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l008com · May 5, 2010, 07:01 PM

I gots a font problem. We have a server full (not literally) of fonts. Some are newer ttf fonts. But lots are really old fonts. Font's from the early 90's that Font Book does not recognize. Is there some tool out there that can convert all these older font files into modern font files? If so, I could convert every font on the server and easily erase all of our font files all at once.

besson3c · May 5, 2010, 08:30 PM

fontforge and fondu are great open source tools that I use for this sort of font conversion all the time. If you can make one of these available for me I can give the conversion a try so that you can know whether to go down this path...

l008com · May 5, 2010, 08:34 PM

I don't have access right now. I downloaded FontForge, I'll check it out tomorrow and see what's up.

olePigeon · May 5, 2010, 09:00 PM

FontForge is pretty quirky, but it has one of the coolest features that no other font program has: It can extract fonts from PDFs. This has been immeasurably useful for the occasional PDF I'm sent, but the person doesn't have the font they used, and I need to make changes.

l008com · May 5, 2010, 09:02 PM

Can it convert Adobe postscript fonts from 1991, that OS X doesn't even recognize as a font file?

besson3c · May 5, 2010, 10:46 PM

You should be able to, yeah.

You'll need to install X11 to use FontForge though, you can grab that installer from Macosforge.

Thorzdad · May 6, 2010, 06:36 AM

If OS X isn't recognizing a Postscript font file (I assume you mean FontBook isn't seeing the font), you may only have the display (bitmap) files for the PS1 fonts. If that's all you have, I doubt you're going to be able to get usable font conversions.

andi*pandi · May 6, 2010, 07:50 AM

I have adobe postscript font files that old, that OSX recognizes... so I'd say Thorzdad may be right here.

Though I am filing away those converter apps for future reference, thanks Besson!

l008com · May 6, 2010, 07:52 AM

I'm pretty sure they are not bitmap font files, others have used the fonts in the past. I'll just have to see what happens once I get my hands on a few.

Thorzdad · May 6, 2010, 08:01 AM

One thing to remember about the PS1 files...the bitmap suitcases and the vector/hinting files are sometime not together on the server, due to the way they are named. Also, a single font family can have a number of different suitcases and PS files. My install of the PS version of the Univers family, for instance, has 22 PS files and 3 bitmap suitcases. To convert the entire family, or use them on a different computer, you would need all of these.

Also...While the bitmap files are usable by applications such as Word and Powerpoint, properly converting the font will still require all the font files.

l008com · 08:15 AM

OK I just got some of the fonts. I'm able to open them in FontForge but how do I save them as a different kind of file? Right now this first bunch I was having trouble with are .otf files (os x does see these ones)

l008com · May 6, 2010, 08:12 AM

Soooo FontForge only seems like it can open files that OS X already recognizes as fonts. Files that have no extension, that OS X doesn't know what to do with... FontForge also cannot open.

And among the ones that FontForge can open, one of the problems is that every style shows up as "Regular". So of this font, there are 6 regulars but one is bold, one is italic, etc etc. But when you open an Adobe program, there is only one regular. Like it picks the first one and ignores the rest. But when I open those fonts in FontForge, they all have real meaningful names for the fonts and styles etc. Not sure what is going on with all this?

Thorzdad · May 6, 2010, 08:14 AM

OTC? That's not a font format that I am familiar with. Are you sure they aren't OTF?
The only reference for an OTC file I can find is for an Open Office template file, not a font.

l008com · May 6, 2010, 08:15 AM

typo

Thorzdad · May 6, 2010, 08:24 AM

Gotcha.
In that case (OTF) those are Open Type files and OS X can see them perfectly. I have hundreds of OTF files on my Mac. The problem with your description, though, is your saying the files are from the 90's. OTF is a relatively new file format, certainly newer than TTF. OS X has had native support for OTF since day-1. If your install of OS X can't recognize OTF fonts, I'd say they are corrupted somehow.

besson3c · May 6, 2010, 08:28 AM

FontForge will not be able to handle font suitcases, this is where Fondu comes in. Once you run Fondu on the font you can open up this file in FontForge and save this as an OTF/TTF.

What happens when you run "file /path/to/font/file" in your Terminal? The data type of these fonts should be listed there. If it is listed as unknown, it is possible that the embedded information about the file was stripped out, perhaps lost in a resource fork that got transferred to another non-Mac machine or something? As long as the file is not zero bytes long you might have to experiment with assigning it to different file types if the file type is still unknown.

If it is listed as an empty file but the file is usable in the Finder, there is probably some old dual fork stuff that is unrecognized via the Unix subsystem, in which case the above paragraph is of no use to you

l008com · May 6, 2010, 08:34 AM

Like I said, the problem with the otf files isn't that OS X won't see them. It's that it sees every face as Regular. Bold is Regular. Italic is Regular. Regular is Regular.

The "unix file" fonts are a different story. I guess i'll download Fondu and see what happens. There isn't any easier programs to deal with this? Even something commercial? But that can convert ALL of these files, with a nice mac-like GUI? Note that I'm finding the solution, but it will be the graphics people that actually implement it.

besson3c · May 6, 2010, 08:35 AM

Do they show up as zero bytes? I've had lots of fonts sent to me that appear this way due to dual fork HFS junk...

l008com · May 6, 2010, 08:46 AM

Yep the unix files are 0 bytes. They lived on a PC server and were copied to a Mac to be used... so I'm assuming the data was lost when they were first written to the PC server right? Windows has no support for resource forks?

So that settles that problem. The problem I have now is just otf's that are all "Regular"

besson3c · May 6, 2010, 09:01 AM

Correct, I've never been able to salvage a font file that the Finder identifies as being zero bytes.

l008com · May 6, 2010, 09:14 AM

Here's a little visualization of my .otf problem. I'm not saying it's ALL .otfs. Just a bunch of specific ones I have here.

Each "Regular" is a totally different face of the font. However:

Photoshop doesn't let me pick between the different faces.

Thorzdad · May 6, 2010, 09:25 AM

Weird. What are the actual names of the font files on your Mac? Are they clearly named Bold, Regular, Italic, etc.? You might try deleting them from FontBook, then re-installing them individually.
Font issues can be a pain, as you can see.

l008com · May 6, 2010, 10:11 AM

The files have real names. Here's a look at the font info from FontForge. The weight is Regular but why isn't the "human name" used?