Fixing fonts in OS X....

March 14, 2006 1:56 PM

My fonts (OS X Tiger) are a mess... help!

Okay, so I always have trubs with fonts. Some of my default/system fonts seemed to be buggered--I go to sites and the fonts are all fucked... sometimes. For instance, if I look at a site with Safari it will look fine and if I look at the same font with Firefox, it's a mess, even though the both have the same default font selected.

Also, some apps can't seem to access fonts beyond a certain letter (like, no fonts after the letter L will appear in Photoshop).

What is the quickest and easiest way to zap my fonts back to the default that came with the unit and then rebuild them up again?

Also, what's the best way to make sure that my system fonts are never deleted or altered?

Lastly, Font Book seems to blow chunks. What do you recommend in place of it?

posted by dobbs to computers & internet (8 comments total)

The latter question is easy: Linotype FontExplorer X

As for the funky fonts themselves, erm, I'm not so sure. For this sort of shenanigans I typically run a utility like OnyX or Cocktail and run the whole kitchen sink (repair permissions, run chron jobs etc.) Pedants may say that they have nothing to do with the problem at hand, but I find that clears up a wide range of oddities. I'd give that a go as the first step.
posted by cramer at 2:04 PM on March 14, 2006

Thanks, cramer. I run Onyx quite regularly already and it has no effect on this issue. :)

Also, can someone explain to me in general overall terms how to keep my managed? Ie, should I just have one Fonts folder in my User area and that's it? (Not counting the system fonts folder.) Or am I better off with multiple folders or what?

Gonna check out FontExplorer...
posted by dobbs at 2:12 PM on March 14, 2006

How many fonts do have installed at a time?

Extensis just came out with Suitcase Fusion. I believe it can tell you which font are system fonts and it has a month free trail.

To avoid this problem in the future, put all your non-system fonts in your ~users/NAME/Library/Fonts folder instead of the main one. Much easier to keep straight that way.
posted by doctor_negative at 2:14 PM on March 14, 2006

FWIW - I used FontExplorer X for a bit and I hated it. I'm using FontAgent Pro now and I like it alot. It's not free, but if you have tons of fonts, sometimes you gotta shell out a little money to make everything flow.
posted by clh at 2:34 PM on March 14, 2006

Seconding Font Explorer! Hell of a program for $0. Our office (small graphic design studio) has been using the latest FontAgentPro, but lately it had not been playing well with Quark 6 among others. I'm inclined to blame it on Quark 6 (DIE QUARK DIE) but I've switched the studio computers off of FontAgent and all is calm.

Regarding font issues in firefox, maybe tossing your preferences would set it right?
posted by lovejones at 3:33 PM on March 14, 2006

...and remember system fonts are ALWAYS truetype fonts. Think twice about messing with truetype fonts and only toss them if you are sure they're not needed by the OS.
posted by lovejones at 3:35 PM on March 14, 2006

FontExplorer says I have 1500 fonts in my system folder! I assume that's way more than there should be.

Anyway to restore it to default?
posted by dobbs at 3:43 PM on March 14, 2006

Mac OSX default fonts

Check the OS X install disk, there may be a fonts folder there for you to copy. I don't have one handy to check...

As far as maintaining font order, my advice is to stop putting your fonts into the system folder and just make a separate fonts folder in the top level of your HD and toss all the non-system fonts in there. Then use your font manager of choice to manage them. Your system may even become a bit more zippy now that some programs don't have to load a billion fonts on startup...
posted by lovejones at 5:38 AM on March 15, 2006