I recently purchased an intel based Mac Pro and found that none of my fonts frm my "Old Mac" will work with this new intel based Mac. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Heidi
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Heidi
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help with fonts from "Old Mac"
- Thread starter Heidijohanna43@
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The old mac was a much older mac with OS 9. I think the issue relates not so much to the operating system as the intel-based processor. I think?
In general (I'll get to the exception…), fonts from OS 9 will work fine with OS X, either architecture. It's a good idea to put the fonts into hqx or Stuffit form before moving them to other machines, just to make sure no forks are stripped.
The exception is PostScript fonts that were really intended for other operating systems. These are the ones made up of, for example, *.pfb/*.pfm pairs instead of the native Mac printer/screen font pairs.
ATM used to make non-Mac PS fonts work on old Mac OS, but that option was taken away with OS X. If these are what you have, you can use a conversion utility to turn them into the Mac format or OpenType. Font editors can typically be used too, just load and save under the new format.
When I copied the fonts, (because there were so many) I copied them to a disk. I am thinking they are the old adobe and letraset fonts managed by ATM. What font editors or type conversion software were you thinking of?
Just as long as it was some native Mac format, they should be in decent condition then.
This is easy enough to check, see what extensions (if any) the filenames have in the Finder. Depending on your Finder settings, you may have to use Get Info to see the extensions. If they don't have the pfm/pfb kinds of names and instead appear to be suitcase/printer font pairs, then conversion software is unlikely to be much help here.
Just about all the worthwhile font conversion and edit stuff for Mac is sold by Fontlab these days. TransType or (if you think you'd use it) the full Fontlab Studio would do the job.
A while back I threw together this little guide with a free alternative, handy if you need to get a few fonts up and running right away, or that shiny new Mac already ate the current budget.
First, do they have those *.pfb etc. names on them? If yes, don't worry about the description, it only means that the Mac doesn't have any apps installed that might associate them with better descriptions.
If they don't have pfb/pfm names in Finder's Get Info, then most likely something went wrong with the file copying process. If you still have the old Mac, you may want to try the Stuffit thing to pack up some fonts, and see if that gets you better results.
Okay, I just opened up the "Bickley font folder. The icons look like black screens with bright green type in the upper left folder. There are 4 of these and a folder named RESOURCE.FRK. Of the 4 black icons, 3 are just the type names (Bickley, BicklIta, and BICKAG) the 4th is FINDER.DAT file. The RESOURCE.FRK folder contains 3 more of the black icons named the same as the other 3. Its odd because I noticed that when I was copying them over, so I tried to copy just one font folder and the result was the same. Do you think I might have to just toss the whole mess in the trash and start all over with my font library?
And yes, that shiny new computer cost me an arm and a leg, my new business better do well. I have had junk cast off computers all my life so this one is a real treat.
Thanks for all the help by the way.
And yes, that shiny new computer cost me an arm and a leg, my new business better do well. I have had junk cast off computers all my life so this one is a real treat.
Thanks for all the help by the way.
If you have separate items named RESOURCE.FRK and FINDER.DAT, the disc where you copied the files used an older DOS-compatible format (the old File Exchange stuff) that OS X doesn't completely understand. This is the kind of resource fork problem I was mentioning near the start of this thread.
The least awful way to deal with this is to go back to the OS 9 machine (or read the disc back into any OS 9 machine if the original is gone) and copy everything to a specifically Mac-formatted disc (HFS), or alternatively, put them into a Stuffit archive before copying them to any old disc format.
The least awful way to deal with this is to go back to the OS 9 machine (or read the disc back into any OS 9 machine if the original is gone) and copy everything to a specifically Mac-formatted disc (HFS), or alternatively, put them into a Stuffit archive before copying them to any old disc format.
Okay, I am going to try just that. The fonts that I have, some of them have been with me for fifteen years. I haven't purchased any fonts in eons. I was pricing adobe fonts and nearly fainted when I thought about losing all of them and quite a few letraset fonts as well. I'm not real sure about the "how to's" of copying everything to a Mac-formatted disk (HFS) but can possibly try the Stuffit archive method.
No luck, I thought it was going to work as the folders looked just like the folder icons on the os x but they were empty. I have an idea, do you think this will work?...the old mac does not have firewire so I would have to purchase a firewire 400 PCI card and a firewire cable, hook the two macs up and transfer the files from one computer directly to the other. It would cost me around $70.00 but if it works it would be worth it. On the other hand if this idea is really lame, I don't want to waste the money. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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