The Font palette

The Font palette contains controls for selecting a font and a font size.

In the Font palette, you select a font by first choosing a font category, then choosing a font family, and then choosing a font face. In the font palette pictured below, the font category is Text, Transitional; the font family is Hoefler Text; and the font face is Regular.

Font palette

The list of font categories contains the following items:

You can control which categories appear by using Preferences.

Sample text is displayed in the chosen font. You can change the sample text using Preferences.

When you select text in a document, Pagehand will update the controls in the Font palette. If the current font is not included in the selected font category, the family control will show an empty selection.

If you don’t like the idea of choosing fonts by category, just leave the font category at its default setting. Categories allow you to narrow your font choices if you want; they do not get in your way if you don’t want to use them.

At the bottom left of the Font palette is an action button that displays a popup menu. Choosing the first menu item sets the selected font as the default font for the document. The remaining menu items display the typographic features offered by selected font. Most fonts have no advanced features. You might be familiar with font typographic features if you have used the Typography panel in the Apple Font Panel.

Font action button

The names of typographic features and settings vary from one font to the next. Pagehand supplies the information provided by the font manufacturer, which at times is not altogether clear.

Next to the action button are three controls for setting the font size.

To set the font size for selected text: