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Modify the OS X system font
Authored by: Wayne_S on May 01, '03 05:08:43PM
I wonder .... if you just copied another font and renamed it "Lucida Grande" and used IT as the system font, would you get the same result? (i.e., a different system font of your own choosing). The font itself would not have changed, only its name. If the system is looking for its own font by name, it should be fooled.

Anyway, I'm too busy/chicken/lazy to try this on my own machine. If anyone else tries it, I'd be interested in the results.

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Modify the OS X system font
Authored by: sgi_oh_too on May 04, '03 09:44:18PM

Nope, tried helvetica with partial success ... tried geneva with
absolutely no success

helvetica changed font for top bar, menus and apps ... but icon
text was absent entirely ... and menu extras had "issues"

geneva resulted in horrible absent text everywhere. also
rendered the dock unlaunchable. had to restart using key
commands i luckily remembered. booted into single user mode,
remounted filesystems as rw and restored the ugly ass lucida
typeface

i am exploring further to see if i can make my own system
compatible hevetica or chicago replacement dfont files



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Modify the OS X system font
Authored by: mdouma46 on May 05, '03 01:22:06AM
I wonder if the partial success might be related to which (if any) bitmap sizes are included in the font in question.

Say for example, Helvetica.dfont only has a 13 pt bitmap inside of the font suitcase while LucidaGrande has a 13 pt, 12 pt, 11, 10, 9 & 8 or something. At least in the past in OS 9, Apple's TrueType font suitcases, in addition to the TrueType font resource, often included several sizes of bitmap fonts which were used for display of menu items, dialogue boxes, etc.

I know that some of the .dfonts of OS X have bitmap sizes as well.

Also, there's no need for the "System Font" (or any other font in OS X for that matter) to be in the ".dfont" format; regular TrueType will work just fine.

Because the font manager I use, FontAgent Pro, can't make .dfonts available to the Classic environment, I've actually converted all of my .dfonts to regular Mac TrueType fonts. That way I have the exact same default system set (the fonts normally installed with X) available both in Classic as well as natively.

For more info on how I did this conversion, see my post over on Apple's Discussion's board.

Hope this helps....

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