Postscript font error - Mac OSX

Support Basics & Interface
1

When I try to load a new font, all postcript fonts show up in the file window as zero bytes and give a “Not a valid font” error. The ttf fonts work fine though. I l know there’s nothing wrong with the fonts coz I use em in DTP all the time.

Is this some OSX weirdness (it doesn’t deal with PS fonts in quite the same way the old Mac OSs did) or is Blender OSX not postscript savvy?

Andy.

2

I am having the same problem. Anyone?

3

I actually don’t use fonts with Blender. If you need to do text, you can use Inkscape and use all the fonts you need then export as an SVG. Then use the SVG import script here:

http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/cpl_import_svg_en.htm

That script is better than the one Blender has. Inkscape seems to support all the built-in OS X fonts.

4

For what it’s worth, I’ve been converting postscript fonts to TrueType using FontLab. Works like a charm…

5

sorry to revive this (not so) old thread… but i’m having the same problem:

impossible to open most of the osx postscript fonts (*.dfont): they show up having 0 bytes in blender’s font explorer and it sais “Error: This is not a valid font”. but in some cases the font doesn’t look empty and i can open it - but then i cannot chose the font variant! for instance i end up with the bold italic version of the font…

my problem is that i cannot use a dxf, svg or png import instead since i’d like to change the text dynamically from a python script that would avoid me to import tons of pre-rendered fonts.

… and i don’t have fontlab either to convert it to a truetype font :confused:

there have been very nice improvements in the last blender versions for font management. but it’d be really handy to have better system integration.

6

Just use true type fonts. It’s the only type currently supported by blender.

7

blender handle well any kind of font. problem is with old fonts packaged in suitcase format which is unfortunately the case of many.

Suitcase is an old pre os-x mac only format where fonts are stored in the ressource fork.

moving the fonts out of the suitcase should be enough. there is utilities to do that (unforker or something like that, font juggler)

8

just found out that there’s also TransType to convert PostScript fonts to TrueType, for only US $87.00 …
http://www.fontlab.com/Font-tools/TransType/

but even if the system can display the result of the conversion to TrueType and shows all characters, Blender still tells me that it’s emty!! and the font isn’t anymore int my system font folder, arrgh! :<

9

ooook got it finally… had to tell TransType to convert the codepage from Unicode to MS Windows Latin 1… don’t ask me what that its, but it seems to work now!! the quest seems over! :smiley:

10

Just out of interest., another useful tool for this sort of things is FontForge: http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

11

I’ve just spent a whole day and a night devising a pathway for feeding Blender with any font on earth, so I thought I might as well share my findings: :cool:

  • get fontforge. For this you will first have to download Darwin Ports, X11 and the XCode Tools (as these can be huge downloads and require to open a free developer’s account, you might rather want to install them from Tiger’s DVD, but these won’t be the latest updates). You can find step-by-step instruction for the install on the net. fontforge will allow you to convert any type of font into any other type through the File->Generate Font menu entry. The plain TrueType (with nothing behind) is well recognized by Blender, and the .ttf fonts that Blender cannot use (all characters are replaced by boxes, the “❚” character) become readable when opened and exported that way.

But fontforge can do nothing about suitcase fonts, inherited from OS9, where the font is indeed located in the resource fork. For this you will have to use dfontifier, which will create a .dfont version of the suitcase font, and then convert the .dfont with fontforge.

That’s all folks! The process is actually a long one, especially the download of the Xcode tools, the installation of fontforge, and the multiple trials and errors, but with some perseverance you should be fine :slight_smile: