Font issues with Macbook Air M1

Hi Apple and Community

I have come a long way with Apple...in fact since its inception into the South African Market. I still do design work all these years later. Back in the day before the internet I at great expense then bought an Aldus Collection of Creative and Designer fonts. They come in Postscript and True Type. I still have the one original and a backup of both on CD. I can see them on my desktop and my Font Book validates the True Type version but it also says that no information exists though I can see the representation of them clearly in my Font Book.

Kind Regards

Rosie


Posted on Apr 5, 2025 7:19 AM

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Posted on Apr 5, 2025 2:24 PM

That you're referring to Aldus tells me exactly what kind of PostScript fonts you have. And those would be Type 1 PostScript.


T1 PS fonts are mostly dead. If you use Font Book, it will add, list and activate them. If I use TypeFace to open a T1 PS font, it will also add and activate them, but it also shows this message:



Per the message, none of the (up-to-date) Adobe apps will list any T1 PS fonts. The pre-2024 releases will, but nothing after. The latest version of the SoftMaker Office suite also ignores T1 PS fonts. Pages ignore them, as I bet any app created by Apple will.


Affinity Designer 2 and DaVinci Resolve Studio would let me use them. So, as the message states, it's hit and miss where they'll appear.


As always, you don't need a font manager. If you manually place the T1 PS fonts in your user account Fonts folder, the same apps that still allow the use of T1 PS will see them.


For TrueType, those still work. Both legacy suitcase style OS 9 and earlier fonts, and Windows TrueType. Even ones from the time of the release of Windows 3.1.


The problem with both is they are not Unicode fonts. Some apps will still work with them without noticeable issues. Quark XPress and the Microsoft Office suite (I think) still list them, but the names don't appear correctly.


Basically, try to avoid using either and stick with OpenType. I know how much these fonts cost (I had thousands of purchased fonts for my in-home business). Where I can, I use Adobe's OpenType repository. If you have any Adobe CC app, you can access their entire font library for no extra cost.


For those fonts you can't find on Adobe's or Linotype's subscription service servers, you can use an app like TransType to convert all of your old T1 PS fonts to OpenType. This works well on most fonts. Those with standard Roman character entries (a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and typical accent marks like !#@*) will be moved from their old decimal positions to standard Unicode positions.


Dingbat and ornament fonts don't translate very well. It will translate them to something, but not in the positions a vendor like Adobe would. As an example, I compared the Adobe Wood Type Ornaments Std OpenType font to the same T1 PS font I translated to OpenType, and they weren't even close. Just so you're aware.

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 5, 2025 2:24 PM in response to MonsierPoirot

That you're referring to Aldus tells me exactly what kind of PostScript fonts you have. And those would be Type 1 PostScript.


T1 PS fonts are mostly dead. If you use Font Book, it will add, list and activate them. If I use TypeFace to open a T1 PS font, it will also add and activate them, but it also shows this message:



Per the message, none of the (up-to-date) Adobe apps will list any T1 PS fonts. The pre-2024 releases will, but nothing after. The latest version of the SoftMaker Office suite also ignores T1 PS fonts. Pages ignore them, as I bet any app created by Apple will.


Affinity Designer 2 and DaVinci Resolve Studio would let me use them. So, as the message states, it's hit and miss where they'll appear.


As always, you don't need a font manager. If you manually place the T1 PS fonts in your user account Fonts folder, the same apps that still allow the use of T1 PS will see them.


For TrueType, those still work. Both legacy suitcase style OS 9 and earlier fonts, and Windows TrueType. Even ones from the time of the release of Windows 3.1.


The problem with both is they are not Unicode fonts. Some apps will still work with them without noticeable issues. Quark XPress and the Microsoft Office suite (I think) still list them, but the names don't appear correctly.


Basically, try to avoid using either and stick with OpenType. I know how much these fonts cost (I had thousands of purchased fonts for my in-home business). Where I can, I use Adobe's OpenType repository. If you have any Adobe CC app, you can access their entire font library for no extra cost.


For those fonts you can't find on Adobe's or Linotype's subscription service servers, you can use an app like TransType to convert all of your old T1 PS fonts to OpenType. This works well on most fonts. Those with standard Roman character entries (a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and typical accent marks like !#@*) will be moved from their old decimal positions to standard Unicode positions.


Dingbat and ornament fonts don't translate very well. It will translate them to something, but not in the positions a vendor like Adobe would. As an example, I compared the Adobe Wood Type Ornaments Std OpenType font to the same T1 PS font I translated to OpenType, and they weren't even close. Just so you're aware.

Apr 5, 2025 11:10 AM in response to MonsierPoirot

I don't have a quick answer for you, but I highly recommend reading Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang, which may explain your difficulties. It has been archived... unfortunately... for reasons he explains.


Kurt Lang is a frequent contributor to this site so hopefully your question will draw his interest. He has more experience with fonts than anyone at Apple probably does any more. Most likely, so do you.

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Font issues with Macbook Air M1

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