Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

barbarian · Jun 3, 2003, 01:25 PM

Silk 2.0 is so almost there it makes me nuts.

There are a few issues that I was wondering if anyone has found a way around.

One of my big OS X pet peeves is the shadow underneath desktop text. If you turn on custom theme fonts in Silk you can get rid of it which is awesome, BUT (and this is a big but) then you lose the ability to set the finder font size (the standard theme size is used...11 or 12) on the desktop (and in icon view). (Finder font size sort of works in list and column view, but not perfectly). Any way around this?

My nirvana: 9 or 10 point fonts in the finder. No shadows on desktop text.

p.s. In the screenshot thread, I'd love to see some screenshots with alternative fonts...

gthyb · Jun 3, 2003, 02:16 PM

yeah everything seems too bold w/ most fonts.

mediacoop · Jun 3, 2003, 02:48 PM

Originally posted by gthyb:
yeah everything seems too bold w/ most fonts.

try "skia"

perfect in my opinion

Hi I'm Mike · Jun 3, 2003, 02:58 PM

Florida

NetworkShadow · Jun 3, 2003, 06:10 PM

Ya I've got to look for some good system replacement fonts.

B.I.L · Jun 3, 2003, 07:12 PM

I only have the OS X default fonts installed right now, and I think Arial Rounded Bold looks nice... now to dig through my big stockpile o' fonts to find something cooler!

neoTony · Jun 3, 2003, 07:29 PM

Adobe Myriad Pro looks sweet on my setup...

NetworkShadow · Jun 3, 2003, 07:41 PM

I've got Trebuchet MS on mine, it's a nice san-serif that's easy to read, not too bold and not too light.
Now I've got to register my silk.

fireside · Jun 3, 2003, 09:52 PM

i hate the stupid desktop thing where if the shadow is turned off its white and you cant read it. there should be someway to change the color, eh?

mrtew · Jun 3, 2003, 10:11 PM

Century Gothic is the best looking font ever made.... but Gil Sans comes darn close and is much smaller and tighter. The both look perfect with Silk2. Right now I am very VERY into the way Babylon5Credits looks though!

B.I.L · Jun 4, 2003, 02:20 AM

I've noticed that most fonts have their baseline set below what Lucida Grand does. This causes the descenders on g's and y's to get clipped off in some instances.

You can see this by going into Silk and setting up a font sub for Lucida Grand. With almost any font, the new font's sample will be lower that LG's sample. To see the problem in action, check out the location field in Safari.

TheIceMan · Jun 4, 2003, 02:42 AM

mrtew:
1. Where can I get the Babylon5Credits fonts?
2. How and where do I install it so that Silk can use it?

Thanks.

mrtew · Jun 4, 2003, 07:25 AM

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
mrtew:
1. Where can I get the Babylon5Credits fonts?
2. How and where do I install it so that Silk can use it?

Thanks.

To be honest I don't know where I got it but I remember downloading it from some free font site within the last month, but I haven't been able to find it again with a quick look thru my bookmarks. The really weird part is that I can't find it in my font folders either. It must have some weird name that shows up as Babylon in every font program I have. I am going to keep looking though.... if you find it on the net post the location here please it's kinda driving me nutso. To use fonts in Silk put them in /~home/Library/Fonts and all your programs including Silk willl pick up on the right away.

Brien · Jun 4, 2003, 10:32 AM

Originally posted by neoTony:
Adobe Myriad Pro looks sweet on my setup...

Hey... whaddya know, that's what I've been using.

barbarian · Jun 4, 2003, 11:45 AM

I have found CgFrontiera to be a nice sans serif replacement. It is very close to the apple sans serif font and seems to be cleaner than lucida grande.

I still wish someone knew how to work around/fix the bug in which setting finder font sizes is disabled when using a custom theme font.

NetworkShadow · Jun 4, 2003, 02:12 PM

Ya I wish I could make a few of my cool fonts bigger, and some smaller....

gthyb · Jun 5, 2003, 03:10 AM

what's the font that apple uses in its marketing? the website/ads, etc. that may look nice in X.

kmkkid · Jun 5, 2003, 06:46 PM

Originally posted by gthyb:
what's the font that apple uses in its marketing? the website/ads, etc. that may look nice in X.

I believe thats myriad for the product names, and apple garamond for the 'OS X' title.

Chris

gthyb · Jun 5, 2003, 06:50 PM

yup...myriad. thanks. adobe's fonts don't install in the regular places....that annoys me.

bwahahax · Jun 5, 2003, 08:16 PM

Yeah.
I noticed that when I copied Myriad to the fonts folder in my home library, it didn't register as being present.

