Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS X, Tiger Edition

Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS X, Tiger Edition

Released May 2007
Publisher(s): Peachpit Press
ISBN: 1933671149

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Book description

Are you suffering from a mysterious font problem in Mac OS X Tiger? Help is at hand, with troubleshooting steps and real-world advice for solving problems fast. If you've experienced seemingly inexplicable trouble with characters displaying incorrectly, being unable to type a particular character, fonts missing from Font menus, confusing behavior in Microsoft and Adobe programs, Font Book crashing, or Character Palette misbehaving, turn to font expert Sharon Zardetto Aker for help. Bonus! This ebook includes over $65 of coupons.

Read this ebook to find the answers to questions such as:

  • How do I go about troubleshooting a font problem?

  • Microsoft Word keeps complaining about a corrupt font. What should I do?

  • People keep telling me to "just delete the caches." What are they? Where are they? Why does deleting them solve a font problem?

  • Why can't I install a PostScript Type 1 font?

  • Why doesn't the Input menu show up in my menu bar?

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Read Me First
    1. Onscreen Reading Tips
    2. Printing Tips
    3. Basics
    4. Assumptions
  3. Introduction
  4. Quick Start
  5. Know What and Where Your Fonts Are
    1. Learn About Supported Font Types
    2. Where Mac OS X Fonts Are Stored
      1. Know your folder names
      2. Font storage
        1. Tiger Fonts folders
        2. Application Fonts folders
        3. User libraries
      3. The font access order
  6. Take Preventive Measures and Plan Ahead
    1. General Guidelines
    2. Know Your Tools
    3. Archive Your Fonts and Utilities
    4. Prep for Changing Font Managers
  7. Learn Troubleshooting Procedures
    1. General Procedures
      1. Restart your Mac
      2. Repair permissions
      3. Reset font file permissions
      4. Try a new user account
      5. Start up in Safe Mode
        1. What happens in a Safe Mode startup
      6. Use a safe login
      7. Perform an Archive and Install
      8. Find the bad font out of a hundred (or more)
    2. Delete Caches and plists
      1. Delete the system font caches
      2. Delete the Microsoft Office font cache
      3. Delete Adobe font caches
      4. Delete Font Book’s plist
      5. Delete Character Palette’s plists
      6. Delete Keyboard Viewer’s plist
    3. Restore System Components
      1. Restore or add Tiger fonts
        1. Restore fonts to the System Fonts folder
        2. Restore basic fonts to the Library Fonts folder
        3. Restore the Additional Fonts to the Library Fonts folder
      2. Restore Font Book
      3. Restore Character Palette or Keyboard Viewer
  8. Tackle General Font Problems
    1. User-specific items
    2. All-users items
  9. Fix Font Book Problems
    1. Nonspecific problems or Font Book crashes on opening
    2. A font isn’t in the expected folder or library after you install it
    3. Font Book can’t see a font in a Fonts folder
    4. A font is listed in the User library but not in All Fonts
    5. The Font list shows a double listing for the same font
    6. The preview area displays the wrong font
    7. The preview area shows nothing in Sample view, and you can’t type anything in Custom view
    8. The Classic library isn’t listed
    9. There’s no Removal confirm dialog
    10. Your disabled fonts are re-enabled
    11. A TrueType font is marked as disabled in Font Book but shows up in Font menus
    12. Duplicate-dot dilemmas in the Font list
    13. Resolving duplicates disables every copy of a font
    14. Multiple fonts or typefaces disappear when one is removed
    15. A font doesn’t show up in Font Book (or menus) after you’ve added it to a folder that you’ve defined as a user library
    16. Library contents disappear when the library is renamed
    17. Collections or user libraries misbehave
    18. Collections or user libraries disappear from the Collection list
  10. Manage Input Menu Items
    1. Character Palette
      1. Character Palette problems that aren’t problems
