[Thorzdad]

There are reports surfacing of font problems after applying the 10.6.7 update.

Cnet's story
FontFeed story
TidBits story
Apple Community discussion

I, myself, have not applied the 10.6.7 update, and will play it safe for now and avoid it.

[MrsLarry]

Thanks for the heads up! Font issues can be incredibly frustrating.

[Thorzdad]

As I read that long Apple Community discussion, it's beginning to look like the issue is with Open Type Postscript fonts (not OT TrueType fonts). For whatever reason, 10.6.7 is not playing nice with many OT Postscript fonts.

[andi*pandi]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Demonhood]

Haven't run into any problems yet. But I also haven't installed anything new in awhile. Every time I open up FontBook I think it's going to scream at me, flash obscenities across the screen and turn all my fonts into Wingdings.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Demonhood 

Haven't run into any problems yet. But I also haven't installed anything new in awhile. Every time I open up FontBook I think it's going to scream at me, flash obscenities across the screen and turn all my fonts into Wingdings.

How awesome would it be if it actually did that, though? Ker-brilliant!

[Thorzdad]

Here's an update to the issue...
The 10.6.7 has, apparently, introduced a change/bug in the way OS X's native PDF creation tool encodes OpenType/Postscript fonts. The result is that any PDF created in 10.6.7 that contains Postscript fonts will display highly distorted, or broken, text. For instance, if you use the Print > Save as PDF function available to most apps in OS X, the resulting PDF will display corrupted text (when using an OpenType/Postscript font.)

This DOES NOT affect applications that use their own internal PDF creation system, such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro. If you use those applications' Save As... function and select PDF, those PDFs will not be corrupted. Additionally, it appears that saving a document as a Postscript file, and then generating a PDF using Distiller appears to create good PDFs.

This also does not affect any PDFs created prior to a system being updated to 10.6.7. This only affects files created or edited after a system has been updated to 10.6.7. A PDF created in 10.6.6 will display correctly in 10.6.7, even if it contains Postscript fonts. However, if you edit that file and re-save it under 10.6.7 (using OS X's native PDF creation function) it will become corrupted.

Outside of PDF creation, Flash developers are reporting Postscript font distortion/corruption in their files created following the 10.6.7 update.

At this point, the only fix is to not apply the update, or revert your system to 10.6.6. Or disable all Postscript fonts on your Mac. Word is that Apple and Adobe are working on the problem.

[synthfiend]

"At this point, the only fix is to not apply the update, or revert your system to 10.6.6. Or disable all Postscript fonts on your Mac. Word is that Apple and Adobe are working on the problem."

Wonder if this has to do with CS 5.5 costing a jillion dollars to upgrade...

[b33r]

I had this problem (or similar) on only one out of the five macs in our office recently upgraded to 10.6.7... funnily enough, the only one that i recently migrated the user from an older system.

Word would not print... could not export to pdf

Have managed to fix this by creating fresh user account... would be interested if anyone else can confirm / deny this

Cheers

[Thorzdad]

That sounds more like an issue with Word. This font problem wouldn't stop printing or exporting to pdf.

[ChrisF]

Originally Posted by synthfiend 

Wonder if this has to do with CS 5.5 costing a jillion dollars to upgrade...

No, it's an Apple bug.

[AKcrab]

I have a client that we think is experiencing this issue. Is there a way to identify all postscript fonts to disable them, or can they simply use a font that we know for sure is not postscript?

[Thorzdad]

They can go into FontBook and run their cursor over the font names and the tooltip will tell you if it's Postscript, OpenType-Postscript, or TrueType. Then, they can simply disable the font. I don't know of any way to do it in a batch, unfortunately.

AFAIK, disabling Postscript fonts shouldn't harm anything. I don't believe any apps rely on PS fonts these days. But, don't quote me on that.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

They can go into FontBook and run their cursor over the font names and the tooltip will tell you if it's Postscript, OpenType-Postscript, or TrueType. Then, they can simply disable the font. I don't know of any way to do it in a batch, unfortunately.

AFAIK, disabling Postscript fonts shouldn't harm anything. I don't believe any apps rely on PS fonts these days. But, don't quote me on that.

In FontBook, in the Search field at the top, you can choose “Type” from the looking-glass dropdown and enter “OpenType PostScript” in the field; that’ll give you all individual OpenType PostScript fonts (83 on my machine here), so you can highlight them all and disable them.

I’m not sure whether they rely on them or not, but the default Adobe fonts that come with/are used in CS are all OpenType PostScript (Minion and Myriad Pro, plus all the Adobe XYZ Std/Pro fonts).

[Thorzdad]

I never noticed that drop down. Good to know.

Digging a little deeper on the Adobe fonts, I see that Courier, Symbol, and MyriadPro are in the Application Support>Adobe>Fonts>Reqrd folder. So, you probably don't want to disable those.

[AKcrab]

This was supposedly fixed today. There is an update available in software update.
Snow Leopard Font Update

[Thorzdad]

Cool! Thanks for the heads up. Must upgrade to 10.6.7 first, apparently. Hope it works.

[AKcrab]

I have a machine in the shop right now with the issue. I should have a solid "it's fixed" or "it's broken" later tonight if you want to hold off.

[AKcrab]

My client says it's fixed.

[Thorzdad]