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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Edit Font Suitcases in Mac OS X
-- InDesign CS's Auto-Trapping
-- QuarkXPress 6.5 Installation Report
Issue 31, 11/2/04
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
© 2004 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Edit Font Suitcases in Mac OS X
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During all the years that people worked on Macs, up until OS X, they could open bitmap font suitcases and do things with the innards.
I remember when ATM was first released over a decade ago. Its documentation recommended you open all your font suitcases and remove all screen font sizes (each weight had at least 5 sizes) except for 10pt and 12pt to save system resources. Since ATM used Type 1 fonts' outline files to create smooth screen fonts at any size, you didn't need all those "standard" screen sizes built-in to your bitmaps anymore, just one or two for ATM to hang its hat on.This was back when ATM was just a toddler, of course, before it grew up to be a font manager.
You could use Font/DA Mover to prune your screen fonts, or you could just double-click a font suitcase and its contents would be editable in the Finder, similar to working on the contents of a folder.
Designers edited font suitcase contents as part of their everyday workflow, not just for ATM's purposes. For example, in my studio, for efficiency's sake, we created single "master" suitcases holding all the screen fonts (just 10pt and 12pt sizes) for every font variation in a large type family: Futura_All.scn, Univers_All.bmp, etc. That made it a lot easier when we were packaging up all the fonts and images for the vendor who'd be outputting our print project ... (remember dragging fonts over manually for this? Brings a wee tear to me eye).
And I know a lot of shops used to create custom font suitcases for a client's project, a single suitcase containing just those screen fonts (from multiple typefaces) used on the job. It made it easier for transferring, archiving and updating.
Now that we and tens of thousands of other designers have upgraded to OS X, what are we supposed to do with these freaks of nature screen font suitcases? How can we even tell what's in them? OS X doesn't allow you see the contents of screen font suitcases, let alone edit them.
If you ask the type vendor, they'll tell you to just reinstall the fonts "from the original disk." Yeah ... right. You mean those floppies I left in the basement when we moved offices in 1995? And just where is that floppy slot on my G5? Or G4? Or G3?
(Personally, I don't understand why type vendors don't just post all their Type 1 screen font suitcases as free downloads. Without the printer outlines, they're basically worthless anyway. Or even just sell them for $5 a set. I'd buy a few just to make sure I had up-to-date, non-corrupted screen fonts, clean and pristine. )
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The Solutions (other than booting into OS 9)
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There are two ways you can open and edit font suitcases in OS X, and one is free.
First, the not-free one. You can buy Font Doctor (now at v6.1.5) from Morrison Software for $70.00:
http://www.morrisonsoftdesign.com/fd_mac.html
Font Doctor is a utility that examines your fonts and alerts you to any damaged ones. Sometimes it can even fix them. But the main feature, for our purposes, is that it allows users to open and edit screen font suitcases. It even lets you create new, empty suitcases so you can rebuild "fresh" ones.
The command you're looking for in Font Doctor -- it took me a while to figure it out -- is File -> Move Fonts. That generates the window where you see the "Open Suitcase" and "Close Suitcase" buttons, and can drag or drag-copy fonts from one suitcase to another.
Font Doctor comes bundled with Extensis's Suitcase font management program, which is only $100, so you might want to spring for that instead, if you haven't already:
http://www.extensis.com/en/products/product_features.jsp?id=1054
By the way, you can download a fully-functional demo (good for 30 days) of Font Doctor from Extensis's site. When you boot up Font Doctor, the splash screen tells you some features won't work in demo mode, but they actually do. Extensis confirms this is a fully-functioning demo when they automatically follow-up with an e-mail.
Okay. The second way to edit font suitcases in OS X is free, but boy, is it ugly.
Yes, my friends, you can run the venerable Font/DA Mover, part of the Mac System Software from the Cretaceous age, in Classic mode in OS X. (If you got on the Mac train after Font/DA Mover was history, DA stands for Desk Accessory ... like the Calculator. And the Puzzle. And the Stapler. Just kidding about the Stapler.)
Font/DA Mover will recognize and open suitcases no matter where they're located on your Mac, in any of the Classic or OS X font folders. No rebooting into OS 9 required.
Can't find your System 6 floppies to resurrect it? You can still download Font/DA Mover 4.1 from Apple's site (in your browser's address bar, remove the space after Software_Updates/):
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/ English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_6.0.x/TrueType/
.... when you get to that page, click the link "Font_DA_Mover_4.1.sea.bin" to start the download.
Suitcases edited with Font/DA Mover work perfectly fine in OS X. You can move or delete screen fonts from existing suitcases, but unlike Font Doctor, you can't create new ones.
Go ahead and give Font/DA Mover a shot, it's a trip.
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InDesign CS's Auto-Trapping
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A friend of mine, a meticulous designer (and a relative newbie to ID) e-mailed me two simple questions a few days ago: Does InDesign automatically trap, like Quark? And can you see those traps when you preview separations (in Window -> Output Preview -> Separations)?
The answer to the first question is yes. Sort of.
Like QuarkXPress 6, InDesign CS automatically creates traps (overprinting edge colors to compensate for slight misregistration on the press) for page layout elements. You can see the default trap settings if you open the [Default] trap preset from Windows -> Trap Presets. Use the same palette to create and apply other trap settings.
I say "sort of" because the only time InDesign (or Quark 6, for that matter) actually generates those traps is when you print out separations. When you print a composite proof to your laser writer, or export a page layout file to a composite PDF, no trapping is applied. When you send a composite file to your print vendor, their software does the trapping when it's separated. They don't use InDesign's built-in trapping settings. The only traps they may honor are any strokes you manually set to be overprinting via the Attributes palette.
Which brings me to my friend's second question. He was sure he could detect automatic traps with InDesign's Separations Preview palette. I took a look at his file and thought so too, at first.
Try it yourself ... put some spot-colored type on top of a process color background, open the Separations preview palette (choose Separations from its dropdown menu too), and look at the type's outlines closely in InDesign. There's a slight edge to the type that is a mix of the spot and process color background.
If you hover your mouse over the relevant page elements, you'll see the ink percentages change in the Separations palette. Move the tip of the cursor ever so slightly from the type interior, to the type edge, to the background. Watch as the palette's ink % readouts change from 100% spot color (when you're over the type) to 50% spot/50% process mix (when you're exactly over the edge of the type) to 100% of the process color (when the cursor is wholly on top of the background color).
If you look at individual plates on screen, you can also detect the edge of the spot color fade to 50%.
What the heck? I double-checked the documentation and called some printers I know. Nope, all said it was impossible. You can't see traps in Separations preview, only in actual separation printouts.
In the meantime, my friend was freaking out, because assuming he was actually seeing the automatic trapping here, he was also seeing that it was incorrect. Some elements had no traps that should, other traps had a bad mix of inks.
After a bit of head-scratching, I figured it out. The cursor was picking up the *screen antialiasing* of the type, not the trapping, which (as I said) didn't exist at this point. When hovering over the antialiased edge, InDesign was converting those RGB numbers to CMYK in the Separations preview palette, just as it does with placed RGB images.
Solution: Turn off anti-aliasing in Preferences -> Display Preferences. Voila, the phantom screen traps are gone. Everything is pure knockout/kiss fit, just as the documentation says.
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Tiplet
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If you really want to see the effects of InDesign's built-in trapping on-screen, you can. (Just remember that your print vendor will very likely *not* be using these settings, unless this is the final file you turn over. And in that case, better warn them that's what you did!)
What you'll be doing is creating a trapped, composite PDF file.
1. Choose File -> Print, and choose the Adobe PDF printer as your printer. (This means you'll need to have Acrobat 6 properly installed, it's what adds the Adobe PDF virtual printer to every program's Print dialog.)
2. In the Print dialog, in the Output panel, look for the Color: dropdown menu. Change the color output from Composite CMYK to In-RIP Separations.
3. Right below that you'll see the Trapping: dropdown menu. It's probably set to Off. Change it to Adobe Built-In.
4. Make any other changes you'd like in the Print dialog -- page range, printer's marks, etc.
5. Click the Printer button (or Setup button if you're on Windows) at the bottom of the Print dialog. Change Adobe PDF options to the Press preset, and click Print to back out of the Printer/Setup dialog.
6. When prompted, name your PDF and tell the infernal machine where to save it. Click Print again in the InDesign Print dialog.
Open the PDF in Acrobat. To view the traps (the overprinting strokes), turn on Overprint Preview in the Advanced menu. You may need to use the Loupe zoom tool if your traps are really small.
And they said it couldn't be done ! ;-) (Thanks to Nick Hodge at nickhodge.com for the basics of this technique.)
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Doing it in Quark
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By the way ... as far as I can tell, it *can't* be done in QuarkXPress 6. I experimented for a long time but I couldn't get Quark to show its automatic trapping in a composite PDF.
However, I was able to get halfway there. I pretended I was going to print separations to my laser printer ... by choosing those options in Quark's print dialog ... but then made an end-run by clicking the Printer button and changing the OS printer to Adobe PDF. That created a color-separated PDF (one page/plate per color) that showed the traps Quark automatically creates.
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Quark 6.5 Installation Report
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Speaking of which ... Yesterday afternoon, Quark posted its free v6.5 updaters to its web site. You can only upgrade to 6.5 if you have Quark 6.1; if you never ran the 6.0 to 6.1 updater, you'll have to do that first. (Instructions and links are detailed on the Quark site.)
