HAVE YOU EVER wanted a KeyCaps font that really looks like a modern Macintosh keyboard? If so, this has to be the font for you, specially prepared by Chris Sansom of Fit To Print, East London, in Fontographer 4.0.1. Yes, folks, it's my first full-blown font.
If you want to see what it looks like properly, install the font and read the PostCard file (that funny-looking little application) which accompanies it. Meanwhile, here's the explanatory part.
In Mac KeyCaps (in both PostScript type 1 and TrueType formats) I have tried, as far as possible, to make the characters look like my Apple® Extended Keyboard II, even down to the slight curvature of the keys themselves. The only problem with this lust for authenticity is that each character is quite small and tucked into the bottom left-hand corner of its key. All is not lost, however, because we have far more characters available than there are keys, so alternative versions can be made. If you really want to make the alphabet look authentic, therefore, use unshifted letters; if you want to make it more readable, shift ’em.
For the number and punctuation keys which have two characters on them, I have done my level best to provide the key showing both symbols as well as a large and small version of each symbol individually, though some of these are a bit obscurely placed, requiring those fancy double keystrokes you use for getting accented characters. I have also (I hope) catered for both UK and US users by providing alternative versions of the 3 key (with # or £). Similarly, the function keys are all there, in versions with and without the tiny text at the top of F13 to F15. There’s even a “power on” key at Sh-Opt-`.
Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, all the normally available key combinations are yours to explore!
The modifiers and whatnot, which are different sizes on the keyboard, are similarly proportioned in the font; there are also “verbal” equivalents of them (“cmd”, “opt”, etc.—“ctrl” is “ctrl” anyway, of course). Unfortunately, I had to foreshorten the two tall keys (return and enter), since all the other characters would otherwise have been ridiculously small. If you want to be really silly and have a proportional space bar, use Opt-space, otherwise the space bar on its own gives you a shorter one (but only if you've installed the PostScript font—the TrueType version, unfortunately, merely gives you a rather large blank space). If you genuinely want an ordinary space—a real gap—you’ll just have to type a space and change its font. Sorry about that.
You will also find the other adornments to be found on Apple’s wonder of keyboardment: the caps lock light (with label) and its two useless (unless you use a PC horror) companions, and even a stripy, albeit monochrome, apple at Sh-Opt-K. I stopped short of the two little plastic nipple thingies that you’re supposed to hang your little plastic function key crib chart on, though.
If you're a PostScript user, I strongly recommend that you use ATM (and if you don’t know what that is, you should) in order to display this font properly on the screen—either way, use Günther Blaschek’s excellent (and free) PopChar too (it’s available from most bulletin boards, the Internet, etc.). Like most display-type fonts, Mac KeyCaps works best at large sizes.
