How to use the Font panel in OS X

Many programs, such as Microsoft Office, support their own interfaces for various fonts you may have installed on your Mac; however, many other programs like TextEdit and Apple's Pages use Apple's central Font panel to provide font management. This panel can usually be invoked by pressing Command-T in programs that support it, where you will be presented with a column-oriented view of font collections that you can navigate through, select, and set the size for.

While convenient for quickly selecting and setting font sizes, the Font panel also contains a number of additional features that can be applied to your text.

The Font panel by default includes a preview window and effects settings in addition to listing your fonts.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

Preview font style
The first feature may or may not already be enabled in the Font panel, but its function is to preview the font you have selected. Though some programs support previewing fonts in a drop-down font menu, this can sometimes bog a system down if you have hundreds of fonts installed that all are accessed and loaded at once (though modern systems handle this far better). To preview a font, simply locate the small dot slider at the top of the Font panel and drag it down to reveal the preview area, or select "Show Preview" from the small gear menu to the bottom left. Now you can see the font name displayed in its actual font, and at the size you have selected.

Set color, style, and other effects
Another feature that is usually enabled by default is the effects bar, where you can set styles like underscores, strikethroughs, font color, and highlight colors. You can also enable text shadows in programs that support this. This bar should be between the preview and above the font listings, so if it is not there, enable it by selecting "Show Effects" from the gear menu.

Set up favorites and collections
The Font panel will show you all fonts, but does so by listing those in the collection you have chosen. The system includes a number of built-in collections such as those for language-specific fonts, fixed-width fonts, fun fonts, and those that are most compatible with specific tasks like PDF or Web content management. You can add or remove any font from these collections by dragging them to and from the collections.

The "Edit Sizes" option in the gear menu will bring up this settings panel. Note that by resizing the Font panel window and preview areas you can collapse the standard column-browser view, as shown here.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

You can also create your own font collections by clicking the plus button and then dragging fonts to it. Apple does include a couple of special collections, which are the Recently Used list and the favorites. The favorites will contain specific font and size pairings that you have added to this list by choosing "Add to favorites" from the gear menu.

Hidden settings (gear menu)
The Font panel does have some additional features that are relatively hidden but may be exceptionally useful; they can be accessed through the gear menu. The first of these is the option to adjust the list and range of sizes that are available in the Font panel. While you can manually change the value in the Size box to the right of the panel to adjust the font, the selectable common font size numbers below this box can be customized. To do this, choose "Edit Sizes" from the gear menu and you can add or remove sizes from the list, show or hide aspects of the size controls, and set the maximum and minimum point values of the slider.

The second hidden feature is the Typography panel, which may be the most useful hidden feature in the Font panel. As with the others, this one is available in the gear menu, and will present contextually relevant font- and character-specific typography options you can use in your document. These include the enabling of ligatures, and special treatment of numbers, capitals, and numbering styles.

The Typography panel holds a number of secrets for making full use of a specific font.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler)

Another aspect of this panel holds an answer to a question many may have about how to use some fancy characters that are previewed in fonts like the stylistic Zapfino. The preview text for these fonts may contain elaborate characters, but when you type these characters, you get a fairly bland version of them. To get to these characters, you can use the glyph variants that will appear in the Typography panel for characters in fonts that support them. You can select individual character variants at the bottom of the Typography panel, or you can choose a predefined glyph variant set and end up with dramatically different styles when using the same font.

One of the more useful Typography panel features is the contextual fractional forms option, where if enabled will take any fraction you type and condense it into a character-size fraction. Many fonts support common fractions such as halves, thirds, and fourths, but if you need a similar view for 1/243, you can do so with contextual fractional forms. Another useful option is the conversion of lower- and upper-case characters into small capital letters, which is quite convenient for headlines, signs, and other needs for emboldening text.

The last features in the Font panel gear menu are quick access links to other font-handling features in the OS. One of these is the colors panel (which is also available in the effects bar), but you can also access the Character Viewer and open the Font Book program to better manage your font collections.

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Pictures: Inside the Lives of Albinos in Tanzania

Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Being an albino can be a death sentence in Tanzania. Since 2006, 71 people with no pigment in their skin, hair, or eyes have been killed there. Another 29 have been attacked.

The genetic condition is believed to have been born in this East African nation. Today, 1 in every 1,400 Tanzanians has it (the world average is 1 in 20,000). Nevertheless, misinformation abounds. Some locals believe albinos are ghosts that can’t die. Others think they were born into cursed families. And—most chillingly—witch doctors want to hack off  their limbs to put in magic potions promising prosperity and healing. A complete albino “set”—ears, tongue, nose, genitals, all four limbs—can sell for $75,000.

