
This post is part of our “Fonts Articles Index” in these articles we explore Fonts. If you’re stuck with OS X, however, I hope this has been useful. If you don’t need to look at OS X’s font support in particular, I’d recommend Microsoft’s Font Validator, as it seems to test much more and report back in much greater detail, while also being much nicer to use. Keep an eye out for properties caled ‘kATSFontTestResultKey’ – these are empty if the test is passed and contain a value which describes the failure if they don’t. ftxvalidator’s results in Property List Editor The results can be a little obtuse, but it does give more detail than just using the Font Book version. This is a properties list file, which OSX has a viewer built in for. So, open up the console, navigate to where your fonts are, and try this: > ftxvalidator -r -o ist YourFont.otfĪ file called ‘ist’ will be created with the validation report.

I’m not sure whether the documentation is ahead or behind the product itself, but it could definitely be more helpful! The documentation might tell you that the command you want is ATSValidator, which has supposedly replaced ftxvalidator, but after installing and being unable to find ATSValidator I snooped around inside the package (with a little help from this useful article) and found that it isn’t there – but an updated version of ftxvalidator is. The installer will place it in usr/bin, so it should be usable anywhere. Unlike the first version, this is a command line tool only. However, Apple provides a suite of font tools on their website for developers, which contains a version which is more helpful.

Open it up, then go to ‘File’ -> ‘Validate File’ and you’ll get this: Font Book’s font validator in actionĪlready this is somewhat useful, but it doesn’t go into much detail. It actually ships with one which is accessible through FontBook, OSX’s font management program. Important note: If you created the Fonts folder while an Adobe app was already running, you do need to restart that app, but only this once. Using OS X’s font validatorĭue to a recent problem with a font on OSX, I found myself investigating OSX’s font validator.

He's also enjoyed working with SVG, Java 3D, Java FX and Swing. Sam Howard Sam is a developer at IDRsolutions who specialises in font rendering and conversion.
