MS Office '04 swells my fontTablesAnnex

[billincamphill]

So this is bothering me enough to tell y'all.
(This happens with 10.3.5 and 10.3.6)
I have the entire Adobe Font Folio OTF Edition in my ~/Library/Fonts/.
After months of working perfect with Adobe CS and MS Office X, my
fontTablesAnnex file was around 6MB.
All was well.
The first time I launch any MS Office 2004 app the fontTableAnnex file
skyrockets north of 200MB.
Now I realize that Office needs to build it's own cache, but why can't
it leave the system cache alone?
Is it possible to change this behavior?

Considering reverting to Office X
Bill

 

[JE McGimpsey]

So this is bothering me enough to tell y'all.
(This happens with 10.3.5 and 10.3.6)
I have the entire Adobe Font Folio OTF Edition in my ~/Library/Fonts/.
After months of working perfect with Adobe CS and MS Office X, my
fontTablesAnnex file was around 6MB.
All was well.
The first time I launch any MS Office 2004 app the fontTableAnnex file
skyrockets north of 200MB.
Now I realize that Office needs to build it's own cache, but why can't
it leave the system cache alone?
Is it possible to change this behavior?

I have no idea what the fontTableAnnex file is (I don't seem to have
one), but

~/Library/Fonts/

isn't the "system cache". It's the user font folder, which is the lowest
level of the four possible font locations (i.e., farthest away from the
system font folder at

HD:System:Library:Fonts

) and, per Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, it's certainly one of the
logical places for fonts to be loaded.


In any case, you can prevent Office 2004 from loading the fonts by
removing the "Do Fonts" file in the

HD:Applications:Microsoft Office 2004:Office:

folder. This is detailed in the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Resource
Kit which you can download from MacTopia:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx

However, be prepared for less than optimal performance if you've not got
the full unicode versions of TNR/Arial/MS Gothic/MS PMincho installed,
especially if you have to share docs with WinOffice users.

 

[billincamphill]

Thanks for the link to the resource kit JE.
Your fontTableAnnex is at /System/Library/Caches/.
That's what I refered to as the system cache.

 

[billincamphill]

Unfortunately removing 'Do Fonts' only affects the installation of
fonts and not the bloating of the fontTablesAnnex.

 

[billincamphill]

But now we're getting somewhere!
Watching top while lauching Office '04 for the first time, a process
spikes for a sec (FontCacheT) and the then ATSServer goes bananas
enlarging the fontTablesAnnex.
Your suggestion for removing the Do Fonts file led me to finding
/Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2004/Office/Support\
Files/FontCacheTool . When you remove that file and launch Excel, the
fontTablesAnnex never gets enlarged and Excel is up and running in two
secs. Wow.
Now I need to find out what effect never running FontCacheTool has.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Your fontTableAnnex is at /System/Library/Caches/.
That's what I refered to as the system cache.

Sorry, I thought you were referring to something in my User account.

I never worried about the System's fontTablesAnnex. OTOH, I'm not seeing
the bloat that you saw , and I have all the MS fonts installed.

Hmmm...