As a result, many of Tanzania’s 17,000 albinos have been hidden away by the government. In this image, Bestida Salvatory is reunited with her 17-year-old daughter, Angel, at the Kabanga Protectorate Center. Angel, who has skin cancer, was forced to flee their home four years ago, after Angel’s own father led a group of men to attack her. Here Angel also visits her one-year-old half-brother, Ezekiel.

Published January 25, 2013

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Apple Drops Manufacturer Using Underage Workers

Apple has stopped doing business with a Chinese manufacturer after a report said it had employed 74 underage workers. According to Apple's Supplier Responsibility Report, which was released by the company Thursday, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics was employing workers under the age of 16.

"Our auditors were dismayed to discover 74 cases of workers under age 16 — a core violation of our Code of Conduct. As a result, we terminated our business relationship with PZ," the company says in the report.

Apple has now lost its spot as the most valuable publicly traded company, one year after it first firmly overtook ExxonMobil. Even though it announced a record number of iPhone and iPad sales in its last quarter earnings, its stock price has fallen over 12 percent.

Apple says it is working hard to improve labor conditions at the factories of its Chinese contractors. It said it also discovered that one of the region's labor agencies had conspired with the manufacturer, providing children to them and helping forge age-verification documents. Apple said in its report that it alerted the provincial government, which fined the agency and suspended its business license.

Apple To Start Making Some Mac Computers in America in 2013

"The children were returned to their families, and PZ was required to pay expenses to facilitate their successful return," Apple says in the report.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Apple's Senior Vice President of Operations, Jeff Williams, said child labor was being used more than companies care to admit. "Most companies, they either don't report on it at all, or they say they look for it and found none, or they obscure the data in some way," Williams told Bloomberg. "If they're not finding it, they're not looking hard enough."

ABC News' Bill Weir visited the factory of Apple's Foxconn supplier last year and did not see any underage workers. "But while we looked hard for the kind of underage and maimed workers we've read so much about, we mostly found people who face their days through soul-crushing boredom and deep fatigue," Weir wrote about his visit.

PHOTOS: Inside Apple's Factories in China

In the 37-page Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, which can be viewed here, Apple said there had been a 72 percent increase in facility audits. According to the report, Apple achieved an average of 92 percent compliance with the goal, for now, of a maximum 60-hour work week.

Apple vowed last year to improve working conditions at its manufacturing facilities in China, vowing to work specifically on reducing working hours for Chinese workers. In March 2012, the Fair Labor Association released a report on the poor conditions at Apple's Foxconn supplier. The organization gave a long list of recommendations to Apple and Foxconn, and both Apple and Foxconn agreed to follow them.

In August, the FLA said that that Foxconn had completed 280 action items on time or ahead of schedule. By July 1, 2013, Foxconn has promised to reduce workers' hours to 49 hours per week and stabilize pay -- though the limit is rarely enforced because workers often want to work overtime and make ends meet.

Apple announced in December that it would begin to make some of its Mac computers in America in 2013.

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Shrinking proton puzzle persists in new measurement

A puzzle at the heart of the atom refuses to go away. The most precise measurement yet of the proton's radius confirms that it sometimes seems smaller than the laws of physics demand – an issue that has been hotly debated for two years.

The latest finding deepens the need for exotic physics, or some other explanation, to account for the inconsistency. "If we were in a hole before, the hole is deeper now," says Gerald Miller of the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the new measurement.

The saga of the proton radius began in 2010, when a group led by Randolf Pohl at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, determined the width of the fuzzy ball of positive charge – and found it was smaller than had been assumed.

Previous teams had inferred the proton's radius, which is impossible to measure directly, by studying how electrons and protons interact. One method uses the simplest atom, hydrogen, which consists of one electron and one proton. A quirk of quantum mechanics says that an electron in an atom can only orbit its proton at certain distances, corresponding to different energy levels. The electron can jump between levels if it absorbs or releases energy in the form of a photon of light.

Ball of charge

By measuring the energy of photons emitted by an excited hydrogen atom, physicists can figure out how far apart the energy levels are, and thus the distances of the permitted electron orbits. A theory called quantum electrodynamics then allows them to calculate how far the proton's ball of charge must extend to keep the electrons at those distances.

This method gave a charge radius for the proton that was about 0.877 femtometres, less than a trillionth of a millimetre.

