Available fonts

[Arkadian]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hi there,

been asking left right and centre, but cannot get an answer...
I have noticed that in the Font Book (within Applications) I have some 194 fonts, while in Word (Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Fonts) there are only 90-odd. In particular I need non-Latin fonts, like Cyrillic and Hebrew (present within the Font Book).
Any idea how I can get them to work on Word??

Thanks.

A.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hi there,

been asking left right and centre, but cannot get an answer...
I have noticed that in the Font Book (within Applications) I have some 194 fonts, while in Word (Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Fonts) there are only 90-odd. In particular I need non-Latin fonts, like Cyrillic and Hebrew (present within the Font Book).
Any idea how I can get them to work on Word??

Thanks.

A.

Hi,

This article, accessible from Word help, explains where Office 2008
looks for fonts:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948736

-Jim

 

[John McGhie]

Old Macs used to have as many font folders as the user liked, and the system
would load and use fonts from anywhere.

Modern Macs are designed around only "two" Font folders: one for the System,
and one for the "Logged-in user". Which means there will be a Font folder
for each User ID on the system.

Some applications look in only those two places for fonts.

I run my system with ALL the fonts in the System folder, because I want all
users on this box to be able to use all the fonts. I have nothing in the
User font folders, because I do not want my documents changing appearance
depending on who opens them.

I am aware that this is a rather "Windows" way of doing things But I am
used to is, and it means I KNOW where all my fonts are, and I know where to
put new ones, and I know where to look if I can't find one, and I simply
cannot create duplicates that cause trouble in OS 10.6 To me, it's
simpler.

Oh, and badly-coded applications that are too lazy to ask the system where
its fonts are, can also find my fonts ....

Cheers

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hi there,

been asking left right and centre, but cannot get an answer...
I have noticed that in the Font Book (within Applications) I have some 194
fonts, while in Word (Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Fonts) there are
only 90-odd. In particular I need non-Latin fonts, like Cyrillic and Hebrew
(present within the Font Book).
Any idea how I can get them to work on Word??

Thanks.

A.

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arkadian]

Old Macs used to have as many font folders as the user liked, and the system
would load and use fonts from anywhere.

Modern Macs are designed around only "two" Font folders: one for the System,
and one for the "Logged-in user". Which means there will be a Font folder
for each User ID on the system.

Some applications look in only those two places for fonts.

I run my system with ALL the fonts in the System folder, because I want all
users on this box to be able to use all the fonts. I have nothing in the
User font folders, because I do not want my documents changing appearance
depending on who opens them.

I am aware that this is a rather "Windows" way of doing things But I am
used to is, and it means I KNOW where all my fonts are, and I know where to
put new ones, and I know where to look if I can't find one, and I simply
cannot create duplicates that cause trouble in OS 10.6 To me, it's
simpler.

Oh, and badly-coded applications that are too lazy to ask the system where
its fonts are, can also find my fonts ....

Cheers

Hi John,

thanks for the info, but I am not clear what I am supposed to do get Word to load all the fonts in the system...

A.

 

[John McGhie]

Put all the fonts in the System font folder would be a good start

Then delete the Word and System font caches and re-boot.

You can either use Font Finagler 1.5 beta to do the job:
http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

Or just whack the files yourself:

Close all Microsoft applications and delete the Office Font Cache (11) from
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft

Or the Office Font Cache (12) from:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008

Then run
atsutil databases -remove
in Terminal. Then reboot...

Cheers

Hi John,

thanks for the info, but I am not clear what I am supposed to do get Word to
load all the fonts in the system...

A.

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arkadian]

Hem.. OK, application downloaded...
I take it that "Preserve Font Book's disabled fonts" and "Preserve Font Book's external libraries stay unchecked. I have done so and about to restart the computer. Confirmed (before I commit myself...).

Once I have done that, is that it?

A.

 

[Arkadian]

Put all the fonts in the System font folder would be a good start

Then delete the Word and System font caches and re-boot.

You can either use Font Finagler 1.5 beta to do the job:

OK, I have taken the plunge: I have cleaned the cache and rebooted. The situation has certainly improved, as I now have more fonts than before, BUT there are still several (acqualy MANY) I still cannot see. For example: Arial Hebrew... it does not appear within Word, but it is present in Font book.

Thanks again,

A.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Actually you slightly incorrect.

There are Fonts folder in System Library, Main Library (which is what
you see the folder of when you first double click on the Hard disk icon)
and the User Library so if you are the only User then there are three.

