Skia Font variations?

Skia has been an Apple typeface since System 7.5. It's a good-looking
font, and the oul' Woman likes to work with it.

In our systems (we have 10.7.x and 10.8.x), with Apple programs like
TextEdit and Stickies (anything with "Show Fonts" I guess), there are 9
variations of it: things like "Regular Light Extended" and so on.

The problem is that non-Apple programs don't see the variations, only
the standard Skia Regular.

The non-Apple stuff that we want to use it with are InDesign and MS
Word. I tried it with Eddie, just to see, and Eddie doesn't see it
either. I haven't tried it out on Linux ...

I've tried pasting it in as RTF, and InDesign claims that it can't find
"Skia-Regular-Black-Extended" and so on.

I've looked around teh Interwebz and can't find a solution, and maybe
there's something I'm missing.

Anyone hereabouts run into this and fixed it?

Thanks.

 

This will only be a little help I'm afraid. I have the 10 variant Skia
here. Font Book says it is version 6.1d3e1. I can reproduce your
problem in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (CS3). My InDesign crashes
as soon as I try to insert any text, (I had not touched it for years
and I can't be bothered trying to make it work again) and I binned all
of Microsoft Office years ago. I can't get XeTeX to behave properly
with Skia; it will only let me specify Skia and Skia Regular in
fontspec and if I boldface some Skia text it sets it a different font,
so that looks like the same problem. OmniGraffle sees all the variants
OK however, so that is a counter example to "only Apple apps work".

I went looking for other ttf fonts that misbehaved like Skia, but could
not find any in a small sample I tried before getting bored.

We are not alone, I found this from 2000 (no help either, but
corroborative)
http://forums.macnn.com/83/art-and-graphic-design/403793/adobe-apps-and-
skia-font-problem/

 

Thanks for the response. I found the same forum thread that you did. Oh
well -- she'll have to use a different font I guess.

 

On the otherhand all ten of the Skia faces work fine (at least for me)
in Pages. Perhaps instead of a different font she might consider a
different program!

 

Is Pages as powerful as InDesign?

 

Not all non-Apple stuff suffers from this problem. BBEdit uses the
standard system font palette and does show all of Skia's variants. Nisus
Writer Pro uses its own Character palette but also sees all the Skia
faces.

Microsoft and Adobe have a history of doing things their own way rather
than using the tools that Apple provides, and very small developers tend
not to update things until Apple finally pulls the plug on the old API
they were using.

 

That depends on just what it is that you are trying to accomplish. An
analogy would be comparing a Lamborgini with a Chevrolet in terms of
speed. if you are planning to drive within a 70 mph speed limit is
there a meaningful difference?

 

Herself has been using InDesign for years; she went through Quark and
Pagemaker. For me, Pages would be to InDesign as iPhoto is to Photoshop,
or as iMovie is to FCP(any version). She does a lot of serious pre-press
stuff.

 

Interesting puzzle…

Font Book does show all the styles, and these are not simple
computerized extrapolations of the original style. Pages shows all the
variations as well. The separate fonts must be somewhere, but they are
not seen by regular tools.

I looked into the system (Library/Fonts) for the Skia font, opened it
with Fontographer, and found no variation whatsoever. Normally, TTF
fonts come as one font file for each style (such as Bold and Italic).
There must be something, however, because the font file is
exceptionnaly big for one style. I bet the extra fonts are hidden in
there, but meant not to be accessible.

More interesting yet… I was able to open Skia.ttf in Windows Fontlab.
Same as Fontographer, one font only. Seems fine enough, but Windows
itself says the font is not valid.

I bet Apple wanted to keep the font for itself, as well as all the
_very nice indeed_ stylistic variations.

Apple mysteries are infinite ;^)

 

They all show up as available in Final Cut Pro's titling "plug in." It's
not a great title font, though.

 

Yes. This may be the reason Skia (Orig designed in 1993 under OS 7.5) displays only as one font style outside cocoa programs:

Post Source:
http://forum.fontlab.com/index.php?topic=8860.0

---------------------

" Re: Skia.ttf Apple font mystery and hidden design
« Reply #1 on: 2013-07-05, 14:09:17 »

Skia was designed to showcase some QuickDraw GX (the precursor of ATSUI) technologies which were intended to compete with Adobe's multiple master format. The different styles are governed by the CVT variation table (cvar) which is ATSUI-specific and will only be available on a mac (and even then only in cocoa applications). There's only a single set of outlines present in the font which is what you will see when you open the file in any font editor.

André"

Hope this explains the issue-

klakster

 

...

I haven’t found a font quite like Skia: it’s a wonderful balance of primitive (and borderline playful), yet seriously designed. It’s a unique font in more ways than the one mentioned here (only one outline style showingwithin most non-cocoa Apple programs).

Because of the above, the following fonts are the closest substitutes I’ve found to Skia (in sensibility and style). They break down into two categories:

Caps and Small Cap font substitutes (for Skia Black):
Heartwood Display SSI (Caps)
Hoffmann Black titling FBI (Caps)
Jungle Fever SC (Small Caps)

Upper and lower case font substitutes:
Clair FSI
Ryder Gothic Pro RR
Frutiger Next LT
Gill Sans Std (esp. Bold and above styles)
Fairway (Alan Meeks) (esp. Bold and above styles)
Pluto Sans HVD
Deco Donut Fat (Just My Type)
Humanist 521 BT (esp. Bold and above wts.)

Sources: Taking screen shots of different Skia styles in Font Book (Then cut & pasting select upper & lower letters in “Preview”) similar fonts were discovered in “Find My Font” Application as well as at a couple web site search programs: “What the Font?” at myfonts.com, and “What Fontis” at whatfontis.com.

Hope this is of some consolation grappling with the restrictions of Skia-


klakster