I have over 100,000 fonts on a disk in font suitcase form. They can be displayed and loaded (limited by OS 9 maximums) on my 9.2.2 version system.
I want to add several to my X v10.8.5 system. So I copied the ones I wanted onto a USB stick and then copied them into a folder on my X computer.
They showed up as "zero byte" unix executable files.
What gives?
Gary
You need to do a few conversions; the suitcase files are resource containers containing truetype fonts in resource format. You'll need to convert them to "flat file" truetype fonts like Windows uses in order to use them on OS X. This sticks everything in the resource fork.
Now... this assume you're working with TrueType fonts. If they're bitmap fonts, you're out of luck, and if they're bitmap + Adobe, it's probably best to use a converter to convert them over to TrueType flat files first.
Fontographer will do a great job at this on the OS 9 side; I use LinoType Font Explorer X to manage my fonts on the OS X side.
[edit] I should note that your USB stick is probably formatted EXT32, which is a disk format that doesn't handle resource forks; this is why the files are a 0 size. Format the USB stick as HFS and the resource forks should be preserved. But you won't be able to use the fonts without converting them.
>Fontographer will do a great job at this on the OS 9 side
So I use Fontographer on my OS 9 system to "flatten" them and then move the flattened file to X. Correct?
Gary
You should check to see if your formatting of the USB stick was an issue (FAT instead of HFS+) but if you want to use Fontographer to "Generate Font Files..." as "PC TrueType" - this will create a new TrueType "flat file" .TTF based on the input file.
These you should be able to use in X, OK.
>You should check to see if your formatting of the USB stick was an issue
I sort of did that by taking the disk with my font collection on it (all 100,000+ fonts) and connecting it to the X system.
All of the fonts were zero bytes on the disk. OS 9 saw them as per normal.
Gary
Check the resource fork on OSX.
Open up a Terminal, type in "ls -l@ ", then drag the folder into the window, then press return. Check for the presence of "com.apple.FinderInfo" and "com.apple.ResourceFork".
TTConverter can probably help you here:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ttconverter
It converts from Windows-style .TTF fonts to Macintosh, but IIRC also the reverse. Like it was said before, only the TrueType (outline) format is supported, not bitmap fonts -- and these are the ones bundled in 'suitcases'.
I think also that the additional metadata in the 'suitcase' itself is not supported, such as some parent information that connects multiple sizes/styles together, it is lost in the conversion process -- but generally you cannot make use of it anyway in Windows or MacOS X.
