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Creating a Mac Font Suitcase with Fontforge

Composed by: Rezmason
On: 2023-11-16 14:16:17

Sometimes a classic Mac application opens a document that expects a font that is not installed. For instance, here is Macromedia Director lamenting the absence of Arial:

A dialog box from Macromedia Director that says, "This movie uses fonts that are not available on this system. Director will use a default font to display the following: Arial".

Installed fonts are in the HD/System Folder/Fonts directory. If you look there, you may find some TTF files that suggest you can transfer TTF fonts from a more modern system, restart your application and resolve the issue, but not all TrueType fonts work with the classic Mac OS.

There's a chance a classic-mac-compatible format of the font you need is somewhere deep inside Fonts Pro 2002, but hold your horses. You may be able to convert a more common format of your font to a Mac font suitcase using FontForge. FontForge is a free font editor that contains a feature called "Generate Mac Family".

The File menu of FontForge, with a red box highlighting the "Generate Mac Family..." menu item

DISCLAIMERS:

  • Forgive me for not including a tutorial for using FontForge. I'm too busy. FontForge requires XQuartz on modern Macs, and it's a little awkward, but it's a powerful addition to the nostalgiac's toolkit.
  • This process worked for me and my font family, which is Arial MT. Every family is different, as they say, but hopefully our mileage doesn't vary too much.

Okay, here are the steps:

  1. Open FontForge on your system.
  2. Select the File > Open menu item and then navigate to and open every font file belonging in your font's family.
    • For instance, my Arial font is actuall four TTF files: "Arial", "Arial (bold)", "Arial (italic)", and "Arial (bold, italic)". Whatever you've got, open them all.
      The FontForge open dialog box, with several fonts of the same family selected
  3. Select the window of the "Normal" or "Regular" font. This step is important and not very well documented. In my example, the proper window to select is "ArialMT Arial.ttf (UnicodeBmp)". (See below.)
  4. Select the File > Generate Mac Family... menu item. If FontForge says "Bad Mac Family", it's not a personal judgement; just check to make sure all your open files belong together and the window you're working in contains a "Normal" or "Regular" version of the font, and then try again.
    A FontForge dialog saying "Bad Mac Family": "To generate a Mac family file, the current font must have plan (Normal, Regular, etc.) style, and there must be other open fonts with the same family name."
  5. FontForge will display a special Save dialog box. You'll be creating a ".suit" file, which is the same as a classic Mac font suitcase. At the bottom of the window is a list of all the non-regular fonts that will be included in the suitcase you're generating. Verify that everything's there and then save it.
    FontForge's "Generate Mac Family" dialog box, with a list of fonts included in the family.
  6. Transfer that file to your classic Mac environment. Go ahead, you know your setup better than I do.
  7. In your Mac environment, drop your new suitcase into the HD/System Folder/Fonts directory.
    A classic Macintosh environment, where a font suitcase called "ArialMT.suit" is being dragged and dropped into the system Fonts folder.
  8. Quit and reopen your application, and it should detect the newly installed font. If that doesn't work, try turning it off and on again.

Consider donating to Macintosh Repository! I don't, but I'm seriously considering it.