Pohl and colleagues used a novel method. They created an exotic version of hydrogen that replaces the electron with a muon, a particle that has the same charge as the electron but is 200 times heavier. Its extra bulk makes it more sensitive to the proton's size, meaning radius measurements based on muons are orders of magnitude more precise.

The new method didn't just make the measurements more precise. It also changed them: the muonic hydrogen gave a radius of 0.8418 femtometres, 4 per cent less than before.

Scandalous result

That might not sound like much, but in the world of particle physics, where theory and experiment can agree to parts in a billion, it was scandalous. A lively discussion sprang up, with some physicists claiming problems with Pohl's experiments and interpretations, and others suggesting gaps in the standard model of particle physics.

Pohl and colleagues have now repeated their experiment. The measurement of the radius is now even more precise than in 2010 – and it is still 4 per cent smaller than the value from hydrogen-based experiments.

Pohl reckons that there are three likely explanations. His experiment could have errors, although the confirmation makes that less likely. Alternatively, the electron experiments could be off. "This would be the most boring possibility," says Pohl.

The third, and most exciting, possibility is that muons do not interact with protons in the same way as electrons. In other words, the proton's apparent radius changes a little bit depending on which particle it is interacting with.

If true, that might require the existence of unknown particles that alter the way the muon interacts with the proton. Those particles could, in turn, solve some of the problems with the standard model of particle physics. They could, for instance, provide a candidate for dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up more than 80 per cent of the mass in the universe.

Monumental idea

Miller, Pohl and Ron Gilman of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey helped organise a workshop with 50 proton experts in Trento, Italy, last October to hash out the details of the problem – and arrived at a verdict of sorts. "Because the muon experiments seem to be so solid, the most popular answers were that there's some beyond-the-standard-model physics differentiating between muon and electron, which would be very important," Gilman says.

"That would be monumental, truly," Miller says.

But Miller also has a less radical suggestion, which could reconcile all the measurements without invoking new particles. According to quantum electrodynamics, two charged particles can interact with each other by exchanging a photon – it's as if they spontaneously create a basketball and throw it between them, he says.

The equations also allow for a more complicated interaction where the particles create two balls, and juggle them. Until now this type of interaction was considered too rare to be important, but Miller reckons that the muon's greater mass could make it a better juggler. That would strengthen the proton's interaction with it and make the proton look smaller to the muon without requiring any new physics.

All these ideas will be up for review in a few years' time when new experiments, including shooting muons at protons to see how they scatter and building muonic helium atoms to measure their energy levels, are completed.

"It's quite likely that through other experiments, in two to three years we might get an end to this," Miller says. "It shouldn't take forever."

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1230016

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Cooling-off Day for Punggol East by-election

SINGPORE: Friday is Cooling-off Day for the Punggol East by-election, which has seen nine days of vigorous campaigning by the four candidates contending in the polls.

The Elections Department has reminded political parties and candidates that Friday has been set aside for voters to reflect rationally on various issues raised during the campaigning before they go to the polls on Saturday.

The four candidates Channel NewsAsia spoke to say they intend to spend their time with their family, friends, and supporters after a gruelling election campaign that took form in walkabouts, morning visits to train stations to catch office-goers, as well as public and online rallies.

Campaigning is not allowed on Cooling-off Day. Election advertising cannot be published or displayed on Cooling-off Day as well.

Exceptions include reports in newspapers as well as on radio and television which relate to election matters.

Also allowed are approved posters and banners lawfully displayed before the start of Cooling-off Day. Other election advertising, such as internet election advertising lawfully displayed or published before the start of Cooling-off Day, is also allowed. Candidates can also continue to wear a replica of the symbol allotted to them.

Candidates and supporters have been advised to refrain from attending public events on Cooling-off Day and Polling Day. However they can attend religious ceremonies or worship services, or functions in the course of work or employment, but must be mindful of the rule prohibiting campaigning and election advertising.

On Saturday, some 31,600 voters from Punggol East SMC will go to the polls to elect their Parliamentary representative.

The by-election is being contested by four political parties.

Dr Koh Poh Koon from the People's Action Party, Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam from the Reform Party, Mr Desmond Lim Bak Chuan from the Singapore Democratic Alliance and Ms Lee Li Lian from the Workers' Party.

This is Singapore's second by-election in eight months after the May 2012 Hougang by-election.

The Cooling-off Day provision in the Parliamentary Elections Act is now in force for the fourth time, after the 2011 General and Presidential Elections and the 2012 Hougang by-election.

