Font Conversion

[Bill W]

Greetings,

We are Mac platform shop and have been handed some .pfb and .pfm fonts. My reading indicates that these are old type 1 fonts for the PC platform.

Anyone know of a MAC program that can convert these?

Search of the web only finds PC based programs and the one MAC based program we have, FontConverter, does not "see" these fonts.

Thanks

-Bill-

 

[T]

Font Monger. But I think it's $150.00

 

[oxburger]

are there no Mac equivalents that you can just substitute? or are they decorative style and hard to find?

 

[Bill W]

T:
Font Monger appears to be a dead program as first two links on search page go to review articles written in 1993, or before.

oxburger:
The particular troubling fonts are in our Illinois location, I am in California, so I do not know what they look like. I do know that our SOP is to try to substitute close fonts when we get "stuck", so I would guess that these fonts are very unique.

 

[smatros]

The only font converter you will ever need

 

[Bill W]

A little more researched to a link I have visited earlier that I thought was and I discovered a program named Trans Type Pro. Their demo version allows conversion, but placed a artifact on the font which renders it unusable. Full version is $179.00.

However it did allow me to identify the typeface to be Korinna Regular, a typeface that we have.

Learn something new every day, don't we - just have to remember it all.

-Bill-

 

[almaink]

If you only need to use them in Adobe Applications, drop them into /Library/Application Support/Adobe
and your good to go. No conversion needed...

 

[Bill W]

Almaink:

I had suggested to our Illinois location to try that trick and they indicated they had and it had not worked. So, I decided to try it and it "appeared" to work.

I say "appeared" because after getting it to work, I quit Illustrator, removed the font, and then reopened the file I had created using the font and low and behold the font was still available in the font menu. The font was Korinna Regular and the only place I can find it on my system is in my Suitcase controlled fonts. It is named KRRG on the "mystery" font files.

I tried this with another font, Memphis, which I own, using Suitcase to activate and unactivate the font and I got the same results. So, does Illustrator hold font information in one of the AdobeFnt.lst files that I see in various places on my computer?

I will need to do a little more research on this.

 

[DonBlock]

There's an old App. called Fontographer from Macromedia (now gone) that will do all kinds of conversions for you as well as allow you to create and change fonts. It's an OS9 app. but it works very well going from PC to Mac or Mac to PC as well as different types of fonts ie. Type I, Type II, Truetype...... The only catch is that you have to have all elements of the font to make it work, both screen and printer files if a PS font.

Great app., just wish someone would have picked it up and ported it to OSX.....

 

[almaink]

Almaink:

I had suggested to our Illinois location to try that trick and they indicated they had and it had not worked. So, I decided to try it and it "appeared" to work.

I say "appeared" because after getting it to work, I quit Illustrator, removed the font, and then reopened the file I had created using the font and low and behold the font was still available in the font menu. The font was Korinna Regular and the only place I can find it on my system is in my Suitcase controlled fonts. It is named KRRG on the "mystery" font files.

I tried this with another font, Memphis, which I own, using Suitcase to activate and unactivate the font and I got the same results. So, does Illustrator hold font information in one of the AdobeFnt.lst files that I see in various places on my computer?

I will need to do a little more research on this.

I've found the need to quit Illy if a font is missing, and I activate it, for the font to be seen. Could also be a bogus font file your using. I have Fontographer myself so have little need for this trick. Although I did try it with a few windows type one fonts and it did work.

 

[mglouis]

Fontographer flags converted fonts to disallow embedding in pdfs.

Matt Louis

 

[T]

T:
Font Monger appears to be a dead program as first two links on search page go to review articles written in 1993, or before.

oxburger:
The particular troubling fonts are in our Illinois location, I am in California, so I do not know what they look like. I do know that our SOP is to try to substitute close fonts when we get "stuck", so I would guess that these fonts are very unique.

That kind of dated me PPlllss

 

[pcmodem]

There's an old App. called Fontographer from Macromedia (now gone) that will do all kinds of conversions for you as well as allow you to create and change fonts. It's an OS9 app. but it works very well going from PC to Mac or Mac to PC as well as different types of fonts ie. Type I, Type II, Truetype...... The only catch is that you have to have all elements of the font to make it work, both screen and printer files if a PS font.

Great app., just wish someone would have picked it up and ported it to OSX.....

Fontographer is now part of Fontlab's product collection.
Fontographer and is for OSX

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I'd second for the use of TransTypePro, works so smooth. Think every cross platform printer ought to have it. Has helped when some fonts have different kearning/leading in Mac and PC versions so we allways can use the customer supplied fonts.

 

[DonBlock]

Thanks for the update on Fontographer. We haven't had anyone call with this issue in awhile so it's good to know that it is still available.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

There seems to be some inconsistency in filling in all parameters that enable a font to convert correctly. Ususally this includes family classification, style, etc meaning that fonts sometimes appear to be outside the same family when they should be in. Also occurenses of "Bold Normal" or "Oblique Regular" etc. Since this is the case it is hardly a surprise that there is need to manually confirm substitutes.
I use TransType Pro, but find that sometimes a little manual sorting to build the right families is necessary.

Note also that there are some fonts like Symbol with ambiguous style value, system font in Mac is Regular (Truetype) but Windows comes as Medium.
Also height metrics (even with Fontographer) sometimes vary in two seemingly identical fonts.

 

[PantherMac]

There's an old App. called Fontographer from Macromedia (now gone) that will do all kinds of conversions for you as well as allow you to create and change fonts. It's an OS9 app. but it works very well going from PC to Mac or Mac to PC as well as different types of fonts ie. Type I, Type II, Truetype...... The only catch is that you have to have all elements of the font to make it work, both screen and printer files if a PS font.

Great app., just wish someone would have picked it up and ported it to OSX.....

YES, and I have it running on our OLD workstation here!

Send CD w/ case of beer (bottle of Single Malt for next-day turn)....

Thanks.

- Mac

 

[jetspank]

@ DonBlock:

Actually, we're using Fontographer 4 in OSX. Works great. You can find info about it here:

Fontographer - Fontlab font software for the graphic designer. Create fonts for your own use with this versatile font editor.

 

[EricE]

We have used Trans Type Pro for many years and have had no trouble with it.

Eric Erickson
[email protected]

 

[jetspank]

Wow. In the minute or so it took me to reply, several others did! Anyway, now you know about Fontographer.