Tip O’ the Day: Open Type Fonts Are Cross Platform
As techonology advanced, PCs have quickly caught up with Macs. A designer can do his job on both platforms with the same amount of effort.
I have heard many times the myth that Macs cannot read files created by a Windows program and vice versa. That might have been true some time ago, but it is no longer. Files created by a Windows application can be opened by the same application run on a Mac. When going from Mac to PC, it is often necessary to add a file extension, as Mac software usually doesn’t append it at the end of a file name—that’s about it. There are other minor differences, but they’re easy to outdo.
The main problem remains fonts. Usually fonts used on a platform won’t work with the other one. Sometimes there are problems even using Mac OS X fonts on a Mac OS 9 platform. Luckily there are exceptions:
- Open Type fonts are cross platform. You can use them both with Windows and Mac OS X without problems.
- Mac OS X handles also Windows True Type fonts, yet this doesn’t work in reverse.
If you know your job will be dealt with by another designer using another OS, remember this and you’ll save you both a lot of pain.
[tag]Mac OS, Machintosh, fonts, type Windows, PC, Mac[/tags]
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