Where DO you install it?

NetworkShadow · Jun 5, 2003, 10:09 PM

I just put mine in my user's home font folder. Seems to work fine for me.

TheIceMan · Jun 6, 2003, 12:54 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:

Can you post a link to that nice wallpaper in the background? Thanks.

Toyin · Jun 6, 2003, 11:25 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
Century Gothic is the best looking font ever made.... but Gil Sans comes darn close and is much smaller and tighter. The both look perfect with Silk2. Right now I am very VERY into the way Babylon5Credits looks though!

Agreed, Century Gothic rocks! I use this to replace Lucinda Grande globally. For the dock and Finder I use Hiragino Maru Gothic Pro W4 which is very similar to Century Gothic, but doesn't have bold text. So all your text in the dock and on the desktop aren't bold.

bwahahax · Jun 6, 2003, 01:39 PM

I got Myriad to install.
It turns out the font file I had was corrupted, and so wasn't being read.
Works fine in my home fonts folder.

gthyb · Jun 6, 2003, 03:38 PM

yeah i made a copy of it in my home folder, too. silk sees it, but for some reason nothing happens when i choose it.

mrtew · Jun 6, 2003, 10:18 PM

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
Can you post a link to that nice wallpaper in the background? Thanks.

Sure... here you go!
http://homepage.mac.com/mrtew/F1 Desert.jpg

I made it by photoshopping together a couple of pix that I got at...
http://www.highresautoimages.com/

Rosyna · Jun 13, 2003, 11:42 AM

What do you think of Silk's GUI and it's application specific settings?

A 2.0.1 version will be released on sunday or monday if all goes well. My question is for versions after that.

All I've added is the ability to disable silk for one app by holding the shift key down during the app's launch and if you hold option down, it will enable logging for that app during that launch.

bbxstudio · Jun 13, 2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by Rosyna:
What do you think of Silk's GUI and it's application specific settings?

A 2.0.1 version will be released on sunday or monday if all goes well. My question is for versions after that.

All I've added is the ability to disable silk for one app by holding the shift key down during the app's launch and if you hold option down, it will enable logging for that app during that launch.

I'm sure this doesn't apply to the category you're requesting feedback on - but I'd love to see the ability to define a maximum display size as well as a minimum... so many great fonts just get stupidly huge sometimes.

BTW, T-26 Asperin Overdose seems to behave very nicely

What I'd love to see is a font-savvy type designer tackle a set of 'Silk-friendly' faces that don't shift and play nice at Aqua display sizes. I may tackle a custom font or 2 myslef - can anybody recommend a decent OSX font design application? I've got Fontographer, but it's notoriously buggy in Classic.

p.h..i...l.... · Jun 13, 2003, 12:54 PM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
...... can anybody recommend a decent OSX font design application? I've got Fontographer, but it's notoriously buggy in Classic.

The only software for x i know is Fontlab:
www.fontlab.com

unlinear · Jun 13, 2003, 03:30 PM

"I've got Fontographer, but it's notoriously buggy in Classic."

That'd be the PowerPC version running in Classic - you'd want to install the Non-floating point version for 68k processors.

(I kid you not - PowerPC version crashes if you look at it the wrong way)

Nonetheless, Fontographer is a fossil compared to Fontlab.

'What I'd love to see is a font-savvy type designer tackle a set of 'Silk-friendly' faces'

Well... since my current font development project is turning out to be an insanely big hassle (at a mere 4 weights) I'm not that enthousiastic about this myself. What kind of style would you think this'd be in? And wouldnt 50 people want 60 other styles for the font?

bbxstudio · Jun 13, 2003, 04:02 PM

Originally posted by unlinear:
Well... since my current font development project is turning out to be an insanely big hassle (at a mere 4 weights) I'm not that enthousiastic about this myself. What kind of style would you think this'd be in? And wouldnt 50 people want 60 other styles for the font?

Well, I've never been one to cave to the myriad requests one is generally flooded with when releasing something - I myself tend to ignore them unless I concur or am overwhelmed with one specific request. I was just thinking it would be great if someone who knew font majick were able to determine what makes certain fonts behave with Silk and other fonts misbehave and then whip up some 'inspired' faces in the bahiving category - whatever styles would be most popular I guess... to keep most people happy, you'd need a variety - squat and square for futuristic themes, hand-drawn for paper-based themes, etc. (although I'd imagine a wider range of ultramodern or futuristic faces would be best because most themes and Aqua itself tend to got that way).

