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A helpful tool for unpacking Mac TTC font families

Moving fonts is simple…

Fonts come packaged in such a way that makes them easy to install. Simply double click to install, or drag and drop into the font manager of your choosing.

Except for when they’re not

Windows will spit out an error when trying to install from a selection of fonts one might find on their Mac. Something like:

"Cannot install Font Name.ttc - The file 'D://Font Name.ttc' does not appear to be a valid font."

This error stumped me for a few minutes, and through a few Google search results. With a bit of digging I found a tool called transfonter that unpacked my Mac fonts and made them work on my Windows machine:

This frustration may be been manufactured…

So, if Microsoft’s Font Validator is right, then I assume Apple did a bad job implementing the specifications. (And maybe even on purpose, to stop distribution of the font to Windows?)

– Arjan
https://superuser.com/a/121746

As one user here explains, it seems that Apple has intentionally broken their fonts to make it difficult to move them onto a Windows machine.

Still looking for the link? It’s here.