Create a comprehensive writing system font collection in Font Book
Nov 21, '11 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: porg
To create a font collection within Mac OS X Font Book, which covers all characters/glyphs/symbols (i.e., the complete range) necessary for a certain writing system, we can use a little trick in conjunction with System Preference's language settings.
Remark: Throughout this hint, I use the term 'writing system' although the involved software applications and their labeling and naming conventions may also use terms such as 'language, script, etc.' interchangeably. Within context you will easily understand the instructions; I just mention this for completeness.
Here are the steps:
- Open System Preferences » Language and Text » Language.
- In the language list, leave your native writing system on top.
- Click: Edit list.
- Enable all writing systems for which you would like to create the font collection. Confirm the selection, leave this window open.
- Open Font Book.
- Move and resize the windows as necessary so that you can see both Font Book and System Preferences, and easily switch between them.
- Repeat the following steps for each writing system for which you would like to create a font collection:
- Go to System Preferences and drag writing system XX to the top.
- Within Font Book's collection list, right beyond the first entry 'All fonts,' a dynamic font collection refreshes to the writing system XX, which you just have chosen in System Preferences. This dynamic font collection only shows those fonts, which contain the necessary character range for your chosen writing system.
- Create a new font collection, give it a meaningful name, i.e. 'Japanese Script.'
- Click on the dynamic font collection on the top (i.e. 'Japanese'), select all fonts (Command+A), then drag and drop them on the font collection, which you created in the previous step (i.e. 'Script Japanese').
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one.]
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