All About Fonts!

In every survey conducted over the past few years, font problems consistently shows up as the number one problem printers and service bureaus have with customer-supplied files. Why do so many people have problems managing their fonts? The various font formats, the way different platforms handle fonts, the flexibility of the PostScript language and inconsistency of PostScript interpreters and a font's susceptibility to corruption present challenges to anyone using a large number of fonts.

On this page, we want to give you the basic information about fonts that you really should know if you're planning on submitting files to a printer or service bureau for output. Following that, we have some tips to help you effectively manage your fonts.

Basic Font Information

There are two main font formats in common use on the Macintosh and Windows platforms today. These are PostScript Type 1 fonts and TrueType fonts. PostScript Type 1 fonts are the standard for printing to PostScript printing devices, ie. imagesetters, laser printers etc. TrueType fonts are actually converted to Type 1 fonts by the PostScript driver that sends your job to the printer. Some TrueType fonts do not convert well and cause errors when they are sent to a PostScript device. For this reason, Type 1 fonts are generally preferred by printers and service bureaus.

Type 1 fonts

The Type 1 font specification was originally created by Adobe as the font format for PostScript printers. A Type 1 font consists of two separate files. One file contains bitmap information for displaying the font on your computer screen and the other file contains the font's outline information in a mathematical form which is sent to the printer. To display and print correctly, both of these files must be together in the same folder or directory on your computer. Many people have a difficult time keeping track of both parts of a Type 1 font. Both Macintoshes and Windows PCs have quirks which tend to reinforce this difficulty.

Originally (back in the late 1980's), Type 1 fonts required screen fonts in several point sizes in order to display on screen with a minimum of jagginess. Eventually, Adobe wrote Adobe Type Manager (ATM), which accesses the outline information in the printer font to draw the fonts smoothly on screen at any size. Adobe now has two versions of ATM available for both Macintosh and Windows. ATM Lite is free and can be downloaded from Adobe's web site. This version has the original core funtionality of ATM (smoothly drawing Type 1 fonts on screen at any size). ATM Deluxe is a commercial program and also has font management features.

Macintosh and Type 1 fonts

Let's look at the issues involved with Type 1 fonts on the Macintosh. A Type 1 font's screen file is generally named by the font's name, ie. Helvetica Bold. The printer font file by convention is named using the first five letters of the first word in the font name and then the first three letters of any subsequent words in the font name. For example, the printer font for Palatino Bold Italic takes the first five letters of Palatino, then the first three letters of Bold and the first three letters of Italic, yielding PalatBolIta. Once you know this naming convention, pairing up the screen and printer fonts is not too difficult. However, some font distributers, such as Adobe also prepend an initial to the screen font name such that Helvetica Bold is named B Helvetica Bold or Times Bold Italic is named BI Times Bold Italic. This causes the screen font to appear in a different place in an alphabetical list view than the printer font, making it more difficult to readily see if both font files are available.

One other Macintosh feature can either cause further problems in managing Type 1 fonts or it can be used to alleviate some of the naming/organization problems depending on how it is used. This is the ability to store screen font files in a suitcase. A suitcase file is a special Mac resource which works somewhat similar to a folder. The most common use for suitcase files is placing Type 1 screen font files or TrueType font files in them. A Mac will see a suitcase file and any font files placed in it as only one open file rather than an open file for each font in the suitcase. This can be used to our advantage by placing all the font files for a particular family into one suitcase. For example you can place Times Roman, Times Italic, Times Bold and Times Bold Italic in one suitcase and name it Times Family or whatever. This makes it easier to keep track of the family's screen fonts and keep them with the printer fonts.

You aren't limited to placing only a single font family in a suitcase though. You could place all your serif fonts in a suitcase or all your dingbat fonts in one. While this can seem to help you with organizing your fonts it can potentially cause problems as people tend to get multiple copies of fonts placed into different suitcases. It's not uncommon for people to have, for example alphabetized suitcases (like one named 'A fonts', one named 'B fonts' etc.) and then also have some of these fonts in single family suitcases. Having multiple copies of the same font open on a computer is not a good thing. We'll look at utilizing suitcase files effectively in the next section on tips for managing your fonts.

Windows and Type 1 fonts

What should you know about using Type 1 fonts on a Windows PC? Like the Macintosh, your need two separate files for a Type 1 font on your Windows machine. These two files will be named the same with the exception of the file extension. The printer font has a .PFB extension (Printer Font Binary). This file contains the font's outline information that the printer uses to draw the font. The other file has a .PFM extension (Printer Font Metrics). This file contains the font's metrics data which is used for screen display.

At first glance this makes it appear that identifying the two files associated with a particular font should be somewhat easier in Windows than with a Mac, however, there is one other factor that makes this not the case. While many font names are longer than eight characters, in order to maintain compatability the font's actual file name in Windows is often different than the font name. For example, the font files for Helvetica are named "HV______.PFB" and "Hv______.PFM". Many font's file names have no resemblance to the actual font name (e.g. Akzidenz Grotesk file names begin with GF). This obviously tends to make locating a particular font's files on your computer difficult. ATM Lite or Deluxe can be used to identify the font file's name by selecting the font in question in ATM and going to File-->Show Selected Samples. This displays a sample of the font along with the font's location and its Windows file name.

The other main issue with using Type 1 fonts with Windows has to do with font styles. Printers and Service Bureaus generally advise their customers to select the actual font style they want to use from the font menu in their application rather than selecting the regular version of the font then using the application's style palette to apply a Bold or Italic style to it (e.g., select Helvetica Bold from the font menu rather than selecting Helvetica then hitting the Bold button in the application style palette). This ensures the font really has a bold or italic or whatever version and doesn't depend on the laser printer or imagesetter to simulate a bold or italic version of the font (which may or may not work). However, this can't be a hard and fast rule on Windows systems.

Windows can only display four styles per family in an application's font menu (such as normal, bold, italic and bold italic). If that's all the styles a particular font has then there is no problem selecting the appropriate font style from the font menu. Many font families, however, contain many more than these four base styles. Futura for example has a light, medium, heavy and extra-bold version along with italics of these in addition to the usual styles. To get around the four styles in a menu limition, a font with extra styles will use style links to access the other styles. For example, on a Macintosh, one could choose Futura Heavy from the font menu. On a Windows system, one would choose Futura Medium and then apply the bold style from the application's style palette to access Futura Heavy. ATM for Windows will list the style links needed to access all of a particular font's styles.

TrueType fonts

When Adobe originally created the PostScript language they controlled the Type 1 font format. Adobe wanted to license the technology to Apple and Microsoft to include support for Type 1 fonts within their respective operating systems. Neither Apple or Microsoft wanted to have a core OS function dependent on another company. They also were not happy about the licensing fees that would be associated with this. Therefore, they agreed to co-develop and cross-license their own graphics engine and font technology. Microsoft was to develop the PostScript style graphics engine (to be named TrueImage) and Apple would create the font system. TrueImage was eventually abandoned, however the font technology was finished and the TrueType specification was born.

Managing TrueType fonts tends to be easier than managing Type 1 fonts due to the fact that a TrueType font consists of only one file rather than two. On a Windows system, the font names tend to be more decipherable than Type 1 font names. Most Windows TrueType font file names are the same as the font name (i.e. Arial is named Arial.TTF). Macintosh and Windows also support TrueType fonts at the operating system level, meaning that there is no need for a third-party program like ATM to use and display the fonts. These facts may make it seem like TrueType is the way to go, but in a PostScript workflow, Type 1 fonts are still the preferred format.

Originally, TrueType fonts could only be printed to a PostScript printer via one of several hacks. The printer driver could convert the font to a Type 1 font which is what a PostScript printer expects, however when this is done any hinting contained in the font is lost (Hints are hidden instructions in the font which are used to instruct a PostScript device how to draw the font at low resolutions. Hinting is one of the features that made PostScript fonts superior to previous font technologies). This generally meant a TrueType font would not look as good as an equivalent Type 1 font if both were printed to a PostScript device.

Another method was to just substitute equivalent Type 1 fonts from the printer. This involves using naming tables to match equivalents (substituting Helvetica for Arial at the printer for example). Not all TrueType fonts will have a Type 1 equivalent however, so some fonts will still need to be converted to Type 1 as described in the previous paragraph. One other alternative is convert the font to a bitmap PostScript Type 3 font. Bitmap fonts don't scale well though, and Type 3 fonts don't support hinting.

These reasons, plus the fact that early on, there were a lot of cheap, inferior TrueType fonts which caused PostScript errors or wouldn't print at all, caused most Service Bureaus and Printers to accept only jobs that were built with PostScript Type 1 fonts. Eventually Adobe added a Type 42 font specification to the PostScript language which offered a better method of printing TrueType fonts.

Essentially, a Type 42 font is the original TrueType font information contained in a PostScript "wrapper". This allows the TrueType font to retain its hinting and outline instructions while allowing PostScript devices to deal with the font in a native PostScript fashion. The biggest drawback to this development is the sheer number of PostScript printing devices that are out there. Type 42 fonts are only supported in PostScript Level 2 or later and the printer must have a TrueType rasterizer built in. What this means is that you can't be guaranteed that every PostScript printer you may want to print to is capable of using this method.

Generally though, TrueType fonts print to most newer PostScript printers with no problems. The best tip for obtaining quality fonts that print reliably is to stay away from the "2,000 Fonts for $20" collections that you find in the bargain bin at the computer store. There's a reason they are so cheap!

TrueType or Type 1?

All that's well and good but what's the bottom line? The compatibility of TrueType fonts and a PostScript workflow have improved tremendously over the past three or four years, however, Type 1 fonts are still the preferred format for high-end printing. If you are serious about professional publishing you should really invest in a quality Type 1 font library from a reputable company.

This page was last modified on Monday, November 4, 2002