[FTrain]

Not sure if it's a coincidence, but my brother tried to download that "America's Army" game off the Apple site (it's that simulation game actually developed by the military), and ever since, he can't get Safari, Mail or Text Edit (and maybe one or two other small, Apple-made apps) to work. Anyone have any idea what about that game would have stopped those apps from functioning? (he has since erased the game, but that didn't solve the problem) Or, if it's not that game causing the problem, any idea what common thread runs through those apps that would have simultaneously rendered them all malfunctioning? I've tried to help him but don't know what to try to get them to function again. Would welcome any suggestions.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by FTrain:
Or, if it's not that game causing the problem, any idea what common thread runs through those apps that would have simultaneously rendered them all malfunctioning?

First thing to check for, in my experience, are corrupted Fonts; namely Helvetica / Helvetica Neue. You'll probably find a thread or two about this by searching in Mac OS. Corrupted fonts or FontBook settings can have really strange effects...

[FTrain]

but how do you check if a font is corrupted, and what do you do about it once you find it?

[Gavin]

A quick test to help track it down is to log in as another user (create one if you have to) and see if you have the same problem.

That will tell you if it is a system thing or something local to your user settings. If it's local you can try pulling prefs files until the problem clears up. Move the file out of your Library folder onto the desktop and restart the program. Do a bunch at a time. Put the good ones back.

Places to look for bad files:

~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Preferences
~/Library/Fonts
~/Library/Spelling
~/Library/Caches


The bad font is probly a good guess, you can do the same process with the fonts folder.

/Library/Fonts
/System/Library/Fonts <- it's probably not in here, and finder won't let you move them out anyway.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by FTrain:
but how do you check if a font is corrupted, and what do you do about it once you find it?

One thing I noticed was that FontBook was not working correctly. Didn't import new fonts, or turn fonts on and off, reliably. I've since switched to Font Agent Pro, and never had any problem whatsoever with fonts.
The way I fixed my probs was: I turned off FontBook (as describes somewhere on the Insider's FAP website), deleted all fonts from my ~/Library/Fonts, and deleted all non-System fonts from /Library/Fonts and /System/Library/Fonts -- using Pacifist to look into the original System setup files on the OS X DVD.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Isn't there a less "power-user" approach to correcting font-problems?

This must be a problem that occurs for mom-n-pop newbies who aren't used to Pacifist, etc. ?Some way to just trash the font folder... and then drag a copy from a pre-corruption backup disk?

(Once I've gone to a lot of trouble to pare-down fonts to what I really need, it's a drag to have to re-build.)

[Love Calm Quiet]

I guess this whole thread turns out to be more of an OS forum issue rather than Applications, but since we're here...

Although I can appreciate what it's said Font Agent Pro does, it's a shame that adequate font management is (apparently) not provided in the OS: seems a shame to have to pay $99 for adequate font functioning on top of $129 for the latest edition of OS X.

Is font-handling supposed to be upgraded significantly in Tiger?