Geneva font

The Geneva font installed in Mac OS X is only a 'regular' one.

This is why it's unavailable as bold in Apple programs which no longer build calculated styled fonts.

Underline is an other problem which is available from the Font Inspector (cmd + t).

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 24 janvier 2009 20:36:38)

I like this font too. I have searched a lot and found out, that bold and italic do not exist for the Geneva. Very sad, because it's a really nice one! And performs well in the internet. I am thinking of designing it by myself, (this would be my first own font...). 😀

Is there any particular reason to use Geneva instead of Helvetica? From a certain distance they look fairly similar.

Hi Magnus, I find Geneva less straining for the eyes to read on the screen than Helvetica.

Lucida Grande is an excellent screen font, try that instead.

How about trying Arial? It's the default font for many Windows programs & looks very similar to Geneva & Helvetica.

Hi,
After problems with an old MS-Office for Mac version, I decided to try out iWorks09.

We've been using Skia as our font, all labels on products etc are typed with this font.
iWorks will integrate Skia but only in a thin and regular, but not a bold form.
For USP reasons one cannot just switch to an other font as suggested above. Apple should allow users to personalize the choice of fonts, particularly fonts that at some time had been introduced by Apple ⚠ such as SKIA.
Is iWorks incapable of using bold fonts?

Any help?

Skia is a system dfont and has only one weight and one form that is "regular".

What you observed in Word, probably in Mac OS Classic, was a technique that was used to fake a bold by smearing the PostScript characters horizontally and making them appear fatter.

Apple has opted for a truer representation of fonts, particularly one that will pass through a PostScript RIP without unpleasant surprises, because the RIPs will not fake bolds or italics.

Skia was originally created as a demonstration font for Apple's unsuccessful QuickDraw GX font technology.

Carter & Cone designed Skia with just the one weight. You could try altering it and making your own font using an application like FontLab but you would be breaking the copyright.

Peter AW wrote:

Is iWorks incapable of using bold fonts?

(1) there is no iWorks package but an iWork one 🙂

(2) Apple made a decision:
use fonts as they are designed.
If the creator of a given font built a bold version or an italic one, we may use them.
If the creator didn't build variants, we can' use them because Apple refuses to calculate 'faux' styles.

I already wrote several times that from my point of view it's a perfect choice taking care of the font designers rights.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 31 janvier 2009 11:41:09)