Anyone have a similiar situation? I want to do design work between Macs and PC's....located in two different shops. Are there fonts that work on both OS? Same names? Or one is called 'A' on a PC' the same one is called 'B' on a mac? Otherwise I know there are both available to purchase for either platform....wondering if anyone gives a discount to purchase both at same time?
Thanks ahead of time!
Posted by Bill Cosharek (Member # 1274) on :
I believe there are fonts that work on both platforms, but they have to include certain code from within in order to do so. I'll try to translate but this is new for me too.
For example, a truetype font should work in both if both a Macintosh Roman & a Microsoft Unicode platform are selected when the font was initially created. These are mappings which the keyboard refers to in order to type characters correctly. They also have information fields for licensing & copyright protection.
There is a whole mess of different metrics assignments which can be encoded into the font. But in short, if both the Mac & Mic codes are included then it should work. I think some Letterhead Fonts are encoded that way. You might want to check there.
Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :
Not having any real experience with Macs, I don't know if this would work BUT....CorelDraw 11 will install to either Mac or PC from the same CDs. It also comes with 1000+ fonts in true type and Type 1. I can only assume that Beguiat in the PC version is the same as Benguiat in the mac version. I know that the true type versions are identical in appearance to the Type 1 fonts except that the type 1 fonts are "cleaner" (fewer nodes).
Hope this helps!
Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :
OOps!!!!
[ June 03, 2003, 03:14 PM: Message edited by: Dave Grundy ]
Posted by Doug Allan (Member # 2247) on :
another thought on the subject that may address your needs is that you could run "Virtual PC" on your Mac, so that you could use the same collection of fonts & the same design software as you do on your PC.
I don't know your situation, but if the design work "in 2 different shops" is all done by you, like a business address, & a home office, then the copyright laws should allow you to install the same software & font collection on both machines being used only one at a time. Depending on the design software you may be transporting a security block, but compared to the cost of a second copy of an endless supply of fonts, I thought a copy of virtual PC may be a cost saving option. Remote access to you office computer is another solution that could work, which is what I do from my home office.
Posted by Fred Weiss (Member # 3662) on :
TrueType fonts generated from Type 1 fonts do not have their paths altered or any nodes added. TrueType has gotten a bad reputation due to would be amateur font designers tinkering with and making alternate renamed versions of fonts. This is where the extra nodes comes from.
Mac fonts (either Type 1 or TrueType) will display and print differently from their PC equivalents. This will be noticed in character spacing and kerning as well as line spacing.
Type 1 fonts will also differ from their equivalents in TrueType even on the same platform in the same way as to spacing and kerning.
A number of type foundries adopted a standard called Open Type which provides cross platform compatability. It hasn't been a big success because it requires people to re-buy fonts they may already own.
The best solution we've found is Macromedia Fontographer for Macintosh for doing the best quality regeneration of a font in either Type 1 or TrueType and for either platform.
Posted by Desire Rusovsky (Member # 2876) on :
MacOS X could use directly the PC TTF (TrueType) fonts without any conversion. If you don't have MacOS X, you could use a font converter to have the same fonts on both platforms.
Posted by Philippe JACQUES (Member # 664) on :
YOU DON'T NEED TO CONVERT ANYTHING !
Just use Adobe Illustrator. Use TrueType fonts on the PC side and place a copy of the same fonts (.pfm, .pfb, .ttf) on the Mac (through a network or through a CD or any other compatible media)
Install the latest one in the "Font" folder of this application. Adobe will recognise all those fonts and you will be able to use exactly the same font on both side.
Any Adobe Application load i.e. the fonts placed in the "System->Application Support->Adobe->Fonts folder Illustrator will oad i.e. the font placed in the "Required-Fonts" folder placed in the same folder as the Application itself. at any restart.
This tips works for any TrueType font you could find as free "only for PC" on the web. But care many printing studio could not like this as this could disturb their common use of Type 1 font.
This only works in the Mac way, you cannot put Mac fonts into this folder on the PC side. But sure you could use a font converter.
