With Apple’s next-generation operating system, Lion, looming, Apple isn’t slowing development of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The company recently unveiled fixes for displaying OpenType fonts and printing from Preview.
The update, which carries the version number 10.6.7, includes four fixes in particular, according to Apple’s support article.
* Addresses an issue in which some OpenType fonts don’t display correctly in certain applications.
* Resolves issues printing from Preview.
* Addresses an issue with PDF files not opening in third-party PDF viewing applications.
* Resolves invalid font errors when printing to PostScript printers.
With all the years of support for PDF and PostScript, it’s a bit surprising that Apple hadn’t nailed it by this point, but Apple isn’t the only player in the OpenType game. The format is a trademark of Microsoft, developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft, and an offshoot of the TrueType fonts used in Windows and PostScript fonts used in Apple Macs. The fonts are compatible across both operating systems.
According to Adobe’s site, OpenType “supports widely expanded character sets and layout features, which provide richer linguistic support and advanced typographic control.” It also notes that “Adobe has converted the entire Adobe Type Library into this format and now offers thousands of OpenType fonts.” Different apps offer different levels of OpenType support—Basic (such as in Microsoft Word), and Advanced (as in Adobe CS5 apps).
Mac users can obtain the update, which is recommended for all OS X v10.6 users, as a 3.77MB download directly from Apple’s support Web site or from an Apple Software Update.
(4.00 out of 5)