Elderly fonts

[Paul.Tait]

We all know about the need to update software as we move to new operating systems to avoid conflicts, but is it the same with fonts?

I bought lots of fonts back in the 80s to accompany my first Mac and with some of these being classic typefaces that will probably never be bettered in terms of design (Bembo, Perpetua, Gill Sans etc. - I could go on), I still use them today. They still seem to work fine (although I did have major problems for a spell when using Adobe Type Manager which kept reporting many of them as being corrupt), but are they always likely to do this?

I'm thinking particularly of potential problems moving to OSX (which I haven't yet done thanks to the snails at Quark).

If there are unlikely to be problems, just out of interest, how is it that fonts will work for 20 years with various upgrades, while most other software won't?

Thanks for any help.

Paul

[CyberPet]

Mostly the font's works just fine in OS X (it's using the postscript version, not the screen font). In OS X I'm using Suitcase and you can do a competitive upgrade if you have a license for ATM Deluxe.

Corrupt font's is however a headache and I'm not sure if there's any real good font fixer software out there?

[Paul.Tait]

Hi Petra

Thanks for your reply. I haven't used ATM for ages because of the problems I was having with it, but you're right, I really should look at getting Suitcase.

Still be interested to know if it's just the way they are written that allows fonts to work regardless of the OS number.

Paul

[RHPConsult]

Paul:

This sounds like a query for Tacit.

I've also got some really old fonts (which I carefully checked for corruption w/Font Doctor...from MorrisonSoftDesign.com) when I first went from 8.6 to 9.)

Didn't do anything special in moving to OSX (now 10.2.4) but, again, most of them are just sitting in the fonts folder, not being used as such. Someday, when I have my taxes done, and the deck painted I'm probably, maybe, perhaps going to throw some of them out.  

There is a version (5.1.2, I believe) of Font Doctor for OSX.

FD was highly recommended by a number of TSers when I inquired a year+ ago. It's a breeze to use.

[Xairbusdriver]

Be good to hear tacit's views on this! Haven't seen him around too much lately, must have a real job!

My take on the longevity of Fonts is that they are rather static files. The System uses them, READs them but I'm not sure it would ever write to them. Only time they would normally be written would be in transferring them to another drive/partition (including a printer). So they are generally immune to the kinds of problems caused by moving electrons around in memory/media. But any time there is a crash, corruption could occur in different memeory areas, including where a font might be stored. If you continue working after a crash, you might end up with a bad byte in a font file and then copy that file later without knowing it. Obviously magnetic/electronic media is suseptable to atomic/comic radiation and that could cause problems as well.

Anyway, that's my opinion and I'm sticking with it until anyone comes up with a better one! Or maybe sooner...

[tacit]

Fonts do not usually[1] need to be updated for new System versions.

If you have fonts that ATM complains about, however, it is quite likely that those fonts really are corrupt. Font files are relatively "fragile," in the sense that they contain a number of resources which are constantly being accessed by the system. Computer crashes or freezes while this information is being accessed can corrupt the font.

There are several programs available which can fix corrupt fonts. FontAgent is one of them.

ATM (the free version--not ATM Deluxe, the pay version) is necessary if you use PostScript fonts. ATM renders the PostScript fonts correctly on your monitor and on non-PostScript printers.

[1] Old (circa 1984-1985) "FONT" style fonts--those that do not use the "NFNT" bitmaps--do not work on systems after System 6. There was one operating system version--MacOS 8.6--that shipped with one very serious bug that would make it destroy certain fonts. It was fixed by the "Apple Font manager Update," which is available free on Apple's Web site. If you use 8.6, you MUST install the Font Manager Update extension! If you have ever used 8.6 but you don't any more, download Font Manager Update and run the "Font First Aid" program contained in it.