MACOS X TIGER ~~ FINALLY GOT WORD TO WORK WITHOUT FONT PROBLEMS :))) !!!!!

[Scott Melendez]

Michael¹s issue sounds like mine ­ not all active fonts appear in Office
font menus.

I removed the Font Cache Tool and Word worked like a champ...for a while.
Now, whenever I edit a document¹s style, or something similar, Word freezes
and I get the Office Error Reporting tool (however, that also hangs). Excel,
PowerPoint, and Entourage are fine.

I use the Font Doctor utility to verify the integrity of my fonts, and
everything is fine. No other application has problems, and all other
applications (from big ones, like Adobe¹s Creative Suite, to the free apps
that come with OS X) display all my active fonts.

I even duplicated the font setup on my Windows PC, and everything works fine
there.

I can¹t remember if this started with my Tiger installation, but the
problems are recent, so it probably coincides.

It¹s not a hardware issue ­ with 2 Gb of RAM and 2 100 Gb drives, I have
plenty of space. I am usually running Acrobat Professional, InDesign,
Entourage, Safari, iTunes, and NetNewsWire, and my system handles it like a
champ.

Word seems to be the culprit. Perhaps my Normal template is corrupt? I
should try to re-create it. Is there a way to check for template corruption?

--
Cheers

Scott

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Scott,

The way to check for Normal template corruption is to quit Word, rename the
Normal template (such as OldNormal) and then relaunch Word to force it to
create a new Normal. If the problem goes away, then you had a corrupt
Normal and can trash OldNormal (copying over any customizations using
Organizer first, if you wish). If not, you can restore the original Normal
by naming it back. You¹ll find more on this subject here:

<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/MacWordNormal.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)

And while you¹re there, check the site for other troubleshooting procedures:

<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)

HOWEVER ... at least some of the problems with Word, Tiger and fonts *are*
attributable to conflicts between Word and Tiger. Both Apple and Microsoft
are aware of the issue and I¹m sure a fix will be made available once it
gets nailed down (whenever that might be). This doesn¹t mean you shouldn¹t
try other troubleshooting procedures, including checking your fonts for
corruption and duplication.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Scott Melendez]

Well, I thought fixing the Normal template might be the answer. But nope ­
Word still hangs when I perform a font-related action. It seems to occur
mainly with existing documents. When I go to change the style of a new
document, it doesn¹t hang (yet). I even put the FontCache Tool back, and I
get the same. I am going to purge all my font caches and restart. If Word
still keeps hanging, I am probably going to give up on it.

But there is DEFINITELY something wrong with Word and fonts under Tiger.
And, from what I can tell, Word seems to be the particular problem child.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

HI Scott,

You haven¹t said if you have checked your fonts for duplicates and
corruption. If you haven¹t, you can¹t (yet) blame this on Word. If you
don¹t know how, post back.

Beth

 

[Scott Melendez]

No duplicates.

I have 2 scenarios I¹ve tried:

1. I use Font Agent Pro to manage my OpenType fonts. This application
automatically takes care of duplicates; Font Book manages my remaining Type
1 fonts and the few TrueType faces I have.
2. Font Book manages all fonts.

In both cases (using different accounts), Word IMMEDIATELY freezes and
launches Microsoft Error Reporting, which also freezes. In fact, it takes 2
attempts to ³Force Application to Quit² for Word.

Word is completely unusable to me right now, except as a ³reader². This is
extremely frustrating.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Scott:

Yes, it *will* hang if the FontCache tool has been taken out. It needs that
every time the active font list changes, to rebuild the Office Font Cache.

If you are running a Font Manager, the active font list is changing
constantly.

And you're quite right: there is definitely something wrong with the
Word/Tiger/ATSUI/Font co-operation. That's the bug they're working on.

In the meantime:

* If you do not go above OS X.3 you'll get no trouble (bit late to tell you
that now, but that's why I and several others here have not gone up...)

* If you (having replaced the FontCache Tool) then go through the process
of rebuilding both the OS X and Office font caches, it will work "for a
while". You may need to do an Office Remove and re-install to get the
FontCache tool to reconnect properly.

* If you *could* uninstall all the fonts that you do not USE, then disable
your font manager, and THEN rebuild your font caches, it would probably work
forever.

I only ever "use" about three fonts. The system uses a few more. I have 72
fonts installed: I reckon I could operate perfectly with only 20 off them.

