Styled fonts (bold, italic) not working right on 10.4.1/Word 2004

[voyager]

You folks were very helpful the last time I had a problem - which
turned out to be a specific, oddball corruption in one file. I hope
this problem is more universal (well, you know what I mean ).

Since I upgraded to 10.4.1, Word 2004 loses track of the links between
fonts - meaning, if I take Gill Sans and make it bold, I don¹t get Gill
Sans Bold, I get Gill Sans with fake bold, the way things used to work
back in the bitmap days. Gill Sans with italic formating gets Gill Sans
slanted mechanically, not Gill Sans Italic.

I have used Font Finagler several times to dump all caches. I have
deleted the Office Font Cache and let it rebuild. I have thrown away
all the Adobe FontLst¹s (I¹m using Adobe¹s Gill Sans - but the problem
is not just with Gill Sans; that¹s just one example). I have
reinstalled the fonts from their original source disk. I have fixed
Permissions, run Disk Warrior and Tech Tool...basically, I¹ve done
everything I can think of, and I can think of a lot.

What can you think of to make me feel (a) like a fool, and (b) grateful?

Thanks.

 

[matt neuburg]

Since I upgraded to 10.4.1, Word 2004 loses track of the links between
fonts - meaning, if I take Gill Sans and make it bold, I don't get Gill
Sans Bold, I get Gill Sans with fake bold, the way things used to work
back in the bitmap days. Gill Sans with italic formating gets Gill Sans
slanted mechanically, not Gill Sans Italic.

I have used Font Finagler several times to dump all caches. I have
deleted the Office Font Cache and let it rebuild. I have thrown away
all the Adobe FontLst's (I'm using Adobe's Gill Sans - but the problem
is not just with Gill Sans; that's just one example)

Others reporting this problem have, I *think*, had success with Tiger
Cache Cleaner... (Am I remembering correctly?) m.

 

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

If Matt's suggestion doesn't work, try "printing" the result...

As a power-saving technique, Word "fakes" the outlines of some kinds of
fonts on screen. Makes editing far more responsive.

If you print the result, or go into print preview, Word then calls in the
real font, constructs the real outlines, lays them up using the real metrics
from the actual printer driver, etc.

The fake outlines are basically Times New Roman or Arial fiddled with to
look something like the real font.

I am not sure how much this technique is still used: computers are so
powerful these days that it's not really needed.

Cheers

You folks were very helpful the last time I had a problem - which
turned out to be a specific, oddball corruption in one file. I hope
this problem is more universal (well, you know what I mean ).

Since I upgraded to 10.4.1, Word 2004 loses track of the links between
fonts - meaning, if I take Gill Sans and make it bold, I don¹t get Gill
Sans Bold, I get Gill Sans with fake bold, the way things used to work
back in the bitmap days. Gill Sans with italic formating gets Gill Sans
slanted mechanically, not Gill Sans Italic.

I have used Font Finagler several times to dump all caches. I have
deleted the Office Font Cache and let it rebuild. I have thrown away
all the Adobe FontLst¹s (I¹m using Adobe¹s Gill Sans - but the problem
is not just with Gill Sans; that¹s just one example). I have
reinstalled the fonts from their original source disk. I have fixed
Permissions, run Disk Warrior and Tech Tool...basically, I¹ve done
everything I can think of, and I can think of a lot.

What can you think of to make me feel (a) like a fool, and (b) grateful?

Thanks.

--

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

 

[voyager]

Matt -

I tried Tiger Cache Cleaner, restarted, and...it worked! The font was
correctly displayed! I was thrilled.

Then I turned off the computer, went to bed, got up, fired up my
computer again...and things were just like before.

In both cases (last night and this morning), opening Word causes a
significant time lag (little clock turns into spinning beach ball for a
while). Last night, after all that thinking, it did things right. This
morning, after all that thinking, it did things wrong. Last night I
figured ³Okay, it¹s rebuilding the deleted cache,² but what was it
doing this morning?

Something is rebuilding the bad links. I have reinstalled the 10.4.1
update and that¹s had no effect. Next I¹m going to try reinstalling
Office. It¹s clear that there¹s a solution out there somewhere, but
evidently it¹s not Tiger Cache Cleaner (at least, not completely) - but
I do appreciate your help. Meanwhile, other ideas are still needed.

 

[matt neuburg]

Matt -

I tried Tiger Cache Cleaner, restarted, and...it worked! The font was
correctly displayed! I was thrilled.

Then I turned off the computer, went to bed, got up, fired up my
computer again...and things were just like before.

Sounds like a description of my entire life!

In both cases (last night and this morning), opening Word causes a
significant time lag (little clock turns into spinning beach ball for a
while). Last night, after all that thinking, it did things right. This
morning, after all that thinking, it did things wrong. Last night I
figured "Okay, it's rebuilding the deleted cache," but what was it
doing this morning?

Something is rebuilding the bad links. I have reinstalled the 10.4.1
update and that's had no effect. Next I'm going to try reinstalling
Office. It's clear that there's a solution out there somewhere, but
evidently it's not Tiger Cache Cleaner (at least, not completely) - but
I do appreciate your help. Meanwhile, other ideas are still needed.

OK, but keep in mind that you want to use Tiger Cache Cleaner *and*
delete the Office fonts cache and restart in order to bring everything
back to ground zero. Did you do that? Also, use Font Book to make sure
you have no font conflicts. m.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Here's something else that seems to be helping others with font problems in
Tiger. This came in from Sam Hanchett. I'm not sure if it does any more or
less than trashing the font caches, but it's worth a try.

-----------------------------------------------
I'd been having this same "corrupt font" problem and others and called Mac
support for help. I work on a G4 iBook. I was instructed to do a "safe
boot" which clears out the font cache. So far it's worked.

To do a safe boot if you don't know how (I didn't), do this: Shut down your
computer. Turn it on and when you hear the chime press the SHIFT KEY. Hold
it until the Apple and spinning cursor appears then release. Wait until the
log in screen appears. At the top of the white background on the log-in
screen it should say "safe boot". Log in. When I did this I opened Word
(with no "corrupt font" warnings) and found I had only a few fonts there.
Then I shut down and restarted as usual (no safe boot). When I open Word it
opened fine and all my fonts were there.
-----------------------------------------------

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

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
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Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Sol Apache]

Hi Matt
I have a dumb question: where is Microsoft¹s fonts cache? Is it the the file
whose name includes browserfont.cache in my home library cache folder?

Thanks

Sol

 

[matt neuburg]

Hi Matt
I have a dumb question: where is Microsoft's fonts cache? Is it the the file
whose name includes browserfont.cache in my home library cache folder?

It is in ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft, and is called Office Font
Cache. m.

 

[voyager]

Okay - day 2 of tests -

I now believe it has something to do with turning off and on the
computer, which may take it out of the realm of a Word problem - or
not.

I did reinstall Office, then run Tiger Cache Cleaner. Again, the
problem was fixed when I rebooted, and it stayed fixed all day
yesterday. But this morning, after the computer (450 Dual, 640 RAM,
10.4.1) was off overnight, the problem has reoccurred.

All tests indicate my computer is fine. I¹ve used the Tiger install
disk, TechTool, and DiskWarrior. But something gets lost when the power
is off. I¹ll report it to Apple, but I¹m still open to any ideas from
here or elsewhere.

Continued thanks.

 

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

When OS X Unix restarts, it re-builds (or "should" rebuild...) the System
font Cache.

When Microsoft Office applications launch, the first one to start after
reboot should poll the system font cache. If that has changed, the
application should rebuild the Microsoft Office Font Cache during its
launch.

If there's a problem in the system that puts crud into the System font
cache, it will be inherited by the Office font cache, preventing it from
rebuilding cleanly.

So when you sort this issue, you need to delete BOTH font caches, then do a
Safe Restart of OS X (to force a re-creation of the system font cache).

After that, Office will rebuild its own font cache from a clean System cache
and all should be well. If something trashes the system font cache, Office
won't notice until the next time all Office applications are quit. The
first one to start after that will notice the system cache has updated and
rebuild, replicating the problem again.

Hope this helps

Okay - day 2 of tests -

I now believe it has something to do with turning off and on the
computer, which may take it out of the realm of a Word problem - or
not.

I did reinstall Office, then run Tiger Cache Cleaner. Again, the
problem was fixed when I rebooted, and it stayed fixed all day
yesterday. But this morning, after the computer (450 Dual, 640 RAM,
10.4.1) was off overnight, the problem has reoccurred.

