OS X Tip #151
Dealing with font problems on your Mac can be made easier if you have some information on how fonts work on OS X. This may be more than you ever wanted to know about fonts.

First some background info of OS X and fonts and then I will give you some troubleshooting tips for some problems you may be having with garbled text or fonts in general.

First, where does OS X store its fonts and who can use them?

Font Locations in OS X
On a Mac running OS X, fonts are usually installed in four or more places. Where a font is installed determines who can use it and how OS X selects it.

User fonts are installed in a user’s Fonts folder. Each individual user on a Mac running OS X can install, control, and access their own fonts. Fonts installed in a user’s Fonts folder are available only to that particular user. User fonts are installed in the Fonts folder within the user’s Library folder located in their Home directory. Home -> Library -> Fonts

Local fonts are installed in the Fonts folder for the start-up disk. These fonts are accessible to all local users of the computer. Any Admin user can modify the contents of this Fonts folder. Local fonts are installed in the Fonts folder within the start-up disk’s Library folder. Macintosh HD -> Library -> Fonts

System fonts are installed in the Fonts folder for the system. These fonts are installed by the Mac OS X installer and are used by the system. The contents of this Fonts folder should not be modified. System fonts are installed in the Fonts folder
within the System’s Library folder. Macintosh HD -> System -> Library -> Fonts

Classic fonts are installed in the Fonts folder within the Mac OS 9 System Folder (if Mac OS 9 is installed). These are the only fonts accessible by the Classic environment, although Mac OS X can use these fonts, even when the Classic environment is not running. Macintosh HD -> System Folder (OS 9) -> Fonts

Network fonts are installed in the Fonts folder on a network. These fonts are accessible to all local area network users. If your machine is a stand-alone Mac, this does NOT apply to you. This method is normally used on networks in large graphic organizations and not usually on the average user’s computer. Only the network administrator can usually modify the contents of this Network Fonts folder.

Next, what type of fonts can Mac OS X use?

About OS X Fonts
TrueType fonts are Apple’s preferred type of font for Mac OS X. Most or all of the fonts that ship with Mac OS X are TrueType (usually licensed from Adobe). Windows also use TrueType fonts, but a Windows TrueType font file has a somewhat different format from a Mac TrueType font. Fortunately, Mac OS X recognizes the following Windows versions of TrueType fonts: TrueType fonts (with the extension .ttf) and TrueType collections (with the extension .ttc).

Note: Mac OS X believes that any font with a .ttf extension is a Windows TrueType font, so don’t use this extension for Mac TrueType fonts. Some installed fonts will have this extension already. Some fonts on an OS X system may also have other extensions like .dfont or .otf.

OS X can work with PostScript fonts. These font files contain the PostScript instructions needed to print to PostScript-supported printers. If you don’t have a printer that includes PostScript support, you are better off avoiding PostScript fonts and sticking with TrueType ones. No PostScript fonts ship with Mac OS X, but you may have some in your Mac OS 9 System Folder or may have added PostScript fonts to your Mac OS X System folder.

How do I add and delete fonts in OS X? Answer Font Book.

Using Font Book
Font Book is an OS X application located in the Application folder. It allows previewing, selecting, searching, and adding, and removing, of Fonts for the local user. You can enable and disable individual font families, or custom-defined groups of fonts.

Simply select a collection or All Fonts if you want to search through all your fonts and begin typing the font’s name or style (such as bold or condensed) in the search field and the results will appear. This is a great way to find similarly named fonts or fonts of a specific style. Font Book has a big slider on right side for scaling the fonts view up and down.

Under the Preview menu, you can “Show Font Info”, which gives information about the selected font’s type, family, foundry, and copyright. You can create your own font collections by choosing “New Collection” from the File menu, then dragging fonts into it from the “All Fonts” list. This works the same way as Playlists in iTunes and albums in iPhoto.

You add a font by clicking the “+” sign under the font list, or by selecting “Add Fonts” from the File menu. Removing a font moves the font files to the trash and removes them from all user-defined font collections.

You can disable a font family by selecting the font and choosing “Disable font” from the Edit menu. Disabling a font leaves it installed, but it will not show up in the font panel. As far as I can tell, the only way to tell that a font has been disabled is through the Font Book application; there doesn’t seem to be any indication in the Finder or in the Get Info window for the font file.

You can disable all fonts in a collection at once by selecting the font collection and choosing “Disable collection” from the Edit menu.

Troubleshooting
Now I may have given you more background than you wanted. But troubleshooting font problems and better yet, avoiding them altogether will be easier if you have this information. Most Mac users will never come into contact with font problems, or even add a font for that matter. But if you do, I am going to give you some troubleshooting tips and some outright fixes.

The first thing you need to do is to identify which problem you are having. You are either having a font cache issue or an incorrect font substitution problem.

Try to remember what you may have done right before the problem showed up. Did you add a font, delete a font, open a document (like Quark) and allowed it to add a font? Did you install an application? Did you create or was this document created on a different machine?

