Substituting Times New Roman on OS X.

August 10, 2006 2:27 PM

Trouble with typesetting international text using Times New Roman on OS X?

I'm doing some InDesign consulting for a comparative literature journal. The journal is using InDesign CS2 and MSWord under OS X. The editor wants to stick as close as possible to the older design. Templates from previous years (imported from PageMaker) use Times New Roman for the body font.

However, the Times New Roman installed does not seem to have the full set of international characters (tried this under two different systems with the same result). Czech and Romanian characters undergo font substitution in Word, and are replaced by square boxes in InDesign. Character Palette does not show these characters as available in Times New Roman.

They are available in Times however. The two fonts have very different screen appearance, but I can't spot a difference on sample print-outs, (aside from the handling of Eastern European characters.)

The three questions are:
1: Is there likely to be any issue with using the Times variant over Times New Roman? This is my preferred solution, but the editor has some political concerns.

2: If we have to buy a font, how can we check to see if it has all the needed characters before paying for it?

3: Is either variant likely to be preferred by the publisher?

posted by KirkJobSluder to computers & internet (5 comments total)

1: What political concerns could there be over font usage? There will be slight differences in letterform, spacing, kerning, etc. between Times And TNR. That really shouldn't be a concern, as they are both nice, readable fonts.

2: Ask the foundry you are buying from. They should be able to tell you how inclusive the character set is.

3: Depends on the publisher. Although, I assumed the journal you are doing this work for is also the publisher. In any case, again, ask the publisher. There may be an aesthetic reason they might prefer one over the other but there shouldn't be a functional preference.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:19 PM on August 10, 2006

And, if you do purchase a font, get the OpenType version, if available. OpenType fonts tend to have a much broader character set.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:20 PM on August 10, 2006

To answer your questions:

1. Times on OS X is Linotype's Times Roman, while Times New Roman (on OS X and on Windows) is Monotype's Times New Roman. The differences are negligible [ref: wikipedia]. Here is an image I made of the two variants (on Mac OS X) layed over each other:



Red = Times New Roman, Blue = Times (Roman). As you can see there are a very few differences, most notably: the beak on F is out slightly more on Times New Roman, and the descender on the "Q" differs slightly. If you're really attached to Times New Roman, you can always purchase the Central-European volume of Times New Roman, but that will cost you about $80. Personally, I would go with Times.
posted by Frankieist at 3:51 PM on August 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

This site might also be useful, it shows the Times variants' ability to render some CE characters. I can't guarantee it will work in any browser other than Safari though (because of the Unicode characters in the URL), as that's the only browser I tested it with.
posted by Frankieist at 4:01 PM on August 10, 2006

Thanks and thanks.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:16 PM on August 10, 2006