Font Window Gear Icon
Mac Tip #310/10-Oct-2007
Select some text in a program such as TextEdit or Pages and press Command T. The Fonts window is displayed, allowing you to choose font family, colour, shadow, size and many other characteristics for the selected text.
The last few Tips, explaining Font Book, have covered many of these features. But there are even more hidden away under the Gear menu at the bottom of the Fonts window.
If there’s a font and size that you often like to use, first select the font and size from the columns available to you then choose Add to Favorites from the Gear icon. In future that font at that size will be available in the Favorites collection in the list on the left of the Fonts window.
To remove an item from the Favorites drag it out to the bottom. It disappears in a puff of smoke.
Show / Hide Preview opens or closes a larger display of the selected font at the top of the Fonts window. Drag the slider between the preview area and the main part of the Fonts window to change the sizes of the two areas. Look for the small dot in the middle of the dividing line and drag that.
Show / Hide Effects brings up and hides the Toolbar mentioned in a previous Tip.
Color…, Characters… and Typography… all bring up further windows where you can make additional choices. Choose colours from the Color Picker.
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Find out about and insert any character available to you, from the Character Palette (which is worth half a dozen Tips all on its own).
Some fonts, such as the free Doulos SIL, offer all kinds of advanced typographical options. Make your choices from the Typography Palette.
Edit Sizes… brings up a window where you can fine tune the sizes. For example, if you never use the size slider you can remove it from display. If you need some unusual font size or never use a particular size you can add or remove sizes from the list.
If you’ve been messing around with the sizes click the Reset Sizes button to restore the defaults.
Manage Fonts… simply opens up Font Book where you can do the tasks previously explained in these Tips.
There really is a great deal of power packed in to both Font Book and the Fonts window.
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