Analyze Old Fonts

To start Font Box, double-click its program icon and Font Box displays its home screen. Click Start to begin analyzing your fonts. Font Box then displays the Analyze Old Fonts window shown below. It is designed so you click buttons to tell Font Box what font tests you want to perform.

Specifying Font Tests The Analyze Old Fonts window provides options for the location of the fonts to analyze and the analysis tests to perform. Specifying the Drives to Analyze Press the pop-up labeled 'Find all fonts on' at the top of the window to display a list of the drives attached to your computer. To analyze one disk, select its name from the pop-up list. If you have more than one attached disk, you'll see an option labeled 'All local drives'. Select this option if you wish to analyze all fonts on the drives attached to your system. If you want to analyze networked volumes, you must take these extra steps: Drag the Fonts folder out of the System folder on the networked Macs. Use an extension manager to set the networked machines to load only the minimal extensions to support networking and restart them. Start Font Box on the machine where you want to perform the analysis and mount the volumes corresponding to the networked Macintosh systems. Select the 'All mounted drives' option from the 'Find all fonts on' pop-up, then proceed with your Font Box analysis. Analyzing a Folder and Its Subfolders To analyze only the fonts in a specific folder and its subfolders, select the disk drive containing the folder using the 'Find All Fonts on' pop-up. Then check the box labeled in a single folder. After you begin the analysis by clicking the Continue button, Font Box displays a dialog asking you to select the folder you wish to analyze. NOTE: The drive you select must contain the folder you wish to analyze. Specifying the Tests to Perform Font Box performs a variety of tests on the fonts you ask it to analyze, and identifies the following conditions: Damaged or corrupt fonts Duplicate bitmapped fonts Duplicate PostScript fonts Bitmaps without PostScript fonts PostScript fonts without bitmaps Large, unnecessary bitmapped sizes Identifying Corrupt Fonts You do not have to tell Font Box to check for corrupt fonts; it checks every font it analyzes for corruption automatically. Identifying Duplicate Fonts The duplicate font tests identify situations where two versions of the same font exist. Keeping both not only wastes disk space, but can cause inconsistent output unless the font files are exactly alike. Unless you have a very good reason for keeping two copies, you should ask Font Box to fix the problem by checking both the box labeled Find duplicate bitmapped fonts as well as the one marked Find duplicate PostScript fonts. Font Box also identifies fonts that are installed as both TrueType and Type 1. Click the 'Prefer' radion button correspording to the font format you prefer. In general, if you have a PostScript printer or exchange files with others, especially sending files for output, then select 'Prefer Type 1'. Otherwise, select 'Prefer TrueType'. In the test for duplicate PostScript fonts, you have the choice of recognizing or ignoring font foundries. For example, if you have both Adobe Garamond and ITC Garamond, you have the choice of keeping both or eliminating one of them. To keep both the Adobe and ITC versions as separate fonts, check the box labeled Keep fonts from different foundries. If you leave the box unchecked, Font Box keeps whichever font is more complete. Identifying Orphaned Fonts An orphaned font file is one that is missing its bitmapped or PostScript counterpart. When a PostScript file is missing, the font appears normal on screen in the bitmap's installed sizes, but jagged in any other size. And when printed, the font appears jagged because your Mac is forced to use its bitmap version. When a bitmapped file is missing, its PostScript counterpart can never be used and wastes disk space until you re-install the bitmap file. To find orphaned fonts, check the boxes labeled Find bitmapped fonts without PostScript fonts and Find PostScript fonts without bitmapped fonts. Font Box then gives you a list of orphaned fonts so you can re-install the complete fonts later. Remove Large Bitmapped Sizes Adobe Type Manager (ATM) only needs one size to generate every other point size. If you use ATM and want to remove all screen font sizes larger than 12 point, check this box to save hard disk and memory requirements and improve system and application performance. IMPORTANT: Select this option only if you use Adobe Type Manager. Fix Automatically By default, the Fix Automatically box is not checked, and Font Box displays a list of every problem it finds, then asks you if you want to fix the problem. If you check the box, Font Box fixes each problem without asking you for input. In other words, if you check this box, Font Box creates you new font library without requiring your further attention. Finishing Your Font Analysis Request When you are finished specifying the font analyses you want Font Box to perform, click the Continue button. To terminate your request, click the Cancel button.