Question

How could I programmatically install a font on the Mac platform (Snow Leopard)? What steps would I need to follow? I would like for the user to input a font file, then my software installs it.

Answer 1

Fonts belong in ~user/Library/Fonts/ for a single user or /Library/Fonts/ to be accessible to all users. You need to get permission in order to write to /Library/Fonts/, although there is an API for that which makes it relatively easy. (I have the code somewhere and can look it up if no one else knows offhand.)

---

As requested, here are some API docs:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Security/Reference/authorization_ref/Reference/reference.html

This is old code I have that did the update under Carbon (hence the pascal strings). It was based on sample code which is probably somewhere in the above URL. I haven’t looked into doing this under Cocoa, and this is a edited version of the code (still a bit messy), so YMMV.

int main()
{
    OSStatus myStatus = -1;
    char path[1024];
    char myToolPath[2048];
    getUpdateAppPath(myToolPath);
    getFilePath(path);

    if (path[0] != 0)
    {
        char temp[2048];
        FILE *f;
        printf("Attempting to open \'%s\'\n", path);
        f = fopen(path, "w+");
        if (f != 0) // we seem to have write permission
        {
            fclose(f);
            SInt16 res;
            sprintf(temp, "\'%s\' \'%s\'", myToolPath, path);
            system(temp);
            StandardAlert(kAlertNoteAlert, "\pUpdate Complete", "\pSuccessfully updated.", 0, &res);
            return 0;
        }

        AuthorizationFlags myFlags = kAuthorizationFlagDefaults;
        AuthorizationRef myAuthorizationRef;
        myStatus = AuthorizationCreate(NULL, kAuthorizationEmptyEnvironment,
                                       myFlags, &myAuthorizationRef);
        if (myStatus != errAuthorizationSuccess)
        {
            SInt16 res;
            StandardAlert(kAlertNoteAlert, "\pAuthorization Error", "\pCould not authorize application to update.", 0, &res);
            return myStatus;
        }

        AuthorizationItem myItems = {kAuthorizationRightExecute, 0, NULL, 0};

        AuthorizationRights myRights = {1, &myItems};
        myFlags = kAuthorizationFlagDefaults |
        kAuthorizationFlagInteractionAllowed |
        kAuthorizationFlagPreAuthorize |
        kAuthorizationFlagExtendRights;

        myStatus = AuthorizationCopyRights (myAuthorizationRef, &myRights, NULL, myFlags, NULL );

        if (myStatus != errAuthorizationSuccess)
            break;

        char *myArguments[] = { path, NULL };
        FILE *myCommunicationsPipe = NULL;
        char myReadBuffer[128];


        myFlags = kAuthorizationFlagDefaults;
        myStatus = AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges(myAuthorizationRef, myToolPath, myFlags, myArguments,
                                                      &myCommunicationsPipe);

        if (myStatus == errAuthorizationSuccess)
            for(;;)
            {
                int bytesRead = read (fileno (myCommunicationsPipe),
                                      myReadBuffer, sizeof (myReadBuffer));
                if (bytesRead < 1) break;
                write (fileno (stdout), myReadBuffer, bytesRead);
            }

        AuthorizationFree (myAuthorizationRef, kAuthorizationFlagDefaults); // 17
    }
    if (myStatus)
    {
        printf("Status: %ld\n", myStatus);
        SInt16 res;
        StandardAlert(kAlertNoteAlert, "\pUpdater Error", "\pMay not have updated properly.", 0, &res);
    }
    else {
        SInt16 res;
        StandardAlert(kAlertNoteAlert, "\pUpdate Complete", "\pSuccessfully updated.", 0, &res);
    }
    return myStatus;
}