Fontlab's TransType Pro, a more powerful version of its previously released TransType SE, is designed for resolving those very real font-related problems that all designers face, providing the ability to convert fonts between the Mac and Windows platforms, and the leading font formats: PostScript, TrueType and OpenType.

Graphics.com asked Fontlab to put some of the program's core functionality into the context of how it might be employed by designers and agencies to solve real-world, font-related dilemmas. Since fonts are acquired ongoingly to meet client needs, design shops typically accumulate large numbers of them from a variety of vendors. Keeping these legacy fonts usable is important for monetizing their value over time. Adam Twardoch, Fontlab's Scripting Products and Marketing Manager, provided some specifics of how TransType Pro could play a role in keeping such legacy fonts alive.

"Fonts are long-living creatures; many users still own Type 1 fonts that were manufactured 15 or more years ago. These fonts are principally okay, but some small bits and pieces may not be quite correct. These fonts were made with ancient, forgotten tools or with early versions of Fontographer. Such tools had bugs that had perhaps been fixed since then, but the buggy fonts are still out there. Newer applications, such as QuarkXPress 6.5, or new systems, such as Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, are sensitive about buggy fonts. Some of the fonts with small bugs are blocked by the applications or the system so the users can't use the fonts that they legally own. With TransType Pro, a user can convert a font—often within the same format. For example, you can convert from Mac Type 1 to Mac Type 1. The design, the font names and so on stay the same but the internal structures are "freshened up." In a sense, you run a 1989 font through a 2005 font tool. This way the user can profit from recent font tool development and receive a "facelifted" font that is more conformant to up-to-date specifications and standards, and—what is even more important—that is accepted by XPress 6.5 or Tiger. "

For a perfect example of obsolete font technology, one has to look no further than Adobe's own Multiple Master fonts. Once hailed as a huge leap format, such fonts have the intriguing ability to allow users to pick "instances" and manually adjust such font parameters as width, stroke weight or optical size. But with Adobe dropping support for these in 1999, users were left with no reliable way to make use of them.

According to Twardoch, TransType Pro provides a way for users to still extract value from their investment in old Multiple Master fonts. "In Mac OS 9 and Windows, users can still use Adobe Type Manager (ATM) to create the instances that can be installed on the system and used in applications. However, the MM instances do not always work without problems. They are not "real fonts" and thus can't be easily copied into a folder or archived on a CD independently from the "source" MM font. Most third-party font managers don't support them, while ATM itself is no longer supported by Adobe and doesn't even exist for Mac OS X. With TransType Pro, you can convert Multiple Master instances into Type 1, TrueType or OpenType fonts. The users keep the flexibility of Multiple Master fonts but instead of semi-usable "virtual instances" they get real Type 1 or OpenType fonts that they can install in Mac OS X and all other systems, and handle just like any other font."

TransType Pro notably adds support for OpenType, which is missing from TransType SE. OpenType is a relatively new font format that is gaining in popularity, in part because of its large character set and also because such fonts can be used on both the Mac and Windows platforms. From that perspective, designers can simplify their font collection be converting everything to OpenType, fixing many legacy font glitches in the process. Just one snafu—not all design and graphics applications fully support OpenType yet. So there may be instances when conversion in the other direction is still required, as Twardoch points out.

"The newer operating systems usually support OpenType fonts, at least to the extent that Western characters can be typed in, printed, and so on. Other special characters such as Central European, Cyrillic or Greek characters are only available in applications that support Unicode, such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator CS and Photoshop 7 or higher. However, there is still a significant number of applications in use that can't deal with the Unicode encoding and don't have access to the extended characters in OpenType fonts, such as QuarkXPress, Adobe PageMaker and FrameMaker, Macromedia FreeHand and Flash, as well as older versions of applications such as Illustrator 9 or Photoshop 6. To access all characters of an OpenType font in such an application, conversion to another format is often a good solution. "

TransType Pro can be purchased $179 on the Fontlab site. A demo version is also available for download.