- CNA/jc

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View some early Vine blockbusters: 6 seconds of pleasure

CNET test cat Dashiell poses for a Vine video.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Six seconds isn't a lot of time to work with. That's the length of video Twitter's new Vine service dishes out. The looping videos can be embedded in tweets and have already been described as "Instagram for video." It's out as of today as an app for iOS, with other platforms in the works.

The short time limit isn't stemming the flow of creativity from Vine's early users. So far, we've seen everything from a monster flick to a moving sale to a recipe demonstration. Here's a roundup of some noteworthy early Vine videos.

Ian Padgham, Twitter's illustrator and video animator, brings us this 6-second take on a monster movie. Warning: cartoonish violence.

CNET Associate Editor Emily Dreyfuss has discovered Vine as a way to share the shortest garage sale in history. The cat is not included in the giveaway, unfortunately.

Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann demonstrates his extremely quick recipe for making steak tartare.

So far, many Vine videos seem to be of people's computer screens. This is probably just a function of folks being eager to try out the service, but still chained to their desks during working hours.

Where there are visuals, there will usually be porn. Expect plenty of Vine users to make attempts at 6 seconds of sexy time. Browsing Vine, I didn't see too much in the way of risque videos, but there was at least one artfully shot clip featuring a bikini-clad woman.

Besides porn and monitors, Vine should be a big hit with animal lovers. The number of dog videos is already reaching alarming proportions and I haven't even started looking for cats yet. I can't stop watching this hyper dachshund on loop.

Naturally, my first choppy post to Vine was of the CNET test cats sleeping on duty. I'd fire them, but I'm too busy being mesmerizing by the flood of Vine videos on Twitter.

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Feinstein Proposes Assault Weapons Ban

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

With an AR-15 and nine other guns on her left, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced a bill today that would ban assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips.

The bill comes nearly 20 years after the first assault weapons ban was signed into law.

“I remain horrified by the massacre committed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and I’m also incensed that our weak gun laws allow these mass killings to be carried out again and again and again,” said Feinstein, who was joined by senators, representatives, mayors, police officials and victims of gun violence. “Military-style assault weapons have but one purpose, and in my view that’s a military purpose, to hold at the hip, possibly, to spray fire to be able to kill large numbers.”

“Assault weapons were designed for and should be used on our battlefields, not on our streets,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “We know that there is no inalienable right to own and operate 100-round clips on AR-15 assault rifles.”

Feinstein’s proposed plan, which she will formally introduce on the Senate floor this afternoon, will ban the sale, transfer, manufacturing and importation of 158 semi-automatic weapons with at least one military feature. It would also ban fixed magazines that are capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

The newly bill differs from the 1994 assault weapons ban in that it does not have a sunset provision. Feinstein said the bill will protect over 2,200 makes of hunting and sporting rifles and shotguns, and the bill will subject existing or grandfathered weapons to background checks if they are sold or transferred.

“We have tried to learn from the bill. We have tried to recognize legal hunting rights. We have tried to recognize legal defense rights. We have tried to recognize the right of a citizen to legally possess a weapon. No weapon is taken from anyone. The purpose is to dry up the supply of these weapons over time. Therefore, there is no sunset on this bill,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein acknowledged the difficulty lawmakers face in passing this bill through Congress.

“Getting this bill signed into law will be an uphill battle, and I recognize that,  but it’s a battle worth having,” Feinstein said. “We must balance the desire of a few to own military-style assault weapons with the growing threat to lives across America.”

The National Rifle Association said Feinstein’s plan infringes on second amendment rights and neglects to address other issues spurring gun violence.

“Senator Feinstein has been trying to ban guns from law-abiding citizens for decades. It’s disappointing but not surprising that she is once again focused on curtailing the Constitution instead of prosecuting criminals or fixing our broken mental health system. The American people know gun bans do not work and we are confident Congress will reject Senator Feinstein’s wrong-headed approach,” Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the NRA, told ABC News.

Feinstein’s office told ABC News that the senator worked with U.S. Capitol Police and Washington Metro Police to ensure the display of weapons at the press conference complied with the rules.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released last week found that 65 percent of those polled supported banning high capacity ammunition magazines while 58 percent favored banning the sale of so-called assault weapons.

Last week, President Obama introduced his gun policy agenda, which called for the banning of some assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines holding over ten rounds.  The president’s plan included 23 executive actions on gun violence that would not require congressional approval, which included a directive for national agencies to strengthen the criminal background check system.

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll out today showed 53 percent find the president’s gun control plan to be favorable while 41 percent view it unfavorably.