I'm currently going through my font collection (quite huge after 12 years in the business) to see what works and what doesn't - over 5000 in and I'm happy with 3 or 4 so far... HelveticaNeueCondensedBdBold looks great with my theme but tends to shift down in Cocoa apps, by far the coolest is t-26 Asperin-Overdose, but it's a little on the cryptic side and hard to read (although damn does it ever look cool and it sits nice in buttons and everything)... I'm probably going to scan through shareware/freeware font sites and do some digging - hopefully I can find a free one I can bundle with my themes (permission granted of course), because LucidaGrande is, how shall I put it? - lame.

mrtew · 12:11 AM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
BTW, T-26 Asperin Overdose seems to behave very nicely

I wanna try Asprin before I buy it. [email protected]

swiz · Jun 13, 2003, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by p.h..i...l....:
The only software for x i know is Fontlab:
www.fontlab.com

Type Tool is available as well.

Rosyna · Jun 13, 2003, 10:43 PM

Screenshots are fun. I like screenshots showing off silk

If Cocoa (the AppKit/GUI part) does not sit on top of Carbon in Panther, then I will seriously look into fixing these baseline issues and adding color support for cocoa. I haven't really considered it seriously because once all of Cocoa sits on Carbon these problems will disappear. For an example of what I say look no farther than menus. They do not experience the shifting font problem or color problem even in cocoa applications. That's because all "Cocoa" menus sit right atop carbon.

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Well, I've never been one to cave to the myriad requests one is generally flooded with when releasing something - I myself tend to ignore them unless I concur or am overwhelmed with one specific request. I was just thinking it would be great if someone who knew font majick were able to determine what makes certain fonts behave with Silk and other fonts misbehave and then whip up some 'inspired' faces in the bahiving category - whatever styles would be most popular I guess... to keep most people happy, you'd need a variety - squat and square for futuristic themes, hand-drawn for paper-based themes, etc. (although I'd imagine a wider range of ultramodern or futuristic faces would be best because most themes and Aqua itself tend to got that way).

I'm currently going through my font collection (quite huge after 12 years in the business) to see what works and what doesn't - over 5000 in and I'm happy with 3 or 4 so far... HelveticaNeueCondensedBdBold looks great with my theme but tends to shift down in Cocoa apps, by far the coolest is t-26 Asperin-Overdose, but it's a little on the cryptic side and hard to read (although damn does it ever look cool and it sits nice in buttons and everything)... I'm probably going to scan through shareware/freeware font sites and do some digging - hopefully I can find a free one I can bundle with my themes (permission granted of course), because LucidaGrande is, how shall I put it? - lame.

intastella · Jun 14, 2003, 01:17 AM

I've heard this Cocoa on top of Carbon thing before, but only as a theoretical feature for the next Mac OS's. How would that work? Would current Carbon apps still work? I guess so because they are only accessing UI elements and dimensions at a lower level.

I'd really like to hear some more about what that would be like, to the developer and user.

Don

Rosyna · Jun 14, 2003, 01:26 AM

All of the Carbon data types (MenuRef, WindowRef, EventRef, AppleEvent, the like) were made Opaque with Carbon and OS X. This means developers can no longer access the internals as struct members but it also allows these data types to be changed at a lower level without breaking existing applications. Jaguar brought about HIObjects/HIView. All MenuRefs, WindowRefs and the like are part of this class. You can now place them inside Cocoa windows with no serious issues.

If Cocoa sits on top of Carbon neither API will suffer. In fact, both will benefit greatly and it will make developer's lives a lot easier (it already has made mine a lot easier). The problem is from what I can tell making Cocoa sit on Carbon is a very time consuming process because it cannot (hypothetically since I don't work for apple) be done piecemeal. It's all or nothing. The good and benefits of doing it must outweigh the time and effort needed to do it.

And AFAIK, Cocoa's text system mostly sits right on carbon but it has extensive caching. Cocoa caches way too much. All of OS X does.

The unification of carbon and cocoa will also mean that Cocoa will take on carbon's behaviour and Apple will no longer have to make two different versions of every new API (rather, just make wrappers) and that the people that say Cocoa is superior will look even more foolish.

Originally posted by intastella:
I've heard this Cocoa on top of Carbon thing before, but only as a theoretical feature for the next Mac OS's. How would that work? Would current Carbon apps still work? I guess so because they are only accessing UI elements and dimensions at a lower level.

I'd really like to hear some more about what that would be like, to the developer and user.

Don