Specific details that would help:
1) can someone PLEASE test this on 10.4.7? There appear to be some ATSUI
changes in that version.
I did this as soon as it came out and posted the results in the forum -
others did too. It doesn't solve the problem.
2) if some of you are comfortable with it, when you see ATSServer doing it's
bouncing, run fs_usage for a bit. That could be helpful in seeing just what
word and other things are doing to the file system.
Tried, but as when this happens the computer goes into a death-spiral
killing apps and then logging out the user, this was simply too hard to
get to work: the whole thing is over (on our machines anyhow) in about
30 secs, during which time machine is not very responsive. In fact
sometimes if you don't get to Word quickly enough, you can't get the
force-quit option showing at all and you just have to wait for machine
to die. Any suggestions about how to do this another way?
3) on the systems this is happening on, are there any haxies, addons,
anything in the menu bar that Apple didn't supply, etc. InputManagers and
APE count, even if you aren't actively using them.
If you recall when this problem first emerged, I spent an inordinate
amount of time trying to characterise the problem - including such
desparate acts as initialising the MacIntel (complete HD wipe and
reinstall), back-grading Office and OS X separately etc. None of these
made any difference - and by implications eliminate the risk arising
from widgets, addons and the like.
4) When this happens, has anyone immediately created a new clean test user
and tried to work with the same document in that?
Yes. See original messages in this thread. Didn't work.
5) WRT to the fonts, is this in conjunction with a font manager? what is the
specific font setup on the affected machines, i.e. directory locations.
See original messages (do you see a pattern emerging here...?). During
work to characterise the problem it was suggested that various font
managers and font cache cleaning utilities would help. None did.
Except that with a Font Manager it is easier to remove the offending
fonts from the font folder.
6) On the fonts causing the problem, does Font Book's font check come up
clean?
That was one of the first things we tried (along with font cleaners,
font inspectors, font repair tools etc.). As posted in the initial
messages, none of the fonts was faulty.
7) on the affected machines, has anyone touched any of the fonts in
/System/Library/Fonts for any reason?
No, but in the testing / reinstalling etc these fonts would have been
reset to their default / unchanged state, and this didn't solve the
problem. So suspect that this is nothing to do with it.
8) On the affected machines, have you checked the permissions for the fonts.
(No, "Repair Permissions" doesn't count, as it, at most, would only touch
the main font directory.)
Didn't try this first time around (this is the first time it has been
suggested). Using the method described elsewhere in the thread we get:
-rwzrwxrwx 1 gavinlaw gavinlaw 174112 Sep 15 2005
/Users/gavinlawrie/Library/Fonts/2GC Fonts/MinonPro-Regular.otf
Just in case you are wondering, we also tried moving the fonts from a
sub-directory to the main directory, but makes no difference. Putting
the fonts in a folder makes it easier to remove them...
So. Hope this helps. I am really disappointed that so far nothing has
been done to address this issue on grounds that it can't be reproduced:
we here have gone to extraordinary lengths to characterise this
problem, demonstrate it is repeatable, isolate features that seem to
trigger it, and provide exhaustive information on the machines we are
running into the problem on. With the exception of your Question 8,
all the 'missing' information requested has been provided before.
Looks like we wasting our time.
We have long since demonstrated that we can create a machine with the
problem by reinstalling OS X from the distribution disk, and installing
Office 2004 from the MS CD, installing our standard fonts, opening a
document that uses these fonts and saving it. Doing same again with
our standard fonts removed, and you don't have the problem. Quite why
this fails on other machines is a mystery - but suggests to me that if
we sent over one of our documents and our standard fonts, the rest
(i.e. a MacIntel reset to its distribution condition, with vanilla
Office 2004 installed) could be supplied by someone at either MS or
Apple.
Let me know if you want to do this...
Regards
Gavin Lawrie