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Snaps from space: Bleak landscapes become abstract art

18:27 23 January 2013

Yesterday, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield dropped a puck from space for his favourite hockey team's opening game. In the meantime, he's been busy tweeting his latest photos of astounding landscapes from the International Space Station. Here are a few of our favourites. Sandrine Ceurstemont

Image 1 of 6

The Australian outback looks like an abstract painting in this view, its iron-rich soil appearing even more vivid from far above. Ridges in its flat topography resemble brushstrokes.

(Image: Chris Hadfield/Canadian Space Agency/ISS)

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Football: Giroud fires five-star Arsenal in Hammers rout

LONDON: Olivier Giroud helped Arsenal silence their critics as the France striker's double inspired a much-needed 5-1 victory over West Ham on Wednesday.

Arsene Wenger's side had been subjected to scathing criticism from fans and pundits after successive defeats against Manchester City and Chelsea seriously damaged their bid to finish in the Premier League's top four.

Wenger was reported to have held crisis talks with his players this week and the Gunners looked set to hit a new low when Jack Collison gave West Ham a shock first-half lead at the Emirates Stadium.

But Arsenal bounced back in emphatic fashion, equalising through Lukas Podolski and then taking the points after Giroud sparked an astonishing spree of four goals in 10 second-half minutes, with Santi Cazorla and Theo Walcott on the scoresheet before Giroud completed the rout.

Arsenal remain in sixth place but their first league win in four matches moves them within four points of fourth-placed Tottenham in the race to qualify for the Champions League.

It was a remarkable turnaround after Wenger's team were initially caught cold in the freezing conditions.

The trademark of every Sam Allardyce side is an ability to cause chaos from set-pieces and West Ham are no different. When Carlton Cole's header was only half-cleared, Matt Taylor pounced to fire in a volley that deflected just over.

Arsenal had been warned but, given their defensive frailties this season, it was no surprise they didn't learn the lesson as West Ham took the lead in the 18th minute.

Giroud, attempting to head clear a corner, could only reach the edge of the penalty area, where Collison, left completely unmarked, had time and space to control and lash a fierce strike past Wojciech Szczesny.

Often accused of lacking the character to deal with that kind of momentum-changing moment, Wenger's players for once showed impressive spirit and hit straight back to equalise within four minutes.

Cazorla and Jack Wilshere were the architects, working the ball across midfield to Germany forward Podolski, who advanced unchecked before drilling a long-range strike past Jussi Jaaskelainen for his 11th goal of the season.

Arsenal's back four continued to give West Ham hope with their nervous play and Cole took advantage to flick his shot over Szczesny, only for Aaron Ramsey to clear off the line.

That was a crucial moment as Wenger's men turned the tables on West Ham with a set-piece goal two minutes into the second half when Giroud, stretching to reach Walcott's corner, poked his shot past Jaaskelainen at the near post.

There was no stopping the Gunners as they swept forward with the imagination and determination which has been missing far too often this season.

First, in the 53rd minute, Podolski played a one-two with Giroud that took him into the penalty area in space to clip a cross to Spanish midfielder Cazorla, who showed tremendous skill to back-flick the ball into the net from close range with the inside of his foot.

Then one minute later Podolski raced into the space behind out-of-position Hammers right-back Guy Demel and whipped over a low cross that England winger Walcott met with a clinical finish at the far post.

Arsenal weren't done yet and, in the 57th minute, Podolski, again exploiting Demel's wayward positioning, had space to pick out Giroud, who timed his run perfectly to meet the German's cross with a first-time strike past Jaaskelainen.

To make matters worse for West Ham, they finished with 10 men after young defender Daniel Potts was stretchered off when Allardyce had already used all of his substitutes.

- AFP/jc

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Apple: Some Maps fixes out already, more this year

Apple offered some minor details on improvements it has made, and still has in the pipeline for its mobile maps software.

"We've made a number of improvements to Maps," Apple CEO Tim Cook told Wall Street analysts during the company's first quarter earnings call this afternoon. Some of those include improved satellite and flyover imagery as well as local information for businesses, he said.

Cook said that people are using Maps "significantly" more than they were before
iOS 6, which added Apple's controversial mapping software and replaced Google. Nonetheless, there's room for improvement, Cook added, saying "we'll keep on working on this" and that the company planned to "roll out more improvements during the rest of the year."

Cook publicly apologized about the software last September, roughly a week after it was released to consumers, saying "we are extremely sorry for the frustration" it caused. Some of those frustrations include missing or inaccurate locations, low quality satellite imagery in densely populated areas, and cosmetic issues with its 3D flyover feature.

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