This strategy may not be the most practicable for a graphic designer

Cheers

Well, I thought fixing the Normal template might be the answer. But nope ­
Word still hangs when I perform a font-related action. It seems to occur
mainly with existing documents. When I go to change the style of a new
document, it doesn¹t hang (yet). I even put the FontCache Tool back, and I get
the same. I am going to purge all my font caches and restart. If Word still
keeps hanging, I am probably going to give up on it.

But there is DEFINITELY something wrong with Word and fonts under Tiger. And,
from what I can tell, Word seems to be the particular problem child.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Scott Melendez]

So it sounds like the optimal solution is not use a third-party font
manager?

Having tried that, I am still left without the ability to use several of my
fonts (i.e., they do not show up in the Fonts menu). So that is still a bug.

What do you mean by getting the ³FontCache tool to reconnect properly²?

--
Cheers

Scott

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

So it sounds like the optimal solution is not use a third-party font
manager?

Or to make sure the software always enables the same set of fonts when
you launch Word.

Corentin

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Microsoft Office applications "call" the FontCache tool when they need it.
On First-Run, they store its location in their settings.

If you take FontCache away, the Office applications will update their
settings to say it's not there. Depending on how they are referring to it,
you may need to reboot to cause them to look for it again when you replace
it.

Yes: Some fonts will not appear in the font menu. Eventually, some of this
problem will be cleared by service releases to either Mac OS or Office.
That is a bug, but I can't say which company owns it yet (because I don't
know).

There are some fonts that are built in such a way that they will never be
fully compatible with Microsoft Office on the Mac. Let's hope you do not
have any of those

Cheers

So it sounds like the optimal solution is not use a third-party font manager?

Having tried that, I am still left without the ability to use several of my
fonts (i.e., they do not show up in the Fonts menu). So that is still a bug.

What do you mean by getting the ³FontCache tool to reconnect properly²?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Scott Melendez]

Well...I spent a lot of money on Adobe¹s OpenType library, on the promise
that, being jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe, would eliminate font
hassles. Of course, the Adobe CS2 applications work seamlessly with OpenType
fonts, but Office 2004 does not.

After a fresh install of OS X 10.4.2 and Office 2004, I am still having
myriad font issues. Without using a third-party font manager, about half of
my OpenType fonts don¹t show up in Office applications; some font dialog
boxes in Word and Excel do not have the ability to scroll down; Word freezes
intermittently; and just general overall poor handling of typography by
Office applications.

There seems to be no real logic as to why Word doesn¹t display all of my
OpenType fonts. Odder still, if I install its PostScript Type 1 counterpart,
Word WILL display the Type 1 version in the font menu. For example, one of
my standard fonts, Stone Serif, is truncated by Word in its OpenType format
(even though it is active in Font Book and all other applications see it).
If I disable it, and install the Type 1 version, it will show up in Word¹s
font menus.

Given that the fonts work fine under Windows and other OS X applications,
I¹ve got to believe the issue lies with Office, or at least the way Office
was ³carbonized².

I really hope Microsoft fixes this soon. So much for OpenType being the
³holy grail² of font standardization.

Is there a technical reason why the Office applications can¹t use the OS X
Font panel?

 

[Elliott Roper]

Well...I spent a lot of money on Adobe¹s OpenType library, on the promise
that, being jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe, would eliminate font
hassles. Of course, the Adobe CS2 applications work seamlessly with OpenType
fonts, but Office 2004 does not.

You have got CS2 and you still bother with Word? Let others use Word to
type the text, then finish the job in InDesign. It does not do too bad
a job of transferring the styles from Word if you want that.

After a fresh install of OS X 10.4.2 and Office 2004, I am still having
myriad font issues. Without using a third-party font manager, about half of
my OpenType fonts don¹t show up in Office applications; some font dialog
boxes in Word and Excel do not have the ability to scroll down; Word freezes
intermittently; and just general overall poor handling of typography by
Office applications.

Amen! I don't believe Microsoft developers can tell the difference
between good and bad typography. It's like the English and food.

I really hope Microsoft fixes this soon. So much for OpenType being the
³holy grail² of font standardization.

Is there a technical reason why the Office applications can¹t use the OS X
Font panel?

Yep, that's in the Cocoa framework. Word is Carbon.
Not that I'd wish the font panel on anybody. It is unwieldly rubbish.
It takes over your screen, and forces you to click through everything
with the mouse. As somebody said recently about iTunes, the font panel
team has an initiation ceremony for new programmers -- they have to
dance barefoot on the burning embers of Apple's Human Interface
Guidelines books.

