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catbrown
Participating Frequently
April 4, 2011
Question

porting type 1 adobe fonts from win xp to mac

  • April 4, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 3177 views

I have several type 1 postscript fonts (purchased from Adobe in 1999) on my pc and want to install them on my mac OSX 10.6.7. I brought one font onto the mac desktop and the file extension automatically switched from .pfm to .pfb (which I assume is what I want to happen?). However, the font will not install: Font Book does not recognize Type 1 fonts.

What do I do? All help appreciated. Thanks.

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    2 replies

    C
    catbrownAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    April 21, 2011

    Just an update on my original query.  I have now added all my Win type one fonts to the InDesign font folder in CS5 and all is well with the world. I doubt that I'll have desperate need of any of those fonts in non-Adobe applications, so for now, will not be upgrading them to open type. Thanks again to all of you who helped me understand this issue.

    Cathy

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    April 4, 2011

    Although Adobe applications under MacOS recognize Windows Type 1 fonts in their own private font directories (you need both the .PFM and the .PFB files installed in the same directory), MacOS X does not itself natively support such fonts.

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    C
    catbrownAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    April 4, 2011

    Thanks. To clarify ... do you mean that only Adobe apps will recognize type 1 on a mac? Do I need to convert the font to some other format? I did purchase it from Adobe and would assume that it would be able to be installed on any operating system for use in any program.

    By private font directories do you mean the directories installed with Adobe programs, InDesign, for example?

    When I ported my one sample type1 font onto my mac, the extension automatically switched from pfm to pfb. How do I duplicate the file and change the extension to have the two copies you refer to?

    Editing with another question: I see the typeface I paid for in 1999 is now available in Open Type. Maybe I should just buy the open type version which I assume is available system wide on both mac and pc?

    Thanks again for your help.

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    April 4, 2011

    Yes, only Adobe applications recognize Windows Type 1 fonts on a Macintosh. Macintosh Type 1 fonts (that use resource fork-based files) are still supported by MacOS as well as Adobe applications. Unfortunately, the fonts were licensed in both Windows and Macintosh formats and they were not compatible. We would strongly recommend against any attempts to convert fonts. The results of such conversions rarely match exactly what you would have gotten directly from Adobe for the target platform.

    Yes, you are correct in terms of what I meant by private font directories.

    I have no idea why file suffixes would have changed when you copied the files. (How did you actually copy them?)

    Adobe stopped active licensing of Type 1 fonts ten years ago or so. For cross-platform compatibility, we strongly recommend migration to OpenType fonts. Although Adobe applications will support Type 1 fonts for the indefinite future (we must do so in order to fully and properly support the PDF file format and existing PostScript and EPS files), the same is not necessarily true for operating system platforms which are committed to both OpenType CFF and OpenType TrueType formats going into the future, but not necessarily Type 1 fonts (regardless of platform).

         - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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