Font Design

Archive for the ‘Font Converters’ Category

The current versions of FontLab’s applications for Mac OS X require the Rosetta library to be installed in Mac OS X. Rosetta is not enabled by default in Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

Rosetta is a small (2 MB) library that comes with Mac OS X and enables Intel Macs to run PowerPC code. Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 installed Rosetta by default. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard does not. If you’re installing Mac OS X 10.6 yourself, you can choose the “Customize” option during installation, and enable Rosetta so that it will be installed on your system.

If you already have Mac OS X 10.6 installed on your computer, and try to launch one of FontLab’s installers, a dialog box should appear telling you “To open this application, you need to install Rosetta. Would you like to install it now?” Choose “Install” and proceed with the Rosetta installation. After it is complete, install the FontLab application as usual.

FontXChange for Macintosh is a font conversion utility that will convert fonts from Macintosh format to Windows format and vise-versa. It is a Macintosh application that will convert fonts to OpenType PostScript, PostScript Type 1 and TrueType for Macintosh and Windows. It is avaiable from Morrison SoftDesign (http://www.morrisonsoftdesign.com/) and a single user license costs $99 USD.

FontXChange works on OS 10.3 or higher. One of its most powerful features is batch processing of entire font libraries. FontXChange allows you to set preferences for different font encodings, including Adobe Standard, Unicode, Mac Roman, and Windows ANSI, and European. FontXChange can also be used to re-create missing screen fonts from a PostScript font file in any format.

With FontXChange you can convert two-file screen font and printer font combination PostScript Type 1 fonts into a single-file OpenType font format that will work on both Macintosh & Windows. This can be a real convenience – especially when dealing with cross-platform editing of page layouts with popular DTP packages like QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.

This is a post about font conversion. Sometimes you may need to convert a PC font to Macintosh format and vise-versa. Some popular font conversion software is TransType (by FontLab, Inc.) and CrossFont.