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droneseven · May 7, 2003, 10:00 PM

Helpful MacNN Forum readers,

I have a very bad font problem and I haven't been able to fix it. Okay, I'm using Suitcase 10.2 to manage my fonts. Everything has been going just great, but recently I decided to remove the fonts from the following folders as there were too many fonts automatically activated through the system for my tastes:

User: ~/Library/Fonts/
Local: /Library/Fonts/
Classic: /System Folder/Fonts/

Now, I knew not to touch the fonts in the Mac OS X System folder, so I didn't bother those. I kept all the fonts I removed in named folders on the desktop so I would know what fonts went where if problems should arise. After checking Mail, Help Viewer, Safari, and especially Address Book, there was an obvious problem. A good deal (but not all) of the fonts appeared as numbers and other glyphs overlapping one another creating, well, a mess.

I frantically restored the fonts to their original locations and restarted everything. Some of the fonts are back to normal appearance, but the problem remains. Obviously the programs were calling for fonts that were not there when I originally removed them, but if I replaced them, why is there still a problem? I checked the AppleCare Knowledge Base and didn't find anything helpful. Just a document that described where the four main font folders were and what they contained. I knew this information previously, which is why I felt safe messing with the fonts in the first place.

Has anyone experienced this? What can I do to correct it? Any suggestions? Perhaps a list of what fonts are in what folders upon installion of the system. Where can I find one?

I'm using a new 17 in. iMac 1GHz and Mac OS X 10.2.6. (Although it should be noted this problem arose in 10.2.5.)

This problem is very annoying. I can't read the names Address Book, or anything in Mail. Help!

kbata · May 8, 2003, 06:35 AM

I had some strange problems with fonts and Suitcase as well. When using Garamond in Filemaker all my fonts would show up as strange symbols. I downloaded a program from versiontracker that cleans your cache's and it fixed the problem. I forget what it was called but you could probably find it by typing in "cache" in the search field.

droneseven · May 8, 2003, 08:03 AM

Originally posted by kbata:
I had some strange problems with fonts and Suitcase as well. When using Garamond in Filemaker all my fonts would show up as strange symbols. I downloaded a program from versiontracker that cleans your cache's and it fixed the problem. I forget what it was called but you could probably find it by typing in "cache" in the search field.

Many thanks. I will search for it and try that and see if it works. Otherwise I may delete or deactivate Suitcase. Or do a system reinstall. Sigh...