Specifications

Optimizing a Production
System
Depending on your workflow requirements, you might find it helpful to optimize
font organization on your Macintosh workstations. This section describes how to deal
with nonessential fonts either temporarily or permanently and addresses some of
the special font management needs of service bureaus.
Removing or Deactivating Nonessential Fonts
In Mac OS X, as in Mac OS 9, fonts located in system-recognized font folders are
always on and available to applications, unless you have used a font manager to
override or deactivate them. To prepare your system for the strict font requirements
of design and production, you might want to remove or deactivate some of the
preinstalled fonts in Mac OS X that will conflict with versions or formats of the fonts
you use in your workflow. You might also wish to remove or deactivate fonts that
you do not plan to use so that they will not show up in your font lists.
Using Font Book, you can deactivate fonts and leave them in place rather than
removing them entirely. If you plan to use a third-party tool to manage your fonts, it’s
advisable to remove nonessential fonts from the system locations so that those fonts
are not accidentally activated. Note that some of the preinstalled Mac OS X fonts have
additional characters you might want to use, such as foreign language characters. You
can use the Character Palette to browse the glyphs of a font before deciding whether
to remove it (choose Glyph from the View pop-up menu).
When choosing which fonts you want keep and which you want to remove, be careful
not to delete fonts that are required by Mac OS X and/or the Classic environment.
Removing required fonts may prevent your Mac from starting up or cause
application problems. Required fonts are listed in the sections that follow.
You can remove nonessential fonts manually in the Finder by dragging them to the
Trash. If you attempt to remove a font from the System folder /Library/Fonts, you will
be asked to authenticate your ID with an administrator’s login and password.
To remove fonts using Font Book, follow these steps.
Removing or deactivating fonts in Classic
The fonts in the System Folder in Classic support applications that run in the Classic
Mac OS 9 environment. However, all applications, including Mac OS X applications,
can access these fonts. You may therefore have duplicate fonts—those that Classic
uses and those that Mac OS X uses. Follow the steps below to remove fonts with
names that conflict with fonts you’re going to be using in production.
21
Technology Tour
Advanced Typography
with Mac OS X
Production tip
If you are a system administrator, you will
want to retrieve and maintain a “clean” set
of fonts from original CDs. Or you can use
products such as FontDoctor or TranType
to create a clean set of fonts for consis-
tent, predictable deployment to users.