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Question about fonts

H

HawaiiMacAddict

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2006
904
0
On one of my Macs of course
Aloha everyone,

I reloaded my MacBook Pro so that I can have a clean install (I guess it's indicative of my being a recent switcher - as of last August :D ), and I noticed a strange phenomenon. Once I got the laptop loaded, I created a Standard User account, for my daily computer use. Upon loading mail.app, however, I noticed a lot of fonts in the fonts list (in preferences) that, apparently, are NOT listed in Font Book. In other words, the list of available fonts, in the fonts list, is more expansive than the fonts actually loaded on my MacBook Pro.

Will I have to use Pacifist and reload all of the fonts tthat Should be there, but are not now loaded? Has anyone else noticed behavior like this? This lack of fonts also affects the administrator account. There are quite a few, but I have Pacifist and can use the install discs to re-install the fonts, if necessary.

Mahalo in advance for your responses,

HawaiiMacAddict
 
Font Book is a catalog of your Installed Fonts ( edit :by selecting Font then turning on-off ).
Whereas, the application lists all the Font avialable to your System including those with your ~/Library/Fonts.
This process allows individual Users to have specific app. fonts.
 
islandmonusvi,

I read your response, but when I looked at Font Book, the "missing fonts" were not in the list at all, so I couldn't have turned them off. These same fonts did not appear in All Fonts or Computer, which is what had me puzzled.

Anyway, I have solved the issue, although I have no idea how or why this issue ever cropped up. I used Pacifist to open up the Apple Installation package, installed one of the "missing" fonts, then voila - the rest of them appeared in Font Book "automagically" (one of my favorite words - actually one I use to describe naturally occurring Mac OS X actions that Windows afficionados only wish could occur in XP :D ) appeared.

In other words, all I had to do is install ONE of the fonts (a window popped up asking if I wanted to overwrite the existing - non functional - font, to which I answered Yes), and the rest* of the missing fonts were also able to be selected/used.* Prior to this, none of the "missing" fonts were even visible in Font Book.

As I wrote above, I do not understand neither how or why this issue popped up, but I now know a work-around.* Actually, this issue is one reason why I decided to get a "clean start" with a clean re-install.* I thought I had done something to cause the initial issue - and, maybe I was right there.

HawaiiMacAddict
 
Historically a corrupted Fonts database has caused many problems.
Font Utilities like Font Doctor help to resolve the errors.
The System tracks Fonts by ' FontID' not by FontNameString.
A bad FontID will cause the database to stall at the point of corruption.
Installing new Fonts forces a rebuild of the Font database.
 
islandmonusvi,

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing wrong - in fact, I still don't understand it. I used the install discs that were in the box for my MacBook Pro, but at least I know now how to get the fonts back. Thanks again for your assistance.

HawaiiMacAddict
 
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