Also the system can read fonts in other folders as well. You just go to
fontbook and click on the + at bottom left (create new collection and
add the the fonts. They don't even fave to be in the official locations.
If you drop fonts on Font book they will normally be added either to
User or Main Library.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

The system fonts folder (System Folder > Library > Fonts) is supposed
to be off limits only fonts designated by apple is allowed to be there.

Put them in Main Library

Hard Drive Name >Library > fonts

 

[Arkadian]

Hi CET,

thanks for your replies, but they don't help me a great deal as I am still none the wiser... why is my computer not behaving like the one downstairs or down the road?
Some Mac users can see Hebrew characters, some can see Cyrillic (both Courier), but I can see none?

A.

 

[John McGhie]

You did not mention whether you resolved the duplicates? It sounds to me
like you have some fonts that Word thinks are duplicates, so it will load
only the first one it finds.

If you have fonts scattered across multiple folders, you will get this
problem. One reason I keep everything in the same folder is that it makes
it difficult to get duplicates.

Phillip is correct, there is a "System" font folder we are supposed to stay
out of, in the /System folder. There's another in the /Library folder:
that's where I keep my fonts.

Instead of doing a re-start, do a "Power-off Restart". Shut the system
down, turn the power off (if it's a laptop, remove the battery) and wait two
minutes. Then bring it up again.

That will trigger some Unix house-keeping processes that will clean out the
Temp files for you.

Hope this helps

OK, I have taken the plunge: I have cleaned the cache and rebooted. The
situation has certainly improved, as I now have more fonts than before, BUT
there are still several (acqualy MANY) I still cannot see. For example: Arial
Hebrew... it does not appear within Word, but it is present in Font book.

Thanks again,

A.

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arkadian]

Hi all,

sorry if I am being dense, but I do not understand (and yes, I powered down the computer for like 15 mins)... I still don't see all the fonts. I found all these font folders, but in word I see only SOME of them. I am still looking for non Latin ones and I have a selection of them in the various font folders, but I cannot use them in Word. What can I do with them, then?
Regarding duplicates, I "corrected" some of the fonts that a little dot next to them, just to see what would happen. Needless to say, no difference

A.

 

[John McGhie]

Well, maybe it's me being dense I am still struggling to understand
what is going on on your machine.

I suspect that the problem is that your system has corrupted entries in the
Microsoft Office font cache. But if it does, that's because they are
corrupted in the System font cache, which is where Microsoft Office gets its
font data from. So you need to delete BOTH font caches and then reboot.

If the fonts are in the System, Public, or User font folders, Word will see
them if it can. If the fonts are elsewhere, Word may not see them.

So the first thing is to ensure that the fonts are in:
/Library/Fonts

Or
~/Library/Fonts

Or
/System/Library/Fonts

That last one is the System font folder, which Phillip rightly warned we
should not tinker with

Now, you need to ensure that you resolve the duplicates, otherwise when Word
loads up its font cache, you get a fairly random result. If there are
multiple fonts with the same name, generally Office will load only one, and
it will be the first one it comes to.

When you have resolved the duplicates, reboot. There is no need to wait 15
minutes to restart; any delay longer than about one minute will trigger the
Unix startup house-keeping, which will clean out various caches and rebuild
the system font cache for you. After that has happened, Microsoft Office
will rebuild its own font cache from the system cache.

You should also check to see if you have any font manager running that is
enabling or disabling fonts or "collections" of fonts. If you have fonts
enabled or disabled in various applications, Word's font list will be very
unreliable, and I do not know how to solve that.

I can only suggest that you should install only the fonts you intend to use,
and ensure that every font you install is always enabled, in every
application. If you do that, then you can get this working right. Any
other way: well sorry, if it is possible, I do not know how.

I guess the other thing worth saying is that you should not load "too many"
fonts. How many is too many? I really don't know. I suggest that problems
will start north of about a thousand. OS X enables us to load a prodigious
amount of fonts. But each font takes a little RAM to load. If you load too
many, it is possible to run the system out of memory.

The other issues we often see involve "old-style" fonts that are not encoded
in the TrueType/Unicode standard. These generally do not play nicely with
everyone, and it is a good idea to update them to their Unicode
replacements.

Mac OS X and Microsoft Office generally expect, and will work best with,
Unicode TrueType fonts. There are bugs in the handling of OpenType fonts (I
thought those bugs had been resolved in Office update 12.1.0, but I can't
guarantee it for things such as Cyrillic fonts).

