Copying fonts from a Mac share to Win7.

[zerassar]

Hey guys.

I have been archiving old creative work by copying from a mac server network share onto my external HDD and then burning to DVD.

However I am now noticing that while the font files appear to be burned they are attempting to open in terminal on the macs and have 0kb file size.

Attempting to figure out why I am browsing to current jobs from the win7 machine and noticing that these also have 0kb file size. But from the mac server they appear fine.

Sitting at the win 7 and copying from the mac server doesnt work. As does sitting at the osx server and pushing the files to a share on the win7 machine.

What would cause font files in particular to not work properly over the network?

 

[calderone]

You are running into a resource fork problem, where the font data is stored in the resource fork and not the data fork on non-OS X volumes or you are reading from a fork unaware OS (Win7). Your workflow is not really clear from your post. So if you could clarify, it would be appreciated.

1. What version of OS X are you running?
2. What server is the file share running? (AFP, SMB, NFS, etc)?
3. Are you mixing access? Reading via SMB, writing via AFP?
4. What is the volume structure of the external (NTFS, HFS+, etc)?
5. What OS was used to copy the fonts to the network share originally?
6. What type of fonts are you working with? (OpenType, PS Type 1, etc?)

If you could clarify these things, and your workflow I could better assist you.

 

[zerassar]

The client machines that are accessing the shares are Snow Leopard.
The server hosting the share is Leopard with XRAID HFS+

The server appears to be running AFP + SMB and NFS concurrently.

The machines making the artwork are Snowleopard and they are using CS4 then artfiles to collect all the files together and store on the network share.

My external is an NTFS.
Sorry if I appeared vague.
Thanks for the assist

 

[calderone]

Essentially, the Windows 7 box cannot see the resource fork, which is what contains the font data.

On a Mac OS machine, while connected to the share. Navigate to a folder with fonts via Terminal and type:

ls -la

You should see Font Name.ttf and ._Font Name.tff. This means that when those fonts were copied to the share it was done so using a non-native OS X protocol (SMB, etc). These file systems are fork unaware (although many of them support streams), because of this the font gets split into a data and resource fork. This is also known as Apple Double.

Essentially, you need to make sure you grab those ._ files. If you are using Windows to burn, you may have to show hidden files and be sure to grab the ._ file. OS X is fork aware, so you should be able to burn no problem from OS X.

Hope that helps. Some info on Apple Double:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20578

 

[zerassar]

Thanks cal that answers my issue. I was grabbing the 0kb file through Win7. However I have just confirmed if I used the osx to copy the files to the external HDD the ._ files you describe do indeed appear.

Would there be any ramifications if I had the postscript files converted into true or open type fonts?

Are there any other issues with using NTFS shares is a cross platform environment?

 

[Buzz Bumble]

I hope you realise that you're probably breaking the license agreements for those fonts by moving them to another computer.

 

[zerassar]

@Buzz Bumble

Thanks buzz I had not even thought of that.
Though to be totally honest that is the least of this companies concerns. But I will look into what the EULA entails.

Until I arrived on the scene they were more than happy to allow staff to use work computers to download Torrents.

It was an uphill battle to get management onside with that one.

 

[Buzz Bumble]

It's often easy to forget that fonts (as well as sounds, etc.) are really "software" and have a license agreement either or their own or as part of the package they came in.

The standard Mac OS fonts can't be used on Windows computers, and the standard Windows font can't be used on Mac OS computers. (You also shouldn't copy fonts from older versions of the Mac OS.) If you install Microsoft Office you will of course get the appropriate fonts installed to allow easy cross-platform compatibility, but you can't move those to a machine without Office.

Fonts purchased from Type Foundaries, "free" on clip-art CD-ROMs, etc. will usually have a license agreement of some sort, but they do vary.

Custom-created fonts made by yourself you can of course do whatever you want with.

Technically there are restictions on what fonts you can embed in a PDF as well, but most font suppliers turn a blind eye to that since it is necessary when sending documents to a print company (for example) and is difficult to un-embed them to use for other documents.