Don't forget to convert all your fonts to Outline if you intend to save your AI doc to EPS to be printed in another application...
Enjoy your life with signmaking !
Posted by Philippe JACQUES (Member # 664) on :
YOU DON'T NEED TO CONVERT ANYTHING !
Just use Adobe Illustrator. Use TrueType fonts on the PC side and place a copy of the same fonts (.pfm, .pfb, .ttf) on the Mac (through a network or through a CD or any other compatible media)
Install the latest one in the "Font" folder of this application. Adobe will recognise all those fonts and you will be able to use exactly the same font on both side.
Any Adobe Application load i.e. the fonts placed in the "System->Application Support->Adobe->Fonts folder Illustrator will oad i.e. the font placed in the "Required-Fonts" folder placed in the same folder as the Application itself. at any restart.
This tips works for any TrueType font you could find as free "only for PC" on the web. But care many printing studio could not like this as this could disturb their common use of Type 1 font.
This only works in the Mac way, you cannot put Mac fonts into this folder on the PC side. But sure you could use a font converter.
Don't forget to convert all your fonts to Outline if you intend to save your AI doc to EPS to be printed in another application...
Enjoy your life with signmaking !
Posted by Mick samsel (Member # 311) on :
Thanks for the responses.
A couple of questions on things mentioned. What do you mean by a type convertor? Also, is True Type the same as Adobe Post Script fonts? I know I have 2 -3 different 'kinds' of fonts on my Mac...I confess I need to go in to the font folder and jot down their names....Type 1, True Type, etc. Thanks!
Posted by Desire Rusovsky (Member # 2876) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mick samsel: A couple of questions on things mentioned. What do you mean by a type convertor? Also, is True Type the same as Adobe Post Script fonts? I know I have 2 -3 different 'kinds' of fonts on my Mac...I confess I need to go in to the font folder and jot down their names....Type 1, True Type, etc. Thanks!
Hi Mick! A font convertor is an application which converts PC fonts into Mac fonts and vice versa! The one I use is TransType from fontlab. This application is able to convert both TrueType and PostScript fonts. True Type and Type 1 (PostScript) are not the same! With TrueType all the informations needed is in only one file! With Type 1 you need two files with a Mac and three (I believe) with a PC running Windows. Usually Type 1 fonts are better than TrueType fonts because Type 1 fonts have less nodes when vectorized than TrueType fonts.
[ June 05, 2003, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: Desire Rusovsky ]
Posted by Fred Weiss (Member # 3662) on :
This sample is the same font, ITC Kabel Demi, shown converted to outlines and with nodes turned on. the top line is from the original PostScript font and the bottom one is from a TrueType version generated from it using Macromedia Fontographer.
Desire, if you're getting extra nodes generated you may want to look into something beyond FontLab for this procedure. My opinion is that what you stated is simply incorrect.
We regenerate fonts on a regular basis for ourselves and for clients. The software we use does not modify the vectors unless we click on menu commands that will cause such changes. A correctly regenerated font will not have extra nodes (at least if regenerated by Fontographer).
Posted by Philippe JACQUES (Member # 664) on :
Take also a look at the forums on the same website. One is related to the identification of fonts : "http://forums.myfonts.com/FontForums/list.php?f=5
Posted by Arthur Vanson (Member # 2855) on :
Fred,
I think there must be a difference between generating a font from a new Fontographer database file and re-generating a font from an existing TTF or Type 1 font file.
When I generate a ttf file from a virgin *.fog file in Fontographer, extra nodes are added just as Desire says. I've read that this is due to the TTF format being incapable of handling cubic curving, thus the extra nodes. A Type 1 font doesn't suffer the same fate, as seen in the images captured from Fontographer. The left of the image shows an E from the TTF font, the right shows the same E from the Type 1 font. Both were generated from the same *.fog file within minutes of each other without any settings being changed.
Clearly your pictures show that the same is not happening to you. I think this must be because they have already undergone the node adding process. However, this is all speculation on my part and I would be very grateful if you know the reason and would pass it on.