 

[Scott Melendez]

I have CS2, but I don¹t work in a vacuum ­ I still work in a Windows world.
While I would love to a nice PDF workflow, it¹s not going to happen, and
most of my documents are in Word or Excel. And since I am the ³author² of
most of my group¹s PDF output, it reduces my work if I don¹t have to re-do
styles, fonts, etc, whether it¹s in Word or InDesign. So someone sending me
a document in Minion Pro OpenType, and Word can¹t ³see² it, it doesn¹t help
me much.

As a follow-up to my previous post, it seems every Carbon app I tested
exhibits the same behavior. Office 2004, Acrobat 7, and Studio MX 2004 ­ all
of these applications do not display all available OpenType fonts beyond a
certain number installed (I don¹t know what that number is, and until I can
get some technical assistance from Apple, Adobe, or whoever, I don¹t have
the time to determine the exact amount). I do know that this amount is
unaffected by the number of TrueType or Type 1 fonts installed.

 

[Loren]

It's a good answer. i hope there is a fix very soon because it is
happening to me again. when it happens it takes 20 minutes of
dismissing corrupt font dialogs to start word.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Scott:

That¹s useful information

OK, there was an old bug that prevented display of fonts above 500: Are you
anywhere near that number? But that was an OS 8 bug, I would be surprised
if it re-appeared in X.

The entire display and printing for Word are handled by Apple routines. The
one we¹ve had a lot of trouble with is ATSUI: Apple Type Services for
Unicode. If we were getting a buffer overrun in that module, weird things
would indeed happen to fonts.

But I am afraid I don¹t have any hard information for you. The developers
are apparently still trying to nail this one down.

Cheers

I have CS2, but I don¹t work in a vacuum ­ I still work in a Windows world.
While I would love to a nice PDF workflow, it¹s not going to happen, and most
of my documents are in Word or Excel. And since I am the ³author² of most of
my group¹s PDF output, it reduces my work if I don¹t have to re-do styles,
fonts, etc, whether it¹s in Word or InDesign. So someone sending me a document
in Minion Pro OpenType, and Word can¹t ³see² it, it doesn¹t help me much.

As a follow-up to my previous post, it seems every Carbon app I tested
exhibits the same behavior. Office 2004, Acrobat 7, and Studio MX 2004 ­ all
of these applications do not display all available OpenType fonts beyond a
certain number installed (I don¹t know what that number is, and until I can
get some technical assistance from Apple, Adobe, or whoever, I don¹t have the
time to determine the exact amount). I do know that this amount is unaffected
by the number of TrueType or Type 1 fonts installed.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[VXBush]

John,

I'm trying to help my husband with this same problem where Word (and
Excel, in my tests) complain about corrupt fonts on startup. I have no
problem because I don't mess with fonts at all, but he's a graphic
designer. Hm, I'm noticing a common thread with all the folks having
trouble.

In our case, on a dual-processor G4, the problem fonts are all between
the letters B and G, inclusive. Fonts that start with A or H-Z never
appear in the list. Has anyone else seen something similar? I didn't
see anyone here (in my swift perusal) mention this particular
limitation to the problem.

If I understand correctly, my options are:

o downgrade his machine to OS X 10.3
o suffer through all the errors until Word starts up

There's no solution available from either Apple or Microsoft. (But
neither support web site mentions this problem. Grr.)

I've tried to rebuild the font cache and remove duplicates in Font
Book, all to no avail. It does work for about a day or so, but then
goes belly up.

BTW: Thanks for your posts. I was glad to see that I'm not the only one
suffering here.

-VXBush

 

[Beth Rosengard]

There have been several fixes/workarounds discussed on this thread. Have
you read back through it? Some of them actually work for some people ,
so it's worth working through them.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Scott Melendez]

Hi John,

I guess it depends on the definition of font. If you mean an individual
style from a family, such as Garamond Italic, then yes I have over 500. But
if you mean font families, like Font Book groups them, no.

The fact that EVERY Carbon application has the same problem with OpenType
fonts is very curious. Perhaps it has to do with OpenType multi-byte
character encoding? Carbon applications can¹t access more than x number of
multi-byte fonts?

To quote Adobe¹s July 2005 edition of ³OpenType User Guide²
(http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/OTGuide.pdf): ³...many widely used
applications are not as savvy, and can only access the standard single-byte
character set for the current operating system. With Microsoft Office, the
Windows version of an application has long supported Unicode fully, but the
Mac version did not until Office 2004.² (Pages 7-8.) Could this be part of
the problem ­ an incomplete support for Unicode?

Isn¹t there any way for Microsoft to use the Adobe engine? (Actually,
Adobe needs to use their font engine for Acrobat 7, since it suffers from
the same limitation; thankfully, selecting fonts is not really an issue in
Acrobat.)

