How to email my font?

April 2, 2007 11:51 AM

I can't seem to email (gmail) font files to a client. What am I missing?

Working from a Mac and trying to send a few postscript fonts (gill sans, univers). When I attach the font files (screen font & printing font) in my email they show up with a file size of 0kb. Yes, I'm linking to real fonts with real sizes (140kb), not aliases.
Do they need to be compressed in a Stuffit-like app? What's up?

posted by artdrectr to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Huh. I just tried gmailing myself some fonts and they seemed to go through fine. But when in doubt, always try stuffing or zipping files when e-mailing them.
posted by iguanapolitico at 11:56 AM on April 2, 2007

Use stuffit. Is it possible all the data is in the resource forks and you are just sending empty data forks?
posted by chairface at 12:05 PM on April 2, 2007

Augh. NO. DO NOT USE STUFFIT. If you're using OS X, right click it (or control-click) and choose "Create Archive" and make a .zip out of it.

This works OK for me, and I just tested it with my gmail account.

Stuffit used to be a good product, but it's more of a PITA now. Besides, you have to have Stuffit Deluxe yourself before you can create a .sitx file. The Stuffit Expander product is still free, but if your clients don't have it (you'd be surprised, a lot of people don't have it anymore since Apple stopped shipping it with the OS) they'll have to go through the extra steps of finding it & installing it.

Making a .zip file will be easier for everyone involved.

It's also possible that the client has an antivirus filter somewhere along the line. Are you sending it to another gmail address or some corporate address? The 0kb file can indicate that an anti-virus doohickey got in the way.
posted by drstein at 12:13 PM on April 2, 2007

Always compress your fonts. Always. Compress when you email. Compress when you upload to an FTP site.

<dr. bronner>
Compress! Compress OK!
</dr. bronner>
posted by lekvar at 12:18 PM on April 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

The problem is most likely that the font uses resource forks, as a lot of older mac fonts do (you can see this by looking at ~/Library/Fonts in terminal, for instance). I don't recommend using the "create archive" as it seems to mangle the resource fork; I just tested it on a font and though it got the resource fork, it didn't unpack it correctly. Stuffit probably will store the fork correctly.
posted by advil at 12:18 PM on April 2, 2007

Actually, with some further testing, you can use "create archive", but you have to unpack the zip file on a mac by opening it in finder, no other way, for the resource fork to be restored correctly. I had tried unzipping it from the terminal, which didn't work right.
posted by advil at 12:23 PM on April 2, 2007

Thanks all for the quick responses.
drstein, no anti virus. the zip thing worked perfectly. Good to know for future 'stuff'.
posted by artdrectr at 12:26 PM on April 2, 2007

It's just worth noting (because I found this out the hard way a few weeks ago) that if you're a frequent command-line user like me, the version of tar and gzip that Apple provides doesn't seem to deal with resource forks. So, tar -cvzf will produce an empty file when run against most older fonts. (This is a concern if you typically use UNIX utilities for batch operations or in scripts.)

However, as others have suggested, the right click > create archive in the Finder does. (Putting the files inside a compressed dmg file also works.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:22 PM on April 2, 2007