Most font problems are caused by adding a defective or incompatible font, by deleting a font your system needs, or by an application or document substituting a font other than the one that created the document. Your Mac can do silly things when these things happen. Retracing your steps can save you a lot of time in fixing your problem. Many times just reversing what you did can fix it or lead you to the answer faster.

Although it is rare, it is possible for a font to get damaged or corrupted. If you have tried everything else, have disabled the font and watched the problems go away and are convinced the font is damaged, you have a couple choices. Replace the font with the same exact font from anther Mac running the same exact version of OS X. Or you can use a utility like Font Doctor (see more choices below) that can examine your fonts and alerts you to any damaged ones. Sometimes it can even fix them. But the best thing is that it allows OS X users to open and edit screen font suitcases. It even lets you create new, empty suitcases so you can rebuild “fresh” ones. Also see: OS X Tip #28: Fonts and Font Book

Fonts Your Mac Needs
There are some fonts your system absolutely needs. Some fonts are used across platforms and the web and therefore are important. If you are having problems one cause could be one of these fonts were deleted. These System fonts are stored /System/Library/Fonts.

Make sure that these fonts are active:

• AquaKanaBold
• AquaKanaRegular
• Courier
• Geneva
• Helvetica
• Helvetica LT MM
• Keyboard
• LastResort
• LucidaGrade
• Monaco
• Symbol
• TimesLT MM
• Zapf Dingbats

Most of these fonts are needed by the operating system, across platforms and the web.

Other important fonts are:

• Comic Sans
• Georgia
• Times NewRoman
• Trebuchet
• Verdana

You will find these fonts stored in /Library/Fonts and they are usually used across platforms and the web.

Some Problems and Possible Fixes

A good font troubleshooting method is to first find out where the problem actually is. Is the problem in only one application? If it is all your apps and all over your Mac, log out and log in as another user (if you can). This is a great way to narrow down the problem with fonts to System, User, or Application. Below are some common problems I have seen and some fixes.

If ALL the text is totally garbled and wrong when you open up a document here are some possible fixes.

• An important system font has been disabled or removed. Try checking the list above and activate or replace this font immediately, Your Mac’s menu and dialog boxes may also be affected.
• Opening a document in an application other than the one used to created it or on another platform can cause what looks like garbled text. Try to open the document in the correct application and this should make the problem go away.
• Helvetica Fractions or Times Phonetic fonts, if installed, has been known to cause font display problems in several Apple applications. Use the Font Book application to delete them. See above.
• Deleting the system font cache is worth trying in some cases. Mac OS X 10.4, keeps its “system font caches” files in a single folder. Drag the com.apple.ATS folder in /Library/Caches to the Trash and restart your Mac. Restarting may take little longer than usual as your machine will create a new font cache and cause enable all your disabled fonts in Font Book. But this might just solve your problem.

If Text is garbled just in menus, try this possible fix.

• Helvetica is VERY important to OS X (Tiger). Your Mac does not have to have the default Helvetica.dfont found in /Library/ Fonts. Actually any copy of Helvetica, in most any font type, located in any Fonts folder will keep your Mac running. But if all your Helvetica fonts are disabled, this would be the same as removing them from your system. Check to make sure Helvetica is active.

If incorrect characters or boxes (usually little boxes in place of text) are substituted on your Mac’s display.

Usually this happens when you have opened a document in an application or that was created elsewhere. Either in a different application or a different computer. Your Mac may not have the required font so it tries to substitute a font in its place with terrible results. If your Mac does not have the original font, and the substitute font doe not have all the characters needed you can try these possible fixes.

• Add the correct font if you can figure out what it is using font book, or try changing the font to one that may have the correct characters and works for you.
• If it appears that you have the correct font in that the font name matches, you could have in fact either an older or non-Unicode version. You could reformat the text and match the font as a possible fix.
• Sometimes a document could have been created in an application that can handle glyphs beyond Unicode-defined ones. The problem occurs when you are now using an application that can’t display those glyphs. The best solution may be for a PDF of the document. If you need to edit it you may have no choice but use the same application and save in PDF for distribution.
• Another cause for could be the document was created in Windows with older fonts (sometimes character IDs don’t match your font-character IDs). A fix may be to search-and-replace characters to make the document readable on your machine.

If standard option-key combos, like option + v [which is usually √], option + 8 [•], option + 6 [¢], option + 2 [™], or option + 4 [¢], do not enter the expected characters this is usually due to one of these problems.

• Check to make sure you did not choose a nonstandard keyboard layout from the Input menu. Check the settings for keyboard layout by going to Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu pane (see image below). Change to a different keyboard layout.
• Check to see if you are using the U.S. Extended keyboard layout, as has many “dead-key” option combinations for accents and gives up many of the standard option-key characters (see image below). Change to a different keyboard layout.
• Another cause could be you are using a particular font that does not conform to the current encoding scheme. Adobe PostScript Type 1 font Symbol does this as well as the Handwriting-Dakota font. If you don’t want to change fonts, use the Keyboard Viewer to find the characters you need.

