Old Mac fonts in Windows?

[safulop]

Greetings,

I am aware of numerous font management programs like Crossfont etc. that are able to take Macintosh fonts and directly import them for use with Windows.

Problem is, all this software only works with PostScript and TrueType fonts (i.e. scalable fonts). What about all those nasty old Mac bitmap-only fonts (i.e. single size)? I am really really in need of importing some old Mac bitmap fonts to my PC for use with MS Word, but I can't figure out how to do this at all.

Thanks for any insightful suggestions,

Sean

 

[safulop]

It might be unusual to reply to oneself, but for an update,

I have found out that, not only is there no way to import ancient Mac bitmap fonts into Windows, there isn't even any clear way to use them on Macs anymore.

It seems that the only way to use these fonts is to actually fire up an old OS 9 Mac. They might also work in OSX Classic environment, that has yet to be tested. But Tiger and Leopard? Forget it.

Some things really are obsolete.

-Sean

 

[mailpup]

Good update.

 

[gbhall]

There really should be no problem with fonts - you can easily find large collections of fonts on the internet, it just takes a little time to find a font so close to the original Mac bitmap as to be indistinguishible. If the original font contains specially shaped special characters, it may be a bit harder. It would be a lot easier if you knew the actual name of the fonts (e.g. Cairo SF by Altsys Fontographer 3.5) then you could search for it direct.

As far as I know, all font files carry internally their name, description, originator and copyright information. This can readily be seen at the top and more universally, at the bottom of the file. To see this, use an old Dos text-file viewing program such as list.com

I would never believe that any font would go out of use, especially collections used in a real operating system. They just get converted to other formats like truetype, adobe, opentype, postscript etc. Google for 'font foundry' and try your luck.