Font conversion problems

In general, Type 1 PostScript fonts don't have file extensions. Most of them look like this:

Adobe Garamond

AGarBol

AGarBolIta

AGarIta

AGarReg

AGarSem

AGarSemIta

The bold, italic name is the suitcase of screen fonts. The rest are the vector outline fonts for printing. How many outline fonts you have for a set simply depends on how many they made. It could be one, it could be 20. But each outline will have at least one matching screen font in the suitcase, or that typeface won't work.

The only place you'll normally see extensions on T1 PS fonts will be for the screen font suitcase. Such as .bmap, .scr and a few others. It's there for no reason other than for the user to easily see which one of the set is the suitcase of screen fonts. The OS doesn't care if the extension is there or not.

As far as converting, you don't need the screen fonts. Everything a converter would need is in the outline fonts.

There are numerous online sites that will convert fonts for free. You upload a handful at a time (usually no more than 5). It converts them and gives you a link to download the converted fonts.

But since you have a lot, this would take a very tediously long time to do. You'd be better off purchasing an app dedicated to doing batch conversions:

https://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/transtype/

https://fontgear.com/products/fontxchange-for-macintosh

Earlier I manually added .TTF to one of my True Type fonts & the icon changed from that horrible black thing with "exec" on it, to an actual icon that looked like all my other fonts with file extensions.

Ah. That's a horse of a different color. You may be talking about two different things here. An example of a T1 PS font:

Note the Kind.

An example of Legacy OS 9 suitcase fonts:

The EXEC icon is sort of "new". As of Monterey or Big Sur, Apple stopped assigning icons to these old fonts, though the OS still recognizes them. It's just a visual thing.

What may have happened, is when you added .ttf to a legacy suitcase font, the OS no longer knew what to do with it. They are TrueType fonts, but not in that format.

If the latter is what you have, these are more difficult to handle. No online converter will recognize legacy TrueType suitcase fonts. Can't tell you if the apps I mentioned above do. But I think either will let you convert a few fonts before purchasing.

Sorry to hear FontXChange is so buggy. I only mentioned it because - last time I looked, anyway - these are the only two stand-alone converters for Mac available.

You can get the demo for TransType by entering an email address on the lead page I linked to and clicking the "SEND ME THE LINKS" button.

That immediately loads the next page. You don't even need to fill in any of the other personal info below. Just click the download button.

I dropped a set of eight T1 PS fonts for AG Old Face into TransType. It converted them quickly, and without issue.

That all said, as a developer I'd be embarrassed if my app crashed as easily as FontXChange seems to be doing. It's been around for quite a while and should have much better error handling than that. Personally, I'd be requesting a refund.

As far as the MM fonts go, neither can do anything with those. TransType threw out a message when I tried to drag one in.

These are Multiple Master fonts. The original version of what are now available as Variable OpenType. They don't have fixed outline glyphs, so can't be converted in any sense of "normal". Just delete all of those, they're dead.

del.frost wrote:

Now that Adobe are no longer supporting TrueType fonts, I need to convert some of my fonts to OTF.

FWIW, Adobe still supports TrueType fonts. Adobe dropped support for Postscript Type 1 fonts.

See: PostScript Type 1 fonts end of support

Okay, they're all outline fonts for a Type 1 PostScript set. They won't work without the matching screen fonts in any app. But as mentioned earlier, none of the latest Adobe apps will load them at all.

Since you have over 7,300 of them, you're definitely going to want to spend the roughly $100 on a dedicated converter app.

Download either I linked to above (or both) and try a few of these T1 PS outline fonts in demo mode before plunking down the cash.

I always prefer OpenType PostScript myself, but the apps should let you choose that or OpenType TrueType. Whatever you decide as the output format, make sure to choose OpenType. Just about all other font formats are heading to the dustbin of history.

Be aware not all fonts translate well. Anything with standard characters; A-Z, a-z, punctuation and numbers are generally not a problem. But ornament fonts can be kind of a mess when translated.

I think it is Postscript Type 1 fonts that may no longer be supported (not TrueType). Is that what you are referring to?

Have you checked with Adobe's support forums?

This article may help. Section 11 talks about the Postscript problem

http://www.jklstudios.com

I was a very long time Suitcase user until it became so glacially slow it was essentially unusable. It's much faster again in its Connect Fonts replacement, but in my opinion is grossly overpriced for a font manager.

That led me to switch to FontExplorerX Pro, which was great until Linotype killed it a year ago.

I'm now using Typeface. A very nice font manager for only $37. That gets you all updates for a year. After that, the free updates stop unless you pay a reduced continuation fee. But it keeps working as is whether you pay or not.

You can set it up to show fonts in any phrase you want: