Extensis Font Doctor, Font Reserve 3, Suitcase X1 Font Management Software Best Practices Guide

Font
Management
in Mac OS® X
Best Practices
Guide
Contact
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Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
1
Best Practices for
Managing Fonts in Mac OS X
So what’s all the hubbub?
With Mac OS X, professional workflows involving
fonts have become seemingly more difficult and
confusing, resulting in delays and problems for
users. This is especially true for Mac OS 9 users who
are just now making the transition.
Fonts in OS X can now be located in a myriad of
locations on the system, and fonts are activated by
a very specific font hierarchy that can make it very
challenging for users to accurately verify that the
correct font is in use.
Several fonts are also required for Mac OS X to
properly function. Removing these fonts can have
unpredictable effects upon the stability of your
system and severely hamper your workflow.
What can I do about it?
This document contains detailed recommendations
and instructions that can help you work efficiently
with fonts in OS X, configure your system to
minimize font problems, enhance your workflow.
It covers:
• How to organize your font library
• Which fonts are necessary to Mac OS X
• Where Mac OS X stores system fonts
• How to cleanup and organize your font library
• The font activation hierarchy
• Techniques to workaround font issues
We presume that you have made the decision to
use a professional font manager – like Suitcase or
Font Reserve – to manage your fonts. These font
management tools are an integral part of making
sense of your font mess.
If you are unclear on the need for a professional
font manager, please take a moment to review the
document “Font Management – Why Go Pro?”
Please visit the following location to download the
PDF: http://dl.extensis.com/downloads/SC/EN/P/
Suitcase_why_go_pro.pdf
This document is useful for all professionals in
the creative, print and publishing environments.
If you manage a workgroup of multiple users, you
may significantly benefit from the use of a serverbased font management system. To download white
papers, documentation and related information
about the benefits of server based font management
solutions, please visit the Extensis website:
http://www.extensis.com.
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
2
Step 1:
Organize Your Font Files
One of the first things you should do is to organize
your physical font files into a neat, systematic and
central location.
To do this, you need to create a folder – for example
a folder called My Fonts – and keep it somewhere
locally on your hard drive. A good location to place
this folder is in the /Users/Shared folder, because
that way your font library will be accessible to all the
users on the machine.
You should also decide whether you want to manually
organize your font files, or use a font manager to do
this for you. Suitcase comes with a product called
FontDoctor which, among other things, can organize
all your font files. Font Reserve can also organize all
your font files for you automatically if you choose to
have it do this.
To organize fonts with FontDoctor:
1. Launch FontDoctor.
Font Doctor comes with Suitcase, or can be purchased
separately from the Extensis website:
http://www.extensis.com.
2. In the FontDoctor dialog box, select the
Organize Fonts tab.
3. In the Search Disks/Folders for Fonts box, add
specific folders to the list by using the folder button to
choose specific locations, or by checking a specific disk
to scan.
If you choose to scan an entire disk, you may wish to
manually clean up your Adobe Application font folders
before scanning the entire disk. See page 5 of this
guide for detailed instructions.
4. If you want to keep an entirely clean font library, it is
good to remove the original font files, so that the fonts
in your library are the only ones available for use. To do
so, check the Delete Original Files After Copy option.
5. Click the Organize Options button to open the
Organize Options dialog box. Typically the default
settings are appropriate here. To reset the default
settings, click the Reset Settings button. Note that the
Skip System Folder option is checked. You will also
need to clean these files up, but it is better to do this
manually, or with a font manager such as Suitcase or
Font Reserve.
6. Click Save to save the new settings.
7. Click Create Library.
8. FontDoctor prompts you to choose a location for your
new font library. Click New and choose a convenient
location on your hard disk for your library.
9. Click OK to confirm the settings. FontDoctor searches
the selected locations and groups all of the fonts in the
new library.
To organize fonts with Font Reserve:
When fonts are added to Font Reserve, you can
specify that the fonts be moved or copied to a central
location, called the vault. To tell Font Reserve to
organize your fonts, do the following:
1. Launch the Font Reserve Browser.
2. Choose Font Reserve Browser > Preferences.
2. Click the Adding Fonts icon in the scroll bar at left.
3. To tell Font Reserve to collect your fonts into the vault,
choose either of the following options:
• Move into Vault: Moves physical font files from
any location, including a remote volume or ZIP
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
3
disk, into the vault. (Fonts on CD-ROMs or locked
disks are copied into the vault.) Organizations
such as design studios, which allow each of their
designers to store and manage all their fonts on
their local workstations, may prefer this setting.
• Copy into Vault: Copies physical font files into
the vault, leaving the originals untouched.
If you want to load all of your font files into
Font Reserve, and then delete the originals
after you’ve begun working with Font
Reserve more, this setting works well.
4. Click OK to accept the new preferences.
5. Add your fonts to Font Reserve.
Manually organizing your fonts
If you decide to manually organize your fonts, it is
best to have a strategy for the organization of your
font library. The following are typical strategies that
users implement while organizing a font library:
Alphabetically by family name: Often used
by designers or creative professionals, this is
often the easiest way to find a particular font.
With this method, the library is often further
divided into a number of subfolders within the
My Fonts folder, for example A-D, E-H, etc.
By classification: Often used by typographers,
or designers who are well versed in typography.
Depending on the level sophistication a set of
subfolders with names such as Serif, Script, or
Ornamental can be used.
By job name or number: Often used in production
environments like service bureaus or print shops,
you would create a set of subfolders for each job
name or number in your workflow.
By client: Often used in design shops with many
clients, where each client uses a specific set of fonts
for all their jobs.
Whichever way you decide to organize your font
library, you must ensure that you keep all PostScript
font components (suitcase fonts and outline fonts)
together in the same folder. Mac OS X requires that
the suitcase font files and corresponding outline
font files to be in the same physical folder in order
to work correctly.
Step 2:
Manage Your System Font and
Application Font Folders
Fonts that are stored in any of the System Font
folders or in any of the Application Font folders are
typically managed by the operating system and not
by your font management tool.
For detailed information about the many locations
where Mac OS X can place and store fonts, see the
Mac OS X and Font Locations chapter of this guide.
The number of locations for fonts in Mac OS X
can lead to confusion and cause problems. Within
the professional creative, print and publishing
environments, it is strongly recommended that
you use a font management tool to manage all
of your available fonts.
Both Suitcase and Font Reserve include features that
allow you to manage Mac OS X System Fonts. For
details about using Suitcase to do so, see page 19 of
the Suitcase X1 Users Guide. To use Font Reserve
to manage System Fonts, see page 34 of the Font
Reserve 3 User Guide.
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
4
Manually cleaning up your System Font and
Application Font folders
In order to manually clean up your System Font and
Application Font folders, it is necessary to remove all
fonts that are not absolutely essential for Mac OS X
to operate.
If you manually clean out these folders, we
recommend that you create a folder named Moved
from System Font Folders within your My Fonts
folder (the folder you created in Step 1). Whether
you will be using these fonts in the future or not, it
is good practice to save these fonts and not discard
them just in case you do need them at a later date.
To manually clean up your system fonts:
1. For Local Domain Fonts, create a folder called
Library Fonts within the Moved from System Font
Folders folder.
2. Move all fonts that you find in /Library/Fonts to your
new Library Fonts folder.
3. For User Domain Fonts, create a folder called User
Fonts within the Moved from System Font Folders
folder.
4. Move all fonts that you find in
/Users/[name]/Library/Fonts
to your new User Fonts folder.
5. If you have a Classic System Folder, a System Folder
that has an OS 9 icon at the root of your main hard
disk, these fonts must be moved. Create a folder
called Classic Fonts within the Moved from System
Font Folders folder.
Move all fonts that you find in /System Folder/Fonts
to your new folder, except the following fonts:
Charcoal
Chicago
Geneva
Monaco
These fonts are essential to normal system operation
of Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther), and removing these
fonts may cause your system to behave erratically. In
no event should these fonts be moved from /System
Folder/Fonts.
You may also wish to leave any OpenType fonts that
you want to use in the Classic environment in the
System Folder/Fonts location. All font managers,
including Suitcase and Font Reserve, are unable to
activate OpenType fonts in the Classic environment
from Mac OS X.
6. To move System Domain Fonts, you must be
logged in to Mac OS X as a user with Administrator
rights. If you aren’t sure your login level, check the
Accounts page of the System Preferences. For more
information, see the Mac OS X documentation.
7. Create a folder named System Domain Fonts folder
in your Moved from System Font Folders folder.
8. Select all of the fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts
folder except the following essential system fonts:
Geneva.dfont
Keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
Lucida Grande.dfont
Monaco.dfont
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
5
These fonts are essential to normal system operation
of Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther), and removing these
fonts may cause your system to behave erratically. In
no event should these fonts be moved from /System
Folder/Library/Fonts.
Adobe Application Fonts
It is likely that you have a number of applications
from Adobe installed on your system. When
installed, these applications place font files in a
special location. To locate and move these files:
9. Copy the selected fonts from the /System/Library/
Fonts folder to your new System Domain Fonts
folder.
1. Create a folder named Adobe Application Fonts
within the Moved from System Font Folders folder.
10. Press Command-Delete to remove the selected files
from the System Folder. At the prompt, enter your
Mac OS X Administrator password and click OK.
2. Move all of the fonts that you find in
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts to your
new folder, except the folder named Reqrd and the
fonts stored within this folder.
Required System Fonts for Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther)
Type
Fonts
Location
Classic Domain Fonts
Charcoal
Chicago
Geneva
Monaco
/System Folder/Fonts
System Domain Fonts
Geneva.dfont
Keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
Lucida Grande.dfont
Monaco.dfont
/System/Library/Fonts
Required International Fonts
Japanese Fonts
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro
W3 and W6
Hiragino Mincho Pro
AquaKana
Osaka and Osaka Mono
/System/Library/Fonts
Traditional Chinese fonts
LiHei Pro
Apple LiGothic Medium
Hei
/System/Library/Fonts
Simplified Chinese Fonts
STXiHei
STHeiti
/System/Library/Fonts
Korean Font
AppleGothic Regular
/System/Library/Fonts
Arabic Font
Geeza Pro Regular and Bold
/System/Library/Fonts
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
6
A Note about Helvetica
While Helvetica is not an essential system font,
some applications still require an active version
of Helvetica in order to operate correctly. If you
regularly use any applications that require Helvetica:
As soon as you remove Helvetica from your
system font folders, be sure to activate a version
of Helvetica using your font manager (Suitcase or
Font Reserve). It doesn’t matter which font format
you use (PostScript, OpenType, TrueType, etc),
but for professional creative, print and publishing
environments, we recommend using a PostScript
version of Helvetica.
International Fonts
If your preferred language is non-Roman, or if
you expect to use a non-Roman language as your
preferred language in the future, there are a number
of other required fonts .
Mac OS X also comes with a number of
international fonts for use when using a non-Roman
language as the preferred language. The required
fonts for each language are listed in the chart on the
previous page.
If you have difficulty
reading the font
name, select the font
and choose
File > Get Info
(Command-I). The
full name is listed
in the Get Info
dialog box.
Step 3: Add your fonts to your font
manager (Suitcase or Font Reserve)
Once you have all your font files organized, and
have removed all unnecessary fonts from the various
System Font and Application Font folders, the next
step is to add all these fonts to your font manager.
If you have organized all your font files into a single
folder hierarchy, then it is a fairly simple process
to add these fonts to your font manager. You can
simply drag the entire My Fonts folder into the Fonts
pane in Suitcase or Font Reserve to have all the fonts
added to the font manager.
The only decision you need to make is whether you
want to follow your physical organization of files
by creating corresponding Sets in Suitcase or Font
Reserve, or simply add the fonts and organize them
into Sets at a later time. For example, if you have
organized your font files by client or by job name,
you may want to create a separate Set for each client
or job. To do this, simply drag each client or job
folder into the Sets pane in Suitcase or Font Reserve.
For detailed instructions about adding fonts, see
page 17 of the Suitcase X1 User Guide or page 27
of the Font Reserve 3 User Guide.
Before you add your font library to your font
manager, you may want to consider first validating
your font library using a tool like Font Doctor. For
more information about this, refer to the “Corrupt
Fonts” section in Step 4.
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
7
Step 4: Cleanup your Font Library
Cleaning up your font library is probably the most
diverse and certainly the most difficult task of font
management. Many font problems encountered
in Mac OS X occur because of problem fonts. Any
number of errors can occur because a font is actually
corrupt, missing a outline font file, or is a duplicate
of another font you already have in your library.
Having a clean, healthy font library is your best bet
to a seamless, problem free workflow.
Corrupt Fonts
Suitcase comes with a full copy of Font Doctor. Font
Doctor’s main function is to validate fonts, to fix
any corrupt fonts that it is able to fix, and warn you
about corrupt fonts it is unable to fix.
If you are using Suitcase as your font manager, it is
recommended that before you add your font library
to Suitcase, you first run it through Font Doctor to
validate your fonts and create a healthy library.
If you are using Font Reserve, it’s also a good idea
to first run your font library through Font Doctor
before adding your fonts to Font Reserve. Font
Reserve contains font validation and corruption
fixing features built into the product, so this acts as
an additional verification process if you have used
Font Doctor.
Any fonts that are found to be corrupt by either Font
Doctor or Font Reserve should be discarded and you
should find and reload a healthy version of the font
from the original media wherever possible.
Orphan Fonts
PostScript fonts are comprised of a suitcase font
file (sometimes referred to as the bitmap or screen
font file) and a corresponding outline font file
(sometimes referred to as the printer font). If either
of these components is missing, it is referred to as
an orphan font. Different applications deal with
these orphan fonts in different ways, but to ensure
a trouble free workflow, both components are
required. So one of the steps you should take in
cleaning up your font library, is to either discard any
orphan fonts you have in your library, or replace the
orphans with a clean version of the font from the
original media.
Once again, Font Doctor can help in this regard by
locating and matching suitcase and outline fonts
together. Font Reserve can also do this. But the final
check should be done once you have added your
font library to Suitcase or Font Reserve. Use the
features of these products to locate and remove any
orphan fonts that you find.
Duplicate Fonts
Two fonts that have the same name are considered
duplicate fonts because it is often difficult to
determine what – if anything – is different between
the fonts. Many font libraries often contain many
duplicate fonts, sometimes out of necessity (different
versions of these fonts may be needed), sometimes
simply because they have accumulated over time.
To avoid confusion and errors, it is best to keep only
the fonts – and the versions of fonts – that you need.
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
8
Once all your fonts have been added to your font
manager, you should decide which of these fonts
– especially duplicates – you want or need to keep,
and which you should discard. For example, most
people have multiple versions of Helvetica — likely
PostScript, TrueType and Dfont versions, and even
possibly multiple PostScript versions of Helvetica
from a single foundry, such as Adobe. This is not
uncommon. There are, in fact, many, many versions
of Helvetica available. If you work on client jobs
using client provided fonts, then you will need
to make sure you have the versions of these fonts
provided by the client. So if Client A requires
Helvetica “A”, and Client B requires Helvetica “B”, it
is necessary to keep copies of both Helvetica “A” and
Helvetica “B” in your library.
While this can be a time consuming process, it
is definitely worth your while to examine your
duplicates and decide which you need and which
you do not need. Both Suitcase and Font Reserve
have features built-in to the product to help you in
this process.
For detailed instructions about examining duplicate
fonts with Suitcase, see page 37 of the Suitcase
X1 User Guide. If you are using Font Reserve,
see page 38 of the Font Reserve 3 User Guide.
If you do need to keep multiple versions of fonts in
your library, you should probably use the keyword
features of your font manager – either Suitcase or
Font Reserve – to tag your duplicate fonts with
information to help identify the fonts required for
each client and job.
For detailed instructions about using keywords with
your fonts in Suitcase, see page 30 of the Suitcase
User Guide. To add specific information to fonts
with Font Reserve, use the Owners feature described
on page 89 of the Font Reserve 3 User Guide.
If you are completely in charge of the fonts you use,
you should only keep one version of each font and
remove the duplicate font from your font manager as
well as removing the duplicate font files from your
system. Within a professional creative, print and
publishing environment, PostScript versions (either
Type 1 PostScript format, or OpenType Postscript
format) are probably the best choice today.
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
9
Mac OS X and Font Locations
With Mac OS X, Apple introduced a
number of new locations where fonts may
be stored and used by the system.
System Domain
/System/Library/Fonts
Fonts in this folder are used by the OS, available to
all users of the system, and in general should be left
alone. Some of the fonts in this folder are absolutely
required by the OS and removing them will cause
the OS or certain applications to crash or behave
erratically. Other fonts may be safely removed
from this folder. See page 7 of this guide for a list of
required fonts that cannot be removed.
Fonts stored in this location are always active and
available to the OS and all running applications
– with the exception of applications running in the
Classic environment.
Local Domain
/Library/Fonts
This folder houses any non-essential system fonts
available to any user who logs-on to the system.
Fonts stored in this location are always active and
available to the OS and all running applications
– with the exception of applications running in the
Classic environment.
User Domain
/Users/[name]/Library/Fonts
Fonts in this folder are non-essential system fonts
available only to the specific user who logs-on to the
system. Each individual user who has an account on
the system has his/her own User Fonts folder.
Fonts stored in this location are always active and
available to the OS and all running applications
– with the exception of applications running in the
Classic environment.
Classic Domain
/System Folder/Fonts
This folder houses fonts available to all users of the
system and are specifically for use with the Classic
environment. These include both the essential fonts
required for running the Classic environment, as
well as non-essential fonts for use within the Classic
environment. See page 7 of this guide for a list of
required Classic fonts that cannot be removed.
Fonts in this folder are always active and available
to all applications running within the Classic
environment of OS X. Fonts in this folder are also
always available to all applications running in the
OS X environment – even if the Classic environment
is not running.
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
10
Network Domain
/Network/Library/Fonts
This folder houses non-essential system fonts that
you would like to have available to anyone on your
local area network. In order to use this folder, you
must setup your network and sharing appropriately.
For specific information about setting up this
folder, refer to the Mac OS X Server File Services
Administration Guide. Please visit the Apple
website to download this file:
http://www.apple.com/server/documentation/
When correctly configured, fonts in this folder on
your server are automatically active and available to
all running applications on each of the connected
client machines – with the exception of applications
running within the Classic environment.
These fonts are available to all users on all
computers that have been correctly configured to
use these fonts.
Application Fonts
/Library/Application Support
In addition to these system font folders, individual
applications sometimes also store fonts in certain
locations for their own use. With Mac OS X,
applications can keep a private store of fonts
for their own use. Of particular importance to
the professional creative, print and publishing
community, are the Adobe applications, which store
fonts in:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
These fonts are active and available to any Adobe
application running in Mac OS X – but not available
to non-Adobe applications.
Font Hierarchy
Can duplicate fonts be retained in the
various system and application font
folders? Yes, but it’s not a good idea.
