2 September, 2010 | Filed under “The Archives”
Note: This article and the details described are aimed at UNIX users, as performed on a Mac OS X system.
What used to be lengthy performances of tongue-in-cheek acrobatics are mostly automated tasks these days. Streamlined installation apps cruise along and make the installation of computer programs a breeze. So much so that it may not occur to us that they are confidence tricksters with built-in inflexibility.
Touchy as I am, I prefer to be my own judge on what goes where on my harddisks, if at all. Say, you download “something” with the intention of testing “whatever” and that the something is wrapped in an installation package. You are not always given the option to uncheck files of no or dubious interest. So, what to do? Soldier on and hope for the best or tread one step at a time?
This may seem like a small matter blown out of proportions and may ring of pessimism, but using the prescribed method I have happily been able to install Final Cut Pro 7, a major task, on a Macintosh G5 sporting the old IBM PowerPC processor where the installation package stopped dead in its tracks insisting that only Intel processors were supported.
When it comes to fragile beings like fonts, installation packages that aim to make life easy for us will normally insist on leaving the fonts in the System's Library > Fonts folder but you can never tell until the fonts have actually been installed. If it makes more sense for you to install fonts in individual user’s territories, or if you use Suitcase in tandem with a plan of your own, please read on. If you could not care less, stop reading at this point.
Note that installation packages have either an mpkg or a pkg suffix depending on the content (my guess is that the “m” in mpkg stands for “multiple” – and it is no guess that pkg translates into “package”). You can even tell by the slightly different icons.
In the left corner, a specimen detail of the Calluna font family from Exljbris Font Foundry. In the right corner, the downloaded package.
The treading steps are:
1. Right-click (or Ctrl-click if you still use a one-button mouse) on the package icon (in my case MyFonts Order M1234567.mpkg) and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual drop-down menu.
2. There may be packages within packages (my MyFonts package had, for instance, one called OTF.mpkg down a Contents > Packages path), but repeat the Show Package Contents procedure at every corner until you are inside the final package (in my case it was Calluna-Regular-OTF.pkg).
3. The final obstacle may be a protective gz archive (e.g., Archive.pax.gz). Make a copy of the gz file and double click on its icon to decompress. At this stage your hunt is over and the file(s) of interest is/are yours for the picking.
In my case the file was the Calluna-Regular.otf font. It was now up to me if I wanted to install it in one of the three possible places where fonts can (should) be stored (Suitcase not counted) on a Macintosh Unix system - or keep it for reference.
4. Delete any gz copies you made and store the original package in a safe place.
Ah, freedom.