Appropriate typefaces or fonts are essential if you want to create professional-looking documents and presentations. On Macs, OS X comes with a wide selection of built-in fonts, but users can add their own and switch their various fonts on and off. Special characters, umlauts accents and other diacritics are also very important when dealing with texts.<\/p>\n
Contents<\/p>
Each font is actually a file or a set of files which reside in various special folders:<\/p>\n
You can add new fonts to your system by simply dropping the font files into your\u00a0Home \u2013 Library \u2013 Fonts<\/em>\u00a0folder, or into the\u00a0Macintosh HD \u2013 Library \u2013 Fonts\u00a0<\/em>folder. Likewise, you can remove fonts you don\u2019t like by dragging them out of these folders. However, if you have to deal regularly with fonts, you\u2019ll find it much easier to use a font-management tool, such as\u00a0Font Book<\/em>,\u00a0which comes with OS X and can be opened from\u00a0Applications<\/em>.\u00a0Font Book<\/em>\u00a0is a tool for browsing, previewing, adding and removing fonts, arranging fonts in sets, exporting them, and much more.<\/p>\n Add fonts:<\/em>\u00a0Double-click any font file on your system and that file will open into\u00a0Font Book<\/em>. If you want that font to be installed, just click the Install Font button, and the font will be dropped into the user collection, unless you change it in Preferences<\/em>.<\/p>\n Preview:<\/em>\u00a0To browse and choose fonts, choose\u00a0Custom<\/em>\u00a0in the\u00a0Preview<\/em>\u00a0menu, then type some sample text in the right-hand pane. Next, click on different fonts to compare. You can use the slider on the right to change the size.<\/p>\n User, Computer:\u00a0<\/em>These icons are located at the top of the\u00a0Collection\u00a0pane and show you which fonts are available, both to your account only and to all users. You can drag fonts from the main list to these icons.<\/p>\n Collections:<\/em>\u00a0Collections<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0Font Book<\/em>\u00a0are for grouping fonts together by subject, style, or category (just like playlists in iTunes or albums in iPhoto<\/em>). This division makes fonts easier to browse, enable, disable, or export. If you want to create a new collection, press the \u201c+\u201d button.<\/p>\n Enable\/Disable:\u00a0<\/em>With too many fonts running on your computer, font menus become impractically long, and your machine will run more slowly. To get around this problem, select fonts or collections you are not currently using, and choose one of the\u00a0Edit \u2013 Disable<\/em>\u00a0options. You can also use the keyboard shortcut, Shift+Command Key+D<\/em>, which disables selected fonts, or\u00a0Shift+Command key+E<\/em>,\u00a0which disables selected collections. Obviously, you can enable disabled fonts again later.<\/p>\n Resolve Duplicates:\u00a0<\/em>Duplicate fonts can cause system instability. If you have more than one copy of a font installed on your system, the font in question will be marked with a little dot next to it. Select the font, then choose Edit \u2013\u00a0Resolve Duplicates<\/em>.<\/p>\n Delete Fonts:<\/em>\u00a0If you want to send a font to the\u00a0Trash, select it and click\u00a0Remove font<\/em>\u00a0in the File<\/em> menu.<\/p>\n Two-letter preview:\u00a0<\/em>Font file icons offer a two-letter preview in Finder, best seen in icons view, while the full font can quickly be previewed using QuickLook (Command key + Y)<\/em>.<\/p>\n Individual styles:<\/em>\u00a0To reveal the individual styles, such as bold and italic, click the arrow next to a font family name.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget that\u00a0Automator\u00a0<\/em>includes all sorts of options for\u00a0Font Book<\/em>, allowing you to filter, find, and otherwise speed up your type management..<\/p>\n When you send a document to someone, fonts are not generally included in the text. That\u2019s why the document might look messy after it arrives at its destination. There are three common ways to avoid the mess:<\/p>\n Macs have a special-character input panel and a logical set of shortcut keys for entering accents, diacritics and other special characters.<\/p>\n Character Palette\u00a0<\/em>is OS X\u2019s built-in feature which allows you to browse, find, and insert all kinds of special characters in most applications. You put the cursor where you want the character, select the character you want from the palette, and click Insert.<\/p>\n To open\u00a0Character Palette<\/em>, click the flag icon near the clock in the menu bar. Next, choose\u00a0Show Character Palette<\/em>. If no flag is there, open\u00a0System Preferences<\/em>\u00a0from the\u00a0Apple\u00a0menu, select\u00a0International \u2013 Input Menu<\/em>, and then check the boxes next to Character Palette<\/em> and Show input<\/em> menu in menu bar.<\/p>\n To find a special character to match the font you\u2019re using, select\u00a0Glyph\u00a0<\/em>from the\u00a0Character Palette\u2019s View<\/em>\u00a0menu. Next, choose the font you need from under\u00a0Glyph Catalog<\/em>. To browse characters in all fonts, select\u00a0All Characters<\/em> from the\u00a0View\u00a0menu and browse by category. If the font doesn\u2019t feature the special character you need, you could try to combine two separate characters if the application you\u2019re using lets you alter the spacing (kerning) between them. You can also use\u00a0Lucida Grande<\/em>\u00a0for a particularly wide range of characters.<\/p>\n Believe us, once you get used to the common special-character shortcuts, you\u2019ll never look back.<\/p>\n In\u00a0Microsoft Word\u00a0you can use the built-in character palette. To use the palette, select\u00a0Symbol<\/em>\u00a0from the Insert menu.<\/p>\n These are some of Apple\u2019s most popular fonts:<\/p>\n If you get seriously into typography, you may want to download a third-party tool and replace\u00a0Font Book<\/em>.<\/p>\nLost in Translation<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
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Accents and Special Characters<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
Character Palette<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Apple Typography<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
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Links<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
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