I am trying to install a font in the Font Book. I have tried it two ways: 1) simply dragging and dropping the font (which has worked before) 2) going through FILE > ADD FONTS. Neither has worked. When I go to ADD FONTS, there are several listed but only one is clickable. It has a .scr file extension. Can someone please help? Thanks!
The one file with the .scr extension suggests that it's a screen font for a Type 1 PostScript font. This is normal. Please read the following.
Font Book can read PostScript fonts, which are a set. One file is a suitcase containing all of the low res bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts. As an example, here's Adobe Garamond. Adobe Garamond AGarBol AGarBolIta AGarIta AGarReg AGarSem AGarSemIta The first file which I highlighted in green is the font suitcase of bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts. 1) The files for a Type 1 PostScript font must have both the screen and printer fonts for a given set in order to work. They also must be in the same folder.
2) The suitcase of bitmap fonts will work alone, but output will be terrible since the system will print the fonts using the 72 dpi screen fonts in the suitcase if the outline portions are missing.
3) Having only the outline fonts will not work. You will get exactly what you are having problems with. You can see the fonts, but Font Book won't load them. That's not a problem with Font Book itself. No font manager will load outline fonts without the matching suitcase of screen fonts present.
Not all screen fonts for a Type 1 PostScrip font set will have a .scr extension. As you have seen, you cannot click on any of the outline printer portions of a Type 1 PostScript font. You load the screen font and all of the fonts faces become available. This assuming that the suitcase of screen fonts is complete. You could easily have a complete set of the outline fonts, but if the suitcase of screen fonts only has for example, the info for the italic font, then that's the only one that will show up.
I have all the different styles (bold, italics, etc.) for this font but not the info which will allow them to be installed in Font Book?
It's possible. The outline printer fonts must have a matching component in the suitcase of screen fonts. It they aren't in there, then that particular font won't appear in your lists.
In OS 9 and earlier, it was very easy to open the suitcase. Just double click on it and put screen fonts in, or take them out. Lots of people did this to keep from "giving away" expensive fonts they paid for. So it was very common for advertising agencies and others to remove the screen fonts from a suitcase that weren't needed for a job before sending it to the printer. Anyone at the printer who would copy those fonts to take home were then getting a crippled, incomplete set.
The downside to this was that people also got into very bad habits. Many didn't realize that you couldn't send out just the suitcase. Yes, the fonts would show up in your lists if you only have the screen fonts, but you couldn't output the job because as mentioned above, the system would only have the low res bitmapped screen fonts to work with. I used to see all kinds of suitcases full of screen fonts that we didn't get the outline fonts with. Or we had the outline fonts, but the matching screen fonts were missing from the suitcase, making the outline fonts useless. I would imagine that's a lot of the reason Apple made it darn near impossible to open screen font suitcases in OS X.
If you'd like, I could make my email address temporarily available. You could then send the files to me and I could tell you what's going on. Don't worry about me keeping them. I already have thousands of fonts I never use.
Thank you I would very much appreciate it if I could email you the fonts that I have. The font is Sabon. Please let me know and I will email to you. Thanks again.
