Mac Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts in easy steps (2015)
6
Font Management
With OS X, font management has become more tricky, with fonts scattered across the system in various locations. In this chapter we will look at optimizing font management and also how to switch off unwanted fonts.
Font Book
This app comes built in to OS X. It is a font viewer which lets you browse through your fonts and deactivate those you don’t need. It also lets you view styles before you use them in a document.
Try to deactivate any fonts you are not likely to use.
Viewing your fonts
Open Font Book
Scroll through your list of fonts to view
Click the black triangles on the left to open the font family and see all available installed fonts
Viewing fonts different ways
You can view as a simple alphabet (as shown above), or you can show all available characters in a particular typeface as shown on the next page.
Custom view
Open Font Book and go to Preview Custom (⌘ + 3)
Scroll to the bottom of the text in the viewer and type or paste in your own text which will be displayed in the selected font
Where to store Fonts
Prior to OS X you had to store Mac fonts in one folder, the Fonts folder. With OS X you can pretty much store your fonts anywhere. The Mac will find them and use them wherever they are. Lots of apps install their own fonts, e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and many others. Sometimes the fonts are stored in the main Fonts Library, and sometimes in the app’s own Fonts folder.
The three main locations are:
•Main Library
•User Library
•App Folder
Having fonts in multiple locations can cause duplicate entries. This may cause you to encounter various problems (e.g. crashes) that will need to be resolved.
This is where the Main Library keeps its fonts
User fonts are kept here
And an app such as Adobe Creative Suite keeps its own fonts here
Disable (Deactivate) Fonts!
The Mac already comes with a fair number of fonts. As you install more apps, you will install their associated fonts. This will result in your Mac having to keep track of potentially hundreds of different fonts. Although it is great to have lots of fonts, you are not likely to use the vast majority of these. For this reason, it is best to deactivate any that you are not likely to need. This should speed up your Mac a little since it is having to keep track of fewer typefaces.
To disable a font
Open Font Book and review your list of fonts in the left pane (All Fonts)
Look at the typeface by selecting the font and looking at the Preview on the right
To disable the font go to Edit > Disable
You will be asked Are you sure you want to disable the selected fonts? Click Disable
The font will now be marked Off.
Resolve Duplicate Fonts
As mentioned earlier, you will at some point end up with duplicate fonts. When you open Font Book you may see a yellow warning triangle alerting you to the fact that a font has duplicate entries.
It is always best to resolve this by disabling and removing (to the Trash) the duplicate font.
To remove duplicate font
Open Font Book
View the list of fonts and check to see if you have any yellow warning triangles
Click the black triangle to view the fonts and see which ones are duplicated
Click Resolve Automatically (which is the easiest method) unless you want to do them by one-by-one
Remove duplicates to keep your Mac running smoothly and prevent crashes.
Accessing Special Characters
You may be working on a technical document and require special characters, such as arrows, symbols, Greek letters, or other characters not shown on the main keyboard.
Accessing special characters
Go to System Preferences and click Keyboard
Make sure Show Keyboards & Character Viewers in menu bar is checked. You should then see the Character Viewer at the top right of the menu bar
Click the keyboard icon on the menu bar and choose Show Character Viewer
A window will open showing various special characters, including arrows, parentheses, Currency Symbols Pictographs, etc.
Look for the type of symbol you wish to use and find the one you want. With your cursor in your document at the correct place that you wish to have the special character, double-click the symbol in the Character Viewer window. The character will now be pasted into your text