If typing the letter O followed by a slash it displays like this Ø you are probably using the Palatino, Hoefler, Chicago, or New York fonts in a program like TextEdit, Apple’s Pages, or FileMaker.

This is usually caused when smart font technology does not work as you would expect. It thought it was helping by substituting a single, different character when you type an O (capital or lowercase) followed by a slash. Here is the fix for this one.

If you’re in an application that uses the Font panel, you can turn this off:

• Open the Font panel. Hit Command (Apple key) + T or go to Format -> Show Fonts.
• From the Action menu (gear icon on lower left), choose Typography (see image below).
• In the Typography panel, go to Character Alternatives (Diacritics). If you do not see Character Alternatives, make sure you have selected a font, such as Palatino, that has Diacritics.
• Change the selection to not Compose Diacritics. This will turn it off. In some programs this never happens. In some others, like FileMaker, it happens, but there’s no Typography panel or equivalent. Here you can only avoid using certain fonts.

Note: a diacritic is a mark, such as an accent, that’s placed above, below, or through a roman character.

If you see some extra blank lines between lines of text and can not remove them. That is because they are probably not really blank lines. Even though you have the line spacing set to single, it appears like the line spacing changes to quadruple.

• Drag the com.apple.ATS folder in /Library/Caches to the Trash and restart your Mac. Restart your Mac. This should fix the problem.

You are unable to change the text to a new font while editing a document.

If documents text includes some special characters that are not available in the new font you are choosing, you Mac may actually overrule the requested font change, leaving the text in a font that contains the characters typed. Thank OS X for not screwing up your document. If change you must, choose a font that has the special characters or eliminate the special characters first.

If the font changes when you import or paste text into another application.

• If could be that the font being imported or pasted is not available in the receiving application.
• You might simply have different font preferences in the receiving application. Example: If Arial at 12-point is in the first document, and the receiving application preferences are set for Times Roman at 14-point, the font and size is supposed to change. Just change the preference or select the text and change the font after pasting.

If the character style change when text is pasted or imported into another document or application. Example: boldface or italic styling, changes when pasted or imported.:

• Could be that the font is not available in the receiving application, has been substituted not having the same typefaces available. Changing or adding font might fix this.
• Font versions (even if the font has the same name) could differ with one having more typefaces. Changing or adding font might fix this.
• This one is my pet peve. You paste the text, the absolute same font is used in both applications, and it still does not paste the correct style or typeface?
• Could be that one of the applications “faked” the style. Microsoft applications, are famous for this. Sometimes the application can create fake boldface versions of particular fonts that have no boldface by “overprinting” the text horizontally, offsetting it by a pixel or two or three. I have also seen some Microsoft apps (cough, Word) screw up formatting as it had added invisible characters! Only choice is re-format and maybe change fonts in most cases.

Sometimes “special formatting options” are available in one application but not the other. For instance, the Font panel shadowing options work in few places besides Apple programs. Try moving drop shadow text from Keynote to PowePoint!

Problems with Specific Applications
There are some known problems that sometimes plague specific OS X applications. I cover these in detail here.

Fix Garbled Text in Entourage Email
Quit Entourage, go to User(home folder)/Library/Caches , and delete the two files listed below:

• com.microsoft.browserfont.cache
• Tasman Browser.cache

Now restart Entourage. This hopefully will fix the problem.

Fix Garbled Fonts in Safari, Explorer or Mail
Look for multiple versions of Helvetica that may be active. Mac OS X comes with a Helvetica.dfont. Make sure another version of Helvetica is not active and make sure that Helvetica Fractions is NOT in your font collection. This is a common problem.

Make sure if you have Suitcase or another third-party font manager application installed that it is NOT set to auto-activation. Also try to delete the system font cache described above.

Adobe TechNote: How to rebuild a corrupt font cache on a Macintosh.

Other Useful Utilities
Font Finagler – (free) can be used to clean your system’s font cache files.

FontNuke (Free – requires Mac OS X 10.4)
Mac OS X Font Cache: Yes
Adobe temp font files: Yes
QuarkXPress 6.x font cache: Yes
Microsoft Office font cache: Yes

Font Finagler ($10 Shareware)
Mac OS X Font Cache: Yes
Adobe temp font files: No
QuarkXPress 6.x font cache: No
Microsoft Office font cache: No

Smasher from Insider Software ($49.95)
Mac OS X Font Cache: Yes (works in demo version)
Adobe temp font files: Yes
QuarkXPress 6.x font cache: Yes
Microsoft Office font cache: Yes

Disable or Remove Unnecessary Fonts
Loading hundreds or thousands of fonts by default can significantly degrade Mac OS X performance. This is especially true if you use Font Book to install fonts and have not adjusted its preferences: by default, Font Book automatically enables newly-installed fonts (as does some other third-party Font Management Utilities). It is a good idea NOT to go font crazy. On load and activate what you really need daily.

I hope if you got this far, you now have a better understanding of fonts and how your OS X Mac deals with them.

    | Tags: adobe, fonts, mac tips, quark