OpenType fonts between Macs & PCs

I'm looking at having PCs (XP) and Macs (OSX) (or slight possibility just all
PCs at which point it wouldn't matter) interact with each other. Where PCs would
write a story and it would be pulled onto a Quark 6.52 or InDesign CS2 document.
From my internal testing here with Quark 4.11, it appears that a good portion of
our Font Folio 9 (postscript) fonts we already own have reflow issues when going
back and forth between Mac and PC. OpenType solves exactly this problem correct?
There should never be any reflow when using OpenType fonts and going back and
forth between Macs and PCs right?
Also, if we have to go with Quark 6.52 (due to vendor limitations, not my
choice, I want InDesign), Quark says that 6.52 only "support open Type
fonts partially. As a result you won't be able to use special characters which
are beyond 255 character limit". Does that mean I would have font problems,
or we just wouldn't be able to use the new fancy extras in OpenType fonts?

Hi Rich,

There are three sets of problems going cross-platform with fonts - font format,
font naming, and font metrics.

Font format - OpenType fully solves this problem. Assuming that your fonts'
licenses allow for installation on more than one system (fonts licensed from
Adobe certainly do), you can copy OpenType back and forth between Windows and
MacOS X without a problem of whether the font is recognized or not. (This is
contrast to the .PFB / .PFM files for Type 1 Windows fonts versus the
printer font and screen font thing for Macintosh as well as the Windows TrueType
versus Macintosh TrueType formats!) OpenType fonts are fully self-contained in
the Macintosh's data fork, including all metrics and kerning data as well as the
glyph outlines and hinting.

Font naming - Non-Adobe applications under Windows and MacOS X typically use the
operating system to enumerate and access fonts. Naming and family conventions
differ between the operating systems. Thus, for non-Adobe applications,
especially Microsoft Office applications, you may see some anomalies going cross
platform even with OpenType fonts, especially when dealing with font family
members beyond regular, bold, italic, and bold italic such as semi-bold, black,
light, etc. Adobe applications finessse this issue by doing their own font
access and doing it exactly the same way on all platforms.

Font metrics - Type 1 and TrueType fonts from reliable foundries provided the
"same" font metrics in both the Windows and Macintosh versions of
their fonts all along. (Do not include Arial, TImes New Roman, and other
Microsoft system fonts in this category at all!) Having the same font format for
Windows and MacOS X, OpenType, does remove any possibility of different metrics.
However, for non-Adobe applications, it does not remove the possibility of
different interpretation of the same font metrics. The problem is that most
applications, including Microsoft Office and QuarkXPress, for example, obtain
font metrics via the operating system. Under Windows, an application typically
(although not necessarily) gets font metrics based on the current output
device's resolution, i.e. the advance widths are in device pixels. That is why
you often get reflow when changing the current printer in Microsoft
applications. And you often will get similar reflow going across platforms with
such applications. Again, Adobe applications finesse this issue by doing their
won font access and doing it exactly the same way on all platforms using
device-independent units!

Hope that is of assistance although perhaps not as good news as you wanted to
hear.

Thanks for all that info Dov, much more clearer and informative than anything
i've been able to find on the internet. So if I understand everything, I should
have no issues whatsoever with font names or reflowing if I use OpenType fonts,
InCopy on WinXP to write my stories in, then InDesign on either OSX or XP to put
all my stories onto an InDesign document and output from there? but with Quark I
may have some reflow issues?

You understand correctly. To be more specific, I cannot vouch for what
QuarkXPress does. I suspect that older versions are more likely to have problems
in this matter.

Dov, thanks again. you are awesome. I know you can't vouch for Quark, but I do
have a follow-up which pertains to OpenType fonts, i hope it is not off topic.

Quark says that "QuarkXPress or QuarkXPress Passport 6.5 support open Type
fonts partially. As a result you won't be able to use special characters which
are beyond 255 character limit." and "The fonts which are beyond 255
characters mean those which are having Unicode characterization."