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raynebair · Jul 28, 2005, 11:18 AM

I'm trying out the 30-day demo of FontAgent Pro and am having some serious problems. Not sure if it's the app or just fonts in general though.

When I open a document in PSCS, it tells me the font is missing, yet it opens the file and I see the FontAgent Pro auto-activation message. But it still doesn't remove the missing font icon from that text layer, so am I supposed to just ignore the fact that PS thinks the font is missing?

Also, anytime I go into FAP and activate some fonts, it messes up my font display in several application. For example...in Safari I was getting chinese looking text. This happened several times in Firefox and Thunderbird as well. In the mozilla apps, it also changed the font appearance to something that I don't recognize but was barely readable. I could see it, but for example in Thunderbird, I couldn't tell which messages were unread/read, because the font didn't distiguish between bold and normal. It was just some weird messed up font.

This happens every time I open FAP and activate fonts. I probably have around 1400 fonts in FAP and only a few hundred are active, but if I activate any at all, I just about have to logout and log back in or reboot the whole machine to get my apps to look right again.

Why is this happening? Is it FAP or just fonts in general? I tried Font Book before trying the FAP demo and it didn't work well either. Am I doomed to forever have font issues on my Mac?

BTW, I'm using Panther.

himself · Jul 31, 2005, 06:56 PM

That sounds pretty unusual. I've been using FAP for quite a while now, and have had no problems with it.

You wouldn't happen to have another font manager installed and running as well (not including Font Book)? That can sometimes cause major problems. Also, which version of FAP?

CaptainHaddock · 05:08 AM

I've heard FAP is a good font-management program, but it is not easy to get set up. I tried the demo like you and hosed my font system, so I gave up.

workerbee · Aug 1, 2005, 02:57 AM

Apart form a rocky start into Tiger, when FAP was rather quirky, it's been working really well here. The only problem I've been unable to resolve is that FAP really does not warm to my MultipleMaster fonts, and keeps re-importing them in dozens and dozens of variations, all the while crying about "duplicate fonts" and what-not. After uninstalling MM fonts, FAP keeps quiet, and Acrobat has not been complaining either.

However, generally font handling is one of the few things that actually worked better in ye olden days of ATM/ATR on MacOS 8/9, IMHO.

raynebair · Aug 1, 2005, 07:44 AM

Other than FontBook, I don't have any other font manager installed. I like FAP for the most part, but lately my fonts just keep messing up so much, I'm about to chunk it all and say to hell with it. But then I won't have any way of managing my 1400 fonts. And I need something...most of my work on the Mac is in Photoshop so I need to be able to work with different fonts.

Hell, even Safari has been giving me fits with fonts. I just about have to logout/login at least once or twice a day. I just don't understand why this font management has to be so difficult. I'm getting so frustrated and so far, I have no resolution, so suggestions, and no help from any of the forums I've posted or searched in.

bkelly · Aug 3, 2005, 01:14 PM

If you are seeing garbled characters, your font caches need to be cleaned. "Onyx," a free utility available on versiontracker will do this.

I use MasterJuggler on OS 10.3.9 and it works very well. Don't know about 10.4.

If you can't find the help you need here, try www.prepressforums.com. There are a lot of folks there with font management experience, both Mac and PC.