If you use PostScript fonts or ATM,

Rip out your TrueType fonts!

If you use font-intensive desktop publishing applications on a Mac, and you produce PostScript files, or you use Type 1 fonts and you print to a non-PostScript printer, you may have experienced spacing and underlining anomalies. These anomalies often arise when the outline (printer) fonts and bitmap (screen) fonts are mismatched: You are likely to experience problems if for a particular font name (such as Palatino), you combine a Type 1 outline (say from Adobe) with a TrueType bitmap (say from Apple).

I strongly recommend that you avoid this situation by ripping all the TrueType outline fonts out of your system (except perhaps the ones named for cities). In the following description, I assume that you are using Mac OS 7.1 or greater.

	A suitcase file may contain bitmapped (screen) fonts, and may contain TrueType outline fonts. Active suitcase files are located in the Fonts subfolder of the System Folder. If you are running Adobe Type Manager (ATM), Symantec's Suitcase application, or some other font utility, you might have active fonts in other locations. A suitcase file has the icon shown at the left.
	A bitmapped screen font within a suitcase has this icon. The corresponding name is listed with a size, in points. Screen fonts are supplied by Apple, Adobe, and other font vendors.
	A TrueType font within a suitcase file has this icon. The three differently-sized letters A in the icon are suggestive of the capability of the font to be rendered at different sizes. The corresponding name is listed without a numerical size indication, because the font can be rendered at any size. If a TrueType font is active, it will mask any like-named Type 1 font: if you want to use a Type 1 font, then you should remove any like-named TrueType font.
	An Adobe Type 1 font is stored as its own file, with this icon, in the Fonts subfolder. There are separate files for different styles of the font - Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, and so on. It is standard to name these files with the 5-3-3-3 scheme: the first 5 characters are taken from the font name (e.g. Palat for Palatino); groups of three characters such as Ita or Bol may follow to indicate style variations.
	If you have a non-Adobe Type 1 font, it will have a different icon, such as this one.

I recommend that you make inactivate every TrueType fonts that is named after a city, except for Chicago, Monaco, and Geneva. Inactivate a font by simply moving it out of the Fonts folder.

The Chicago, Monaco, and Geneva TrueType fonts are used by system software. I advise you to leave these installed, in TrueType form. However, I also advise you not to use them in any document! They are optimized for the screen.

New York is a cheap imitation of Times; Geneva is a cheap imitation of Helvetica. Upon printing to a PostScript printer, Monaco, Geneva, and New York are normally substituted by Courier, Helvetica, and Times respectively. If you really want Courier, Helvetica, or Times in a document, make sure you specify it explicitly: do not rely upon the font substitution feature to to obtain one of these. In fact, I recommend that you access the PostScript options of Page Setup, and disable Substitute Fonts. This setting is stored on a per-document basis.

Once you have made any non-city-named TrueType fonts inactive, confirm that for every Type 1 outline font, you have installed the matching screen font, and it is from the same vendor as the Type 1 font. If you Get Info for an Adobe font, the file information dialog includes Adobe's copyright information.

More detail is available in the document Apple v. Adobe Metrics.

You might also be interested in PostScript vs. TrueType Fonts: Which should you use? by Judy Litt.

There is an archaic option in some older Microsoft products: fractional spacing. Very early Macintosh applications restricted spacing of characters to the same pitch as pixels on the screen, ¹/₇₂ inch. For some unaccountable reason, Microsoft chose to perpetuate this behaviour into their applications, long after the LaserWriter was commonplace, and long after the Mac system software allowed essentially infinite resolution of character positions. To achieve good spacing in these Microsoft products, you must enable Fractional Spacing (that is, fractions of ¹/₇₂ inch) in the Page Setup dialog.

Charles - Mac, Frame, Introduction to RIPping
1998-05-29