All tests indicate my computer is fine. I¹ve used the Tiger install
disk, TechTool, and DiskWarrior. But something gets lost when the power
is off. I¹ll report it to Apple, but I¹m still open to any ideas from
here or elsewhere.

Continued thanks.

--

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

 

[voyager]

John -

This sounds very promising. I will do this. Thank you.

When OS X Unix restarts, it re-builds (or "should" rebuild...) the System
font Cache.

When Microsoft Office applications launch, the first one to start after
reboot should poll the system font cache. If that has changed, the
application should rebuild the Microsoft Office Font Cache during its
launch.

If there's a problem in the system that puts crud into the System font
cache, it will be inherited by the Office font cache, preventing it from
rebuilding cleanly.

So when you sort this issue, you need to delete BOTH font caches, then do a
Safe Restart of OS X (to force a re-creation of the system font cache).

After that, Office will rebuild its own font cache from a clean System cache
and all should be well. If something trashes the system font cache, Office
won't notice until the next time all Office applications are quit. The
first one to start after that will notice the system cache has updated and
rebuild, replicating the problem again.

Hope this helps

 

[roberto]

Hello,

I'm the guy that first posted about this (I think), and suggested using
Tiger Cache Cleaner. What I've found, from following up on the list,
is that, like most others, when I restart (which isn't very often), I
have the problem back. I now just restart with AppleJack (see
versiontracker), a small Unix program that does a bunch of little tasks
when restarted in single user mode), however this still isn't an
acceptable option for the long haul, as SOMETHING is wrong somewhere.
I've also found that I don't need to do anything to the Microsoft Font
Cache files, just doing a "deep cleaning" of the Apple Type Services
caches does the trick. I'm going to contact Apple about this, and hope
that if enough of us do this, even if the result is finger pointing,
they'll at least be aware that this problem exists.

FYI, I recently bought a new iMac (20" 2GHz) and had the ultimate in
clean installs of both the OS and the Office suite, and the problem is
on this thing, too.

Good luck to everyone, and if you're having this problem, don't forget
to tell Apple!
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/


--Roberto

 

[roberto]

Oh, and voyager: can you share whether you're using Type 1 or OpenType
format Adobe fonts? I'm using OpenType (and wishing Word had better
access to all the unicode goodness therein)... I was hoping to narrow
it down to one KIND of Adobe font...

--Roberto

 

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

Hi Robert:

Many thanks for posting back on this.

Microsoft and Apple have their heads together as we speak, trying to figure
out what's causing this. Trust me, this issue is *not* on the back burner.
I have no idea which of them is going to fix it, or when, but I do know
they're both working very hard on it.

I think we all wish that Word could get at some of the Unicode goodies in
professional fonts. Well: Word calls ATSUI, so what you see is all that
ATSUI currently makes available (or perhaps more accurately, all that ATSUI
made available whin the current release of Word 2004 was finalised).

Cheers

Oh, and voyager: can you share whether you're using Type 1 or OpenType
format Adobe fonts? I'm using OpenType (and wishing Word had better
access to all the unicode goodness therein)... I was hoping to narrow
it down to one KIND of Adobe font...

--Roberto

--

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

 

[voyager]

Actually, the Gill Sans I¹m talking about is Open Type, and I know I
have the same problem with another Open Type. However, I also have some
previously Type 1 dingbat fonts that I changed into Windoze TTF fonts
using TransType and they show the problem, too, so I was thinking it
was the Windoze TTF component that¹s to blame. As I understand it, Open
Type includes TTF codeŠ

 

[voyager]

Everybody -

Thanks again for all the info. It thus appears that there is a problem,
with no good solution until Apple and MS offer one - so I¹m following
Roberto¹s interim solution of cleaning the font caches, rebooting, and
then trying never to shut down.

I am now pretty darn certain the problem lies in the TTF
implimentation, whether in actual TTFs or in Open Type.

 

[Tim Murray]

Actually, the Gill Sans I¹m talking about is Open Type, and I know I
have the same problem with another Open Type. However, I also have some
previously Type 1 dingbat fonts that I changed into Windoze TTF fonts
using TransType and they show the problem, too, so I was thinking it
was the Windoze TTF component that¹s to blame. As I understand it, Open
Type includes TTF codeŠ

What do you mean by "the same problem?" If you're talking about the original
thread title about styled fonts, many dingbat fonts don't have any "real"
bold or italic anyway.