symbol font). But it apparently has no effect in Cocoa applications. As the article explains, Cocoa apps try to make more intelligent decisions based on how you type. This is not always successful. In any case, we still could not get existing highlighted text in TextEdit to change to the Symbol font by selecting the Symbol font for that text. Changing the layout to Symbol only affected text typed after the change.

This is another one of those areas where Apple needs to improve the interface. Either these graphic fonts should not be listed in the Font Panel unless their matching Keyboard layout is enabled, or selecting them should cause some dialog box to pop up that explains what needs to be done to use them.

Apple KB article 106484 (Mac OS X 10.1: Viewing and Typing Text in Different Languages) has some additional background on this matter.

"Opening" Font files and suitcases in Finder In Mac OS 9, if you double-click a font suitcase, it opens up to display the contents of the suitcase. Similarly, if you double-click and individual font file, it opens up a window showing a sample of what the font looks like. These are Finder functions in OS 9. The Finder in Mac OS X does not do this. And, as far as we have been able to determine, there is no third-party enhancement utility that adds this function back. If you know of one, please send us the info. Thanks.

Update: Jim Dempsey writes: "If you have Suitcase 10 for OSX installed, when you double-click on a font suitcase in the Finder, Suitcase is launched and automatically displays the font."

Displaying PostScript fonts in OS X Our initial understanding was that one of the benefits of Quartz in Mac OS X is that you no longer need a matching bitmap version of a font to display the PostScript printer font version on screen, as could be needed in Mac OS 9. Mac OS X should display the font directly from the printer font file.

As pointed out in this Apple Technical Note: "On Mac OS X, the 'FONT' bitmapped font resources are not supported, although the 'NFNT' bitmapped font resources are supported for QuickDraw applications. Font families consisting entirely of 'NFNT' bitmapped font resources are ignored by non-QuickDraw applications based on Cocoa, Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI), and Multilingual Text Editor (MLTE), and cannot be applied to user interface elements such as menus, windows, and static and editable text controls."

However, a table on the same page suggests that a bitmapped font suitcase is needed to get the PostScript font listed in Font menus. We tested it out. Indeed, without a bitmap version present, the PostScript font would not be listed. Oddly, even with all needed files installed, the added font did not appear in TextEdit's (Cocoa's) Font Panel. We continue to investigate this.

Also note: "PostScript Type 1 Multiple Master fonts are not yet supported on Mac OS X."