QuarkXPress 6.5 Update Page:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/65update.html
The download is 160MB, so if you don't have a high-speed connection, you'll probably prefer to have Quark send you the updater on a CD. It's free, but it will take 8 weeks to get to you.
There's one 6.5 update file for Mac 6.1 users, but two different 6.5 updaters for Windows 6.1 users. Depending on how Windows users "got to" 6.1 (buying 6.1 or updating their 6.0 to 6.1), they'll have to use a different installer. All the grimy details and "how to tell what you have" instructions are on the site.
I just downloaded and installed 6.5 this morning, so this report is very preliminary. Haven't used it for any real jobs yet.
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What's New in 6.5
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Quark 6.5 includes a number of bug fixes, a few enhancements to existing features, the very cool QuarkVista XT, and the "I guess it's a good thing" Citrix support.
For the list of bug fixes, see this page:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/tech_info/65problemsresolved.html
For the list of new or unresolved bugs, go here:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/tech_info/65knownissues.html
In the program itself you can now create guides on the Master page pasteboard that appear in the document pages' pasteboards. Also, you can now group tables with other items or tables. And you can include Bleed settings in your Print Styles. Not too much there, I guess we'll have to wait for v7 to see a solid set of enhancements across the board.
QuarkVista is a new XTension (created by Quark, not licensed from a third-party) that allows you to apply Photoshop-like effects, filters and color transformations to imported raster files (in the usual TIFF, EPS, etc. formats). Of course they don't call it "Photoshop-like," they call it "expensive image editing software"-like. Well I guess they could be talking about Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, which at $100 is not the cheapest thing around.
You access the Vista capabilities via a new palette, Picture Effects. The color adjustments and filter effects you apply can be turned on and off, and many can be tweaked via an Edit dialog and a handy Preview checkbox. I'll probably write more about Vista in future issues.
While Quark has often said that in version 6.5 you'd be able to import native Photoshop files and turn their layers on/off right in Quark, the feature -- a version of alap's ImagePort XT -- apparently wasn't ready in time for 6.5's release. All .psd files are greyed out in my Get Picture dialog, and users on the Quark forum are reporting the same. I checked around and was assured that Quark will post an announcement and a download link for it in the near future.
The headscratcher, for me at least, is Quark 6.5's "support for Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server and Terminal Server users." If I knew of a single Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation server-using art department, I'd be more enthused, I'm sure. I'm just glad I can type the thing. Very possibly there are a ton of large installs where they use this set-up, otherwise why would Quark bother. (So if you're one, no offense, and congratulations on the new feature.)
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Bundled Goodies
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When you get 6.5 you can also get a pre-selected package of 40 free OpenType fonts (the Std kind, with far fewer glyphs than the Pro kind) from Linotype. They're a good mix of text, display and script fonts, many of which you probably don't have already.
To get the fonts, go to the link in the ReadMe file and enter your Quark serial number. You can find your serial number in the Quark Environment dialog ... hold down Option/Alt while choosing About QuarkXPress.
Always paranoid about "free" software, I read through the Linotype license agreement, and it appears that the fonts are embeddable in PDFs. When I made a couple PDFs with the Linotype fonts (from InDesign, just to make sure they weren't tied to Quark somehow ... did I mention I was paranoid?) they worked just fine.
The download comes with an Extras folder that contains a few free XTs that have been available from the Quark site for a while, like PDFBoxer, as well as a few stock template packages. But it also includes a 6-month fully-enabled demo of FontAgent Pro, currently the favorite font management program among the cognoscenti. I may just give it a whirl.
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BRING HERGEEKNESS ON-SITE
Do you like what you read in DesignGeek? Find anything useful? Bring me in for a session or two of hands-on software training for your workgroup; here in Chicago or any other city near an airport, and you can have me all to yourself. LOL .... I don't charge an arm and a leg, and you'll find we usually go far beyond teaching which dialog does what. I pay attention to your particular projects and workflow, and teach how you can best use the software to get it done easily, accurately and efficiently.
Many of the stories I write in DesignGeek come from real-world situations my training clients are dealing with. They had a problem that wasn't on the syllabus, I helped them solve it. This level of commitment to your real-world concerns is just one of the benefits I offer to training clients. To learn more, or hear what other clients have to say, contact me or fill out the no-obligation "Request a Training Quote' form on Seneca's site:
http://www.senecadesign.com/training/request.html
Recent training clients include Marquette University (InDesign); Think Design Group (InDesign, InCopy); Republic Windows & Doors (OS X, Quark 6, Illustrator CS); Cadence Design Systems (OS X, Quark 6, Acrobat); Abbott Laboratories (InDesign, OS X); Seven Worldwide (InCopy); BCN Communications (InDesign); Ispat/Inland Steel (InDesign); and a second visit to BBDO Chicago (InDesign).
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site: http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/subscribe.html
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Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or e-mail at info@senecadesign.com
Copyright 2004 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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