If duplicate fonts are stored in multiple
font locations, Mac OS X will use the
version of the font based on the location
of the font in the following hierarchy:
1. A specific Application’s font folder:
/Library/Application Support
2. The User font folder:
/Users/[name]/Library/Fonts
3. The Local font folder:
/Library/Fonts
4. The Network font folder:
/Network/Library/Fonts
5. The System font folder:
/System/Library/Fonts
6. The Classic font folder:
/System Folder/Fonts
The Application Support font folder is the “highest”
font location, and the classic font folder is the
“lowest” font location. This means, for example,
that if you have a font of the same name (a duplicate
font) in both the /Users/[name]/Library/Fonts
folder, and the /System/Library/Fonts folder,
Mac OS X (and all running applications) uses the
version of the font in the /Users/[name]/Library/
Fonts folder, since that is the “higher” font location.
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
11
Mac OS X and Font Formats
Can you use the same fonts that you used with
Mac OS 9? In general, the answer is yes. Mac OS X
supports the same PostScript and TrueType fonts
used with Mac OS 9. The fonts may look a little
different – for example, suitcases don’t look or even
seemingly behave like suitcases in Mac OS X – but
they still work the same way.
Following is a brief synopsis of all font formats
supported by Mac OS X:
PostScript Type 1
These are still the de-facto standard for
professionals in the creative, print and publishing
environments. You still require both the suitcase
font file (sometimes called the screen font) and
the corresponding outline font file (also called
the printer font) in order for PostScript fonts to
work correctly in Mac OS X. Both the suitcase and
corresponding outline font files must be in the same
physical folder in order to work correctly.
TrueType
These continue to be supported by Mac OS X.
TrueType fonts contain the bitmap and outline
information, as well as all the required font metrics,
in a single font suitcase, making it somewhat easier
to utilize then traditional PostScript Type 1
fonts. However, TrueType fonts are still not as
widely accepted in professional creative, print and
publishing environments.
OpenType
OpenType is the up and coming standard in font
formats. There are several significant advantages
to the OpenType format. First, as with TrueType,
the entire font is housed in a single file. Second,
this file is cross platform – the same file can
be used on a Mac or Windows platform with
consistent results. Third, an OpenType font can
contain either PostScript or TrueType outline data,
so professional creative, print and publishing
environments can continue to use PostScript
fonts. Fourth, OpenType can support Unicode
information which can contain thousands of
characters including high quality ligatures,
swash glyphs, and other advanced typographical
features. This is a significant benefit over PostScript
Type 1, which is limited to 256 characters.
Mac OS X natively supports OpenType fonts
and Unicode information, making OpenType
an excellent choice of font format. However,
moving to OpenType fonts does require a financial
investment since you cannot simply convert your
existing PostScript Type 1 or TrueType fonts to
OpenType. Adobe is now selling an OpenType
version of their Adobe Font Folio library, and is
only developing OpenType fonts at this point.
Best Practices Guide
Font Management in OS X
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Dfont
With Mac OS X, Apple introduced yet another
font format. The Dfont (Data Fork TrueType
Font) is essentially a TrueType font repackaged
in a data fork file rather than the resource fork
in Mac OS 9. While these Dfont format fonts
are high-quality fonts, this format is essentially
only used by Apple and, in effect, these fonts are
just used as system fonts. We do not recommend
using Dfont format fonts within professional
creative, print and publishing environments.
PostScript Multiple Master
This special PostScript font allows modifications
of one or more font parameters to create variations
of the original font. While Multiple Master
fonts are supported by Mac OS X, they have
been falling “out of favor” and are no longer
being actively developed by Adobe (the original
creators of Multiple Master fonts). They have
been known to cause various issues and problems
in professional workflows, and we recommend
not using Multiple Master fonts if possible.
Windows TrueType
Mac OS X also supports Windows TrueType fonts
(often called .ttf fonts). These fonts are the same as
Mac TrueType fonts, but with a different internal
organization. These fonts were not supported by
Mac OS 9.
