Fonts Issues

[BlueRevolution]

A couple of weeks ago I accidentally deleted all of my fonts in Font Viewer (gotta love that Apple is too classy for a "do you really want to delete these 1,500 fonts?" dialog). I rescued them from the trash and re-imported them, but ever since then I've had Pages give me missing fonts errors, and Wikipedia pages don't display with italic and bold in places where it really should.

I finally got tired of this and did a bit of troubleshooting. I created a fresh account and lo and behold, all fonts worked. So I eventually decided to delete my user account and import everything into a completely new account with the same name. I gave admin rights to the temp account, backed up everything, deleted the account and remade it. I copied all the stuff back into the library and logged out and back in, only to find my user account exactly as it had been - including the fonts problem.

I figured there was something wacky in the library, so I tried again. I deleted the account and recreated it, but didn't copy anything in - just let it run on the defaults. The problem was still there.

After a great deal of experimentation, I discovered that my account name is now jinxed. Any new account, administrator or no, is free of the fonts issue - except the one with my name. That account continues with the font problem, even when it's not given admin rights. I tried deleting the account, restarting, resetting the PRAM and recreating it, all to no avail.

I'm rather fond of my name, so I'm wondering if anyone has any idea why it might be behaving like this. I have no inclanation to format, so if I don't get it solved by later today I'll just make do with some other account name. Any help that you could offer would be much appreciated.

 

[iMeowbot]

It kind of smells like a cache issue.

For Tiger, close all programs you care about and log in as an admin. Go to the folder Library:Caches:com.apple.ATS and trash everything inside, then restart the system.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I fixed it. I'm going to detail what I did to solve the problem, in case anyone else runs across it in the future. And also because I feel like a total genius for having solved it.

I kept going with my extensive testing, and discovered to a certain degree what was happening. Evidently there exists some sort of database for user profiles, because all brand new profiles had the dog icon, except for profiles with my name, which had the dragonfly that I'd selected when first setting up my MacBook Pro.

More precisely, it is the visible name that is linked in the database, not the short name. So what I was able to do is to create a new user account and rename it over top of the record of mine, with its screwed up fonts. In this way I was able to erase the jinxed user account, so that when I went to recreate my bona fide account it no longer had that record tripping it up. There's probably a direct way you can go in and change this, but I'd rather have a high level solution than a low level solution.

So here's a complete set of step-by-step instructions. I'm going to use Alice for your original account, and Bob for the temporary account.

1. Back up your Home directory!
2. Open the Accounts preference pane.
3. Create a new account called "Bob". Be sure to check "Allow user to administrate this computer".
4. Log out of Alice, and into Bob.
5. Open the Accounts preference pane again.
6. Double-check that you've backed up your Home folder safely.
7. Delete Alice.
8. Create a new account named "Carol", but use "alice" for the short name. This will be your account at the end, so give it the appropriate password and admin rights to taste.
9. Change Carol's name to "Alice".
10. Log in to your new Alice, and copy your stuff back into your Home folder. To restore your library, open the Library folder on both the backup and the new version and copy each subfolder across, one at a time.
11. Log out of Alice and back in.
12. Verify that everything is as it was before you deleted the account.
13. Open the Accounts preference pane and delete Bob.
14. Delete your backup of your Home folder.

It feels like juggling, but I promise you, it does work.

 

[BlueRevolution]

It kind of smells like a cache issue.

For Tiger, close all programs you care about and log in as an admin. Go to the folder Library:Caches:com.apple.ATS and trash everything inside, then restart the system.

I think your way would've been easier.