Pull Hair
One of my duties as a Pastor's Husband is to provide late-night tech support for my wife. She'll be preping for a sermon and ask for something- say, a YouTube clip, and want it for the sermon.

Usually it's not a problem- and the biggest challenge is usually getting a full-screen player that multi-head aware. Even then, there's usually creative ways around that.

One issue does crop up almost every week. Fonts.

Man, I hate custom add-on fonts.



Here's why. My wife uses a Mac. The sound booth computer is a PC. The first picture is a sample of what she wants on the overhead, and what she sees on her Mac in PowerPoint.
Font issues

The second picture is what that exact same file looks like on a PC. PowerPoint changed the fonts!
Font Issues

In this particular case, it's the Dakota font. And yes, I do have it installed on the Mac and the PC.

On a typical Sunday, that means I have to to a panic reformatting of the sermon's PPT file, guessing at what font she wanted. Not fun.


There's couple things going on here- and there's really no excuse for any of them, except for Microsoft and Apple not playing nice with each other.

PowerPoint Embed Fonts (Mac issues)
Issue #1: PowerPoint has a feature to embed fonts inside the PowerPoint, thus taking everything you need to properly view it. The issue I'm having doesn't (and can't!) happen when moving the file between PC's. The Mac version of PowerPoint however, doesn't support his feature. Use anything but Arial and Times New Roman- and you probably will have issues.

Issue #2: If you install a font on both the Mac and the PC, using the exact same TTF file - the font will be named differently on each system! Take my Dakota example above. On the PC it's called "Dakota". On the Mac it's called "Handwriting Dakota". Thus, even if you've installed everything perfectly, PowerPoint can't find the font because its name has changed.

Why is this happening? If you research both issues, there are nice, technical descriptions that don't really give a good answer. (Yes, yes, Windows has smaller limit to the number of fonts in a font family- but why? Why won't Windows preserve the family attribute?) I believe that Microsoft is playing the same games they did back in the 90's with the Netware client. Make someing built-in that's compatable with a competing product- but with lots of little nagging issues. Issues that drive you nuts until you decide to go with a purely Microsoft environment.

I've recently decided to give up with PowerPoint. My wife prefers KeyNote - and it will read the PowerPoint templates she purchases. I'm now having her export to PDF format. Acrobat Reader can view that full-screen, with native multi-head support. We can no longer make last-minute fixes in the sound booth, but I've had it with these font issues.


....and for those who would suggest I get a Mac for the sound booth, might I ask you dontate a multi-head Mac, re-wire the projector from VGA to DVI, purchase new Worship Presentation software, re-enter & format several dozen songs, and retrain our AV team. Oh, and did I mention that the A/V department's budget has $9 for this coming year?