How to Manage Fonts in Mac OS Panther

Mac OS X Panther 10.3 continues the Mac tradition of making good-looking, quality fonts easy to manage. The included "Font Book" application makes it simple to install, search, preview and/or activate all the fonts you need. The "Character Palette" that is available to all Mac OS Panther native applications lets you see and select special characters and symbols for use in your documents.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Manage Fonts in Mac OS Panther

1. Open the "Font Book" application, located in the "Applications" folder. Alternatively, you can double-click on any font file that you are viewing in the "Finder" and the application will start up.

2. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the multi-pane view of the "Font Book" application window. There are three panes, which can be resized. The first two show the "Collection" and the "Font" and the third, at far right, is the large preview pane in which you get a scalable view of the fonts' character sets.

3. Add or disable font collections and individual fonts within those collections by using the "+" and "Disable" buttons beneath the "Collection" and "Font" window panes.

4. Select a "Collection" and a "Font" to preview it in the right-hand pane. Use the vertical slider to the right of the preview pane to increase or decrease the size of the previewed characters.

5. Manage your font collection by removing any individual fonts or entire font collections that you do not use.

6. Learn more about how to install new fonts, how to manage them and how to control their topographic features at the official Apple website (see Resources below).

Tips & Warnings

• Although there are some third-party font-management applications for the Mac, notably Suitcase, these are always struggling to keep up with the Mac OS versions and updates. With the excellent control offered by the free "Font Book," the often costly purchase of any third-party font manager is not necessary for most Mac users.
• Every application has its own way to open a "Font" panel, whose controls are linked to the "Font Book" application. To open it in TextEdit, for instance, choose "Font" from the "Format" menu and select "Show Fonts."
• Do not attempt to use "Font Book" controls if you are already employing a third-party application for that purpose. Conversely, do not install such an application if you are managing your fonts well enough with "Font Book."

Resources

• Information on font management from Apple