Re: installed system fonts are not installed - eh? (was Re: Font corruption)

Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
Any idea why fonts in /System/Library/Fonts might not be loaded into Font Book at all, until I doubleclick them in the Finder (*and* relaunch Font Book)?

More elaborate version below:

In article <2007080308381427544-wbyylebtre@cbobkpbz>,
Jolly Roger <wbyylebtre@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-08-03 01:38:07 -0500, Sander Tekelenburg <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

[Font Book: File -> Validate Fonts.]

Hm... I had never done this so tried it for fun. 13 fonts are reported
as having "serious problems". [...]
If you have corrupted font files in your system, I truthfully have to wonder what *else* is corrupted in there, and how that corruption came to be.

I had to do a forced reboot about a week ago. That might have caused it. But Disk Utility reports everything as just fine, I'm well aware of how to not grant something Admin rights just because it asks, and everything does behave just fine. That is, until I thought I'd deal with the reportedly corrupt fonts.

I booted into Safe Mode, allowed Font Book to move the the 12 fonts it considered corrupt to the Trash and rebooted. Upon reboot I found 178 fonts in the Trash (I kept them aside) and only 2 still listed in Font Book. /Library/Fonts, which before had listed 61 files, was empty.

I copied (Finder drag&drop) all 61 fonts from a clone I'd made a few months ago. Rebooted.

Font Book reports no errors. Problem solved.

New problem introduced however: Terminal.app now suddenly shows the "minute window" problem, as documented here: <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25730>. Apple's solution: Use Font Book to enable Monaco.

However, Font Book doesn't list Monaco at all. Monaco *is* in /System/Library/Fonts, as it should be. But none of the 32 font files there appears to be listed in Font Book. When I double-click one of those font files, they're opened in Font Book which reports them as "installed". Yet it takes relaunching Font Book before it actually lists Monaco. After which Terminal.app is OK again.

OK. Fine. Everything OK, I guess. But why the heck wouldn't the fonts in /System/Library/Fonts be loaded into Font Book at all? (I can clickety-click them all to get them to be installed, but why should that be necessary?)

Because installing them means they are in some way 'registered' with Fontbook and the ATSserver. No I don;t understand it either, but simply copying fonts into locations doesn't mean they immediately become available - to Apple apps that use the ATS server.

No one else does as far as I can see tho .. Just to add further confusion. Oh IIRC Quark and Adobe Indesign suites DO honour the ATSServer. But most other stuff including MSword doesn't.

Fonts on OS-X are a freaking mess. Its getting better tho judging by the googling I have done. Tiger was a real advance, and leopard may yet 'save the day...when the third party apps decide to use ATSserver..of course when you are selling Font Suitcase, you may choose not to..


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