      2. Scrollbars are missing on any Character Palette section
      3. Character Palette opens off-screen or gets stuck behind the menu bar
      4. The Insert/Insert With Font button is active but doesn’t work
      5. The Insert With Font button inserts a character without the font
      6. Character Palette crashes or generally misbehaves
    2. Keyboard Viewer
      1. Keyboard Viewer doesn’t update its view when you choose a new keyboard layout from the Input menu
      2. The font you choose in Keyboard Viewer is not being used in your document
      3. Keyboard commands like Command-Q don’t work when you switch keyboards
      4. Keyboard Viewer crashes or generally misbehaves
    3. The Input Menu
      1. You have no Input menu
      2. The Input menu misbehaves
    4. Input Keyboards
      1. Some foreign language keyboards are missing from the International pane’s list
      2. You logged out with a foreign keyboard active and now you can’t log in
  11. Solve Other Specific Problems
    1. Font Files and Icons
      1. A font file can’t be moved or copied
      2. A font refuses to go out with the Trash
      3. Font files have strange icons
      4. OpenType icon changes to an “O”
      5. A faux corruption
      6. A font icon changes when you move it to a different folder
    2. PostScript Fonts
      1. Helvetica Fractious
      2. Times Phrenetic
      3. A PostScript Type 1 font won’t install
    3. Font Menus and the Font Panel
      1. A font doesn’t appear in a Font menu
      2. The collections in Font panel are not coordinated with those in Font Book
      3. Font panel loses track of your Favorites or Recently Used fonts
    4. Font and Character Formatting
      1. Text is totally garbled
      2. Text is garbled in menus and dialogs
      3. Boxes or incorrect characters are substituted
      4. Standard Option-key combos like Option-V enter the wrong characters
      5. The letter O followed by a slash turns into a slashed O
      6. Extra blank lines appear between lines of text
      7. Lucida Grande keeps getting applied to your text
      8. Text refuses to change to a new font
      9. The font changes when text is pasted between applications, or imported
      10. Character styles change when text is pasted or imported
    5. Safari
      1. Special characters, like accented letters, turn into other characters or question marks in diamonds
      2. Some pages on a site are fine, others present font gibberish
      3. Web page text is rendered as fractions
      4. Arabic-language pages don’t display correctly
    6. Microsoft Office
      1. The fonts in the Microsoft Fonts folder aren’t in Font menus
      2. You deleted the Microsoft fonts from your User Fonts folder
      3. Office applications take a long time to “optimize font menus”
      4. Some foreign language fonts don’t show up in Microsoft menus
      5. But the foreign language keyboards let you type right-to-left in Word and you even get the correct language script
      6. (Mostly false) reports of corrupt fonts
    7. Adobe Applications
      1. A font name is bracketed in InDesign’s font list
      2. Creative Suite programs won’t launch; they want CMap files
    8. Classic Fonts and Environment
      1. PostScript Type 1 fonts in Classic documents have “the jaggies”
      2. Fonts are unpredictably substituted in documents
      3. Fonts in the Classic Fonts folder don’t show in any Tiger Font menus
  12. Excerpt 1: The World According to Glyphs
    1. GID interpretation—Apple fonts in Apple programs
    2. GID interpretation—Apple fonts in Adobe programs
    3. GID interpretation—Adobe fonts in Adobe and Apple programs
  13. Excerpt 2: Update Legacy Fonts
    1. Learn How to Pack a Suitcase for OS X
    2. Work with Suitcases in Mac OS 9
    3. Use Font/DA Mover
  14. A. Font Specs
  15. B. Tiger Fonts
  16. C. The “Do Not Remove” Font List
  17. D. Users and Accounts
  18. About This Ebook
    1. About the Author
    2. Author’s Acknowledgements
    3. About the Publisher
    4. Production Credits
  19. Featured Titles

Product information

  • Title: Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS X, Tiger Edition
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: May 2007
  • Publisher(s): Peachpit Press
  • ISBN: 1933671149