Unicode
You’ve probably heard the term “Unicode” used in
one way or the other, but may not know exactly to
what it refers. For Fonts, Unicode defines unique
character mappings for up to 65,000 characters
(current font formats) per font. Therefore, the
character “A” is in the same character mapping
across all Unicode fonts.
In previous versions of the Mac OS, the predominant
character encoding for fonts was MacRoman,
not Unicode. MacRoman does not specify exact
character mappings, so unique characters could be
mapped to other character locations. For example,
in MacRoman, Dingbat characters could be mapped
to keyboard keys. The Unicode format specifies
exact character mappings for all letters, including
Dingbats, that provides much more predictability.
For an application to be able to use Unicode
fonts, it must be “Unicode Compliant.” If
an application is not compliant, then it will
likely display an entirely wrong character
from a different location in the font.
Mac OS X applications developed for Cocoa are
Unicode compliant, while applications written
with the earlier Carbon standard are not as
likely to be compliant. Significant exceptions
to this include Adobe applications (InDesign,
Illustrator, Photoshop) and Microsoft Office
applications, which are Unicode compliant.
ATM Light
With Mac OS 9, PostScript fonts required Adobe’s
ATM Light system extension to be installed in order
to work, because they were not natively supported by
the Mac OS. With Mac OS X, PostScript is natively
supported and the rendering of Type 1 fonts is
supported directly by the OS, so ATM Light is no
longer required, or even available, for Mac OS X.
Font Management in OS X
Best Practices Guide
13
Troubleshooting
This section describes some of the known
font issues and workarounds that you can
employ to circumvent the problem.
Font Cache Issues
If your fonts occasionally appear garbled
– it appears the correct font is being used but
the characters are randomized – you have most
likely run into the Mac OS X font cache problem.
This problem was fixed in Mac OS X version
10.3.6, but existed in version 10.3.5 and earlier.
To workaround this issue:
1. Remove the font cache files com.apple.ATS.System.
fcache, com.apple.ATSServer.FODB_System and
fontTablesAnnex that are found in
/System/Library/Caches. You will need to enter an
Administrator password in order to do this.
2. Remove the folder com.apple.ATS from
/Library/Caches.
3. Remove the file com.apple.ATS.plist from
/Users/[name]/Library/Preferences.
4. Restart your Mac.
This should alleviate the problem. If the problem
recurs, it is necessary to remove the font cache files
again. There are also shareware products available
that allow you to purge these font cache files easily,
such as Font Finagler, available from:
http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/
Symbol/Dingbats Fonts
In Mac OS X version 10.3.5, occasionally certain
symbol/dingbats fonts do not display in certain
applications. This problem was fixed with Mac
OS X 10.3.6. A similar situation occurs when you
are using a Unicode symbol/dingbat font within a
Unicode-savvy application. An example of this is
the Mac OS X font ZapfDingbats.dfont – which is a
Unicode font – when used with TextEdit – which is
a Unicode-savvy application – will result in the font
Lucida Grande being substituted for ZapfDingbats.
dfont when you enter text with the keyboard.
Unicode does not map symbol/dingbat characters to
keyboard alphabet keys. Therefore, text entry from
the keyboard using a Unicode font with a Unicodesavvy application will result in “invisible” text,
blank boxes, or font substitution.
To display and use dingbat characters in a Unicodesavvy application using a Unicode font, use the
Character Palette - a built-in feature of Mac OS X
– to input the dingbat characters, instead of the
keyboard.
For more information on this issue and the
workaround, please refer to the Extensis Knowledge
Base Article #1302204: http://www.extensis.com/en/
support/kb_article.jsp?articleNumber=1302204
Expert Fonts
Some expert fonts, for example Adobe
Minion Expert, do not preview on screen
correctly in most applications. This was only
an issue in Mac OS X version 10.3.5 and was
fixed with the version 10.3.6 release.
FM-OSXBPG-0305
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