I will be very interested to see if the new round of Carbon apps (Filemaker
8, Macromedia Studio 8) fix the issue.

John, if the developers need me to do any testing, I am WILLING & ABLE to do
what I can to stomp this out!

Scott

 

[rowdybarber]

Foolish act #1 was installing 983 shiny new fonts along with upgradin
to Tiger. Assumed the "disable" feature in Font Book 2 would gran
more control, ease of use and management of all these wonderful fonts
So why not dop on tons of fun fonts?

Instead: fonts cause major drag + lag on apps like Adobe PDF an
Microsoft Word.

First I went through and painstakingly used font book to disable abou
750 fonts, taking great care not to shut down any system fonts eve
when they were stuff I never use, such as Chinese characters.

I restarted, relaunched Word, and...(you knew it was coming)...sam
problem. Waiting forever for fonts to optimize, and the endles
pulldown font menus once the app finally loaded.

Ransacking a few mac/font issues forums, I found this workaround, whic
was supposed to work but thus far hasn't:

-start in safe mode
-log in
-log out
-restart normal
-log in

The above steps were supposed to enable all fonts.

At which point, I created a new font collection called 'disabled fonts
and, again, moved about 90% of my fonts (non-system fonts) into th
disabled fonts collection.
-control click 'disable Disabled Fonts'

Word still loads 983 fonts, which takes forever and the pulldown fon
menu/formatting pallate are, well, 983 fonts deep.

Any thoughts on how to streamline this? I've decided F all these fonts
I don't need 1,000 fonts on my computer. How can I quickly, cleanly an
concisely deactivate or remove them, but leave my system fonts in plac
so everything runs smooth and returns to the revered state of 'as it wa
before'?


-R

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Answered in your earlier posting...

Foolish act #1 was installing 983 shiny new fonts along with upgrading
to Tiger. Assumed the "disable" feature in Font Book 2 would grant
more control, ease of use and management of all these wonderful fonts.
So why not dop on tons of fun fonts?

Instead: fonts cause major drag + lag on apps like Adobe PDF and
Microsoft Word.

First I went through and painstakingly used font book to disable about
750 fonts, taking great care not to shut down any system fonts even
when they were stuff I never use, such as Chinese characters.

I restarted, relaunched Word, and...(you knew it was coming)...same
problem. Waiting forever for fonts to optimize, and the endless
pulldown font menus once the app finally loaded.

Ransacking a few mac/font issues forums, I found this workaround, which
was supposed to work but thus far hasn't:

-start in safe mode
-log in
-log out
-restart normal
-log in

The above steps were supposed to enable all fonts.

At which point, I created a new font collection called 'disabled fonts'
and, again, moved about 90% of my fonts (non-system fonts) into the
disabled fonts collection.
-control click 'disable Disabled Fonts'

Word still loads 983 fonts, which takes forever and the pulldown font
menu/formatting pallate are, well, 983 fonts deep.

Any thoughts on how to streamline this? I've decided F all these fonts,
I don't need 1,000 fonts on my computer. How can I quickly, cleanly and
concisely deactivate or remove them, but leave my system fonts in place
so everything runs smooth and returns to the revered state of 'as it was
before'?


-RB

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Scott Melendez]

Hi John,

I guess it depends on the definition of font. If you mean an individual
style from a family, such as Garamond Italic, then yes I have over 500. But
if you mean font families, like Font Book groups them, no.

The fact that EVERY Carbon application has the same problem with OpenType
fonts is very curious. Perhaps it has to do with OpenType multi-byte
character encoding? Carbon applications can¹t access more than x number of
multi-byte fonts?

To quote Adobe¹s July 2005 edition of ³OpenType User Guide²
(http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/OTGuide.pdf): ³...many widely used
applications are not as savvy, and can only access the standard single-byte
character set for the current operating system. With Microsoft Office, the
Windows version of an application has long supported Unicode fully, but the
Mac version did not until Office 2004.² (Pages 7-8.) Could this be part of
the problem ­ an incomplete support for Unicode?

Isn¹t there any way for Microsoft to use the Adobe engine? (Actually,
Adobe needs to use their font engine for Acrobat 7, since it suffers from
the same limitation; thankfully, selecting fonts is not really an issue in
Acrobat.)

I will be very interested to see if the new round of Carbon apps (Filemaker
8, Macromedia Studio 8) fix the issue.

John, if the developers need me to do any testing, I am WILLING & ABLE to do
what I can to stomp this out!

Scott