Mac vs. PC - Courier Font
Jessi
difficulties with our most commonly used font, Courier. It
is important that Courier look exactly the same on a PC or
on a Mac because Mac and PC files will be meshed together
on a magazine.
Here's the problem:
A document typed on a PC in Courier 12 pt looks slightly
different than a document typed on a Mac in Courier 12 pt.
At first glance it looks the same. But after you hold the
two printouts together (prinouts from the same printer) you
can see the difference. As the sentence goes along, the
spacing between the two becomes different. It appears that
Courier 12 on a PC has slightly more space between letters
than the Mac printout. This causes more obvious
differences in a long paragraph because soon words flow off
one line and onto the next.
Here's the specs:
Win 2000 PC - Word 2000
OS 9.0.4 Mac - Word 98
Printer - HP DeskJet 970 Cxi
Fonts - I believe are default on both machines
Unfortunately, it is not confined to my comptuer and
printer as other users have experienced the same problem.
John McGhie [MVP - Word]
This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on Tue, 9 Jul 2002
06:38:30 -0700, "Jessi" <jrh...@reimanpub.com>:
> We are trying to convert a Mac user over to a PC but having
> difficulties with our most commonly used font, Courier.
Am I allowed to say that any company that uses Courier as its default font
has larger problems that the kind of computer it uses? No? Thought not...
> Here's the problem:
> A document typed on a PC in Courier 12 pt looks slightly
> different than a document typed on a Mac in Courier 12 pt.
That's because it is. It's *not* the same font.
Old Mac fonts are hinted for 72 dpi display and PostScript printers.
Windows fonts are hinted for 96 dpi displays and multiple printers. There
is no single font that will do exactly the same thing on Windows, and on Mac
and on the Printer.
> Win 2000 PC - Word 2000
> OS 9.0.4 Mac - Word 98
> Printer - HP DeskJet 970 Cxi
> Fonts - I believe are default on both machines
> Unfortunately, it is not confined to my comptuer and
> printer as other users have experienced the same problem.
Yes. We could talk to you for hours about how to "reduce" the differences.
But you simply cannot get it exact.
You could reduce the problem somewhat by forcing your Mac user up to Mac OS
X. In OS X you can drag Windows TrueType and OpenType fonts to the Mac and
they will work just fine.
You could reduce the problem by using a printer that has embedded fonts.
The printer will substitute its internal font for use by both Windows and
Mac OS. At least you would get the same font being used to print for both
machines.
But trying this on a $200.00 printer that does not support PostScript is
really pushing the envelope. Having a good look around on the HP website
will do you some good: but you will find that that particular printer does
not contain any fonts: it uses the fonts installed on the system.
But really the issue is that you cannot get a modern computer to emulate a
typewriter. If that's what you need, "use" a typewriter.
Word is always going to read the fonts, display driver, and printer driver
from the local system and use these to determine the measurements it uses to
make up its pages. When you send the print job to the printer, what happens
next is intensely complex and depends on the fonts, printer, printer driver,
print control language and paper size.
The same document printed from two different PCs will have slight
differences due to these effects.
I'm sorry, I do not have a good answer for you. Well, I *do*, but you won't
like it. If you install a PostScript printer driver on both kinds of
machines (the latest Apple LaserWriter driver would be my choice) then
"Print to file" on both machines, you will get a large PostScript file
stored on the hard disk.
If you copy that file to a printer with an embedded PostScript interpreter
(not the 970...) it will print dot-for-dot exact whether you send it from a
Windows PC or an Apple Mac.
Unfortunately, such a file "created" on Windows or Mac will be slightly
different because of the abovementioned font and printer driver and screen
resolution differences. {Sob}
We do not have a good answer for you.
Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie-information.com.au
Andreas Prilop
> A document typed on a PC in Courier 12 pt looks slightly
> different than a document typed on a Mac in Courier 12 pt.
You need to specify *exactly*.
- There are at least three different typefaces:
Courier [PostScript]
Courier [TrueType]
Courier New [TrueType]
- There are PostScript and non-PostScript printers.
- The printer might use built-in fonts or might download fonts.
- MS Word for Macintosh has an option "Use fractional width"
(or similar).
All these affect the print-out.
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