In the Unicode world, there is no such thing as a "non-Latin" font. All
fonts are the same: Unicode. Which means they all contain potentially
64,000 characters. Most fonts only populate about 256, or 512, of those
character positions, but that does not make them a different kind of font:
they are all Unicode fonts, they simply have most of the Unicode character
set missing.

Another way to put that is that there is only one font in the world (so far)
that implements a "full" Unicode set, and that is Arial Unicode MS. It
contains every character in the Unicode 3.2 specification, which is about
"half" the characters in the current specification, Unicode 5.2.0.

You can get more information here:
http://unicode.org/

Or here, in a language we can understand:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/

Hope this helps

Hi all,

sorry if I am being dense, but I do not understand (and yes, I powered down
the computer for like 15 mins)... I still don't see all the fonts. I found all
these font folders, but in word I see only SOME of them. I am still looking
for non Latin ones and I have a selection of them in the various font folders,
but I cannot use them in Word. What can I do with them, then?
Regarding duplicates, I "corrected" some of the fonts that a little dot next
to them, just to see what would happen. Needless to say, no difference

A.

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hello John,

Your reply was an excellent reference - hope you don't mind if I
save it for offline use

Jeff

 

[Arkadian]

I am going demented...

Well, maybe it's me being dense I am still struggling to understand
what is going on on your machine.

I suspect that the problem is that your system has corrupted entries in the
Microsoft Office font cache. But if it does, that's because they are
corrupted in the System font cache, which is where Microsoft Office gets its
font data from. So you need to delete BOTH font caches and then reboot.

If the fonts are in the System, Public, or User font folders, Word will see
them if it can. If the fonts are elsewhere, Word may not see them.

So the first thing is to ensure that the fonts are in:
/Library/Fonts

Or
~/Library/Fonts

Or
/System/Library/Fonts

Different (and partially overlapping) lists of fonts available in all of the above folders. With Font Book it makes four different lots.

That last one is the System font folder, which Phillip rightly warned we
should not tinker with
OK


Now, you need to ensure that you resolve the duplicates,

Done that within Font Book. Disabled all the duplicate fonts that wouldn't resolve and then rebooted (waiting for a little while before powering up).

No great difference, if at all..., once powered back up.

otherwise when Word
loads up its font cache, you get a fairly random result. If there are
multiple fonts with the same name, generally Office will load only one, and
it will be the first one it comes to.

When you have resolved the duplicates, reboot. There is no need to wait 15
minutes to restart; any delay longer than about one minute will trigger the
Unix startup house-keeping, which will clean out various caches and rebuild
the system font cache for you. After that has happened, Microsoft Office
will rebuild its own font cache from the system cache.

You should also check to see if you have any font manager running that is
enabling or disabling fonts or "collections" of fonts.

No idea where it would be located. I tried a few searches within Finder, but no joy.

To add some more info, I tried to play with my Cyrillic and Hebrew documents.
First of all, the font that it is telling they are in is Courier (Cyrillic) and Courier New (Hebrew), but as I said, I can visualize neither.

However if I change the font to, say, some version of Arial, I can see it. The same with Times. It seems that I am missing the non Latin characters in Courier (I have not installed any new font. They all came with the computer or word). I wonder if I should try again the installation disk for Word, just in case.

I think I said this somewhere else... anyway, in the MacBook (with Snow Leopard and the very same version of Word that I have on the iMac, only on the MB the installation is complete; on the iMac I have only Word, Excel and PowerPoint) I can view the document in Hebrew (in Courier New), but not the one in Cyrillic.

Am I making myself any clearer????

Mac OS X and Microsoft Office generally expect, and will work best with,
Unicode TrueType fonts. There are bugs in the handling of OpenType fonts (I
thought those bugs had been resolved in Office update 12.1.0, but I can't
guarantee it for things such as Cyrillic fonts).

In the Unicode world, there is no such thing as a "non-Latin" font. All
fonts are the same: Unicode. Which means they all contain potentially
64,000 characters. Most fonts only populate about 256, or 512, of those
character positions, but that does not make them a different kind of font:
they are all Unicode fonts, they simply have most of the Unicode character
set missing.

Well, I need to use fixed width fonts, which I believe Arial is not, this is why I would need, say, an all singing all dancing version of Courier.

 

[Arkadian]

Hi again,

for some reasons my reply has been cropped, so here is the ending

You can get more information here:
<http://unicode.org/>
Hem.....


Or here, in a language we can understand:
<http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/>

Yes, slightly better

Hope this helps

Thanks again for all your help.

A.