kpdesigns

Q: Foreign Fonts

I'd like to disable some of the foreign fonts that always show up in my fonts list in adobe programs. Is this possible? Is it safe to do?

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), 30"; Cinema Display

Posted on Jan 12, 2015 8:06 AM

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Q: Foreign Fonts

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  • by judysings,

    judysings judysings Jan 13, 2015 10:49 AM in response to kpdesigns
    Community Specialists
    Jan 13, 2015 10:49 AM in response to kpdesigns

    Hi kpdesigns,

    Thanks for the question.  You can choose to delete font collections from your Mac if you wish.  The following resources will show you how:

    OS X Yosemite: Customize font collections
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18453?viewlocale=en_US

    The Fonts window groups similar fonts into collections, such as Fun or Modern. You can add or remove fonts in these collections, or create your own collections. 

    1. In an app that uses the Fonts window, open the window by choosing Format > Show Fonts, or Format > Font > Show Fonts.

    2. Do any of the following:

      • Create a collection: Click Add  below the Collection column, then type a name for the collection. 

      • Add a font to a collection: Drag a font family or typeface to a collection. 

      • Remove a font from a collection: Drag the font out from the Fonts window. The font remains on your Mac, but is no longer available in the Fonts window. 

      • Delete a collection: Select it in the list, then click Delete  below the Collection column. 

      • Mark a font as a favorite: Drag a font from the Typeface column to the Favorites collection in the Collection column. Or select a font, click the Action pop-up menu , then choose Add to Favorites. 

    For more information about working with fonts, open Font Book.

     

     

    Mac Basics: Font Book - Apple Support
    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201749

     

    Remove a font with Font Book

    To remove a font using Font Book, select All Fonts in the Collection column, select the name of the font in the Font column, then choose File > Remove "Font Name" Family. Font Book will move those font files into the Trash. 

     

    System fonts can't be removed.

     

    I hope this information helps ....

     

    - Judy

  • by kpdesigns,

    kpdesigns kpdesigns Jan 13, 2015 10:54 AM in response to judysings
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 10:54 AM in response to judysings

    I looked in Font Book and the foreign fonts are not even listed in there. I have a feeling they could be somewhere else that font book can't see?

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 11:22 AM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 11:22 AM in response to kpdesigns

    Many of the foreign fonts are in the System folder, and Font Book won't display those, much less let you remove them. There are tons more foreign fonts in the root Library folder.

     

    Good news is, of the 280 fonts (the files themselves) Yosemite installs, you can remove most of them without affecting how the OS or its apps function. I don't know about you, but I'm neither blind or have very poor vision, so what do I need the Braille fonts on my system for? I can't read any Kanji characters, so why do I need any Asian fonts on my system?

     

    I have a detailed font article you can look over; Font Management in OS X. Section one explains which are the minimum fonts that should be in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder, and the root /Library/Fonts/ folder.

     

    Or, just compare to this list of the installed fonts on my Mac and make yours the same. Copy all fonts to another location first. Then you can activate any of those you remove with your font manager the same as any other font. They don't need to go back into the folders they came from.

     

    System folder:

     

    Apple Color Emoji.ttf

    AppleSDGothicNeo-Bold.otf

    AppleSDGothicNeo-Regular.otf

    Courier.dfont

    Geneva.dfont

    Helvetica.dfont

    HelveticaNeue.dfont

    HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc

    Keyboard.ttf

    LastResort.ttf

    LucidaGrande.ttc

    Menlo.ttc

    Monaco.dfont

    Symbol.ttf

    Times.dfont

    ZapfDingbats.ttf (Not really necessary. I don't have this one installed.)

     

    Library folder (root, not your user account):

     

    AppleGothic.ttf

    Arial Black.ttf

    Arial Bold Italic.ttf

    Arial Bold.ttf

    Arial Italic.ttf

    Arial Narrow Bold Italic.ttf

    Arial Narrow Bold.ttf

    Arial Narrow Italic.ttf

    Arial Narrow.ttf

    Arial Rounded Bold.ttf

    Arial.ttf

    Comic Sans MS Bold.ttf

    Comic Sans MS.ttf

    Georgia Bold Italic.ttf

    Georgia Bold.ttf

    Georgia Italic.ttf

    Georgia.ttf

    Impact.ttf

    Tahoma Bold.ttf

    Tahoma.ttf

    Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf

    Times New Roman Bold.ttf

    Times New Roman Italic.ttf

    Times New Roman.ttf

    Trebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttf

    Trebuchet MS Bold.ttf

    Trebuchet MS Italic.ttf

    Trebuchet MS.ttf

    Verdana Bold Italic.ttf

    Verdana Bold.ttf

    Verdana Italic.ttf

    Verdana.ttf

    Webdings.ttf

    Wingdings 2.ttf

    Wingdings 3.ttf

    Wingdings.ttf

     

    I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

  • by kpdesigns,

    kpdesigns kpdesigns Jan 13, 2015 11:25 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 11:25 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    I did follow your recommendations, but I am still unsure of why I see these fonts hanging around in my font list. What do you think of these?

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21231523/Screen.png

     

    I know 2 of them have to be there because they are in the system folder, but the others are a mystery.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 11:41 AM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 11:41 AM in response to kpdesigns

    The Adobe apps install those fonts and only the Adobe apps see them because of where they're located. They're also all over the place. They're repeated over and over for each Adobe app and are buried within each application package for Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, etc. No idea why.

     

    For Photoshop, you would right click on the app itself and choose "Show Package Contents". Then drill down through:

     

    /Contents/Required/PDFL/Resource/Fonts

     

    There will be 27 .otf fonts and two Windows formatted Type 1 PostScript fonts (only the Adobe apps can read Windows PS 1 fonts within OS X, no version of the Mac OS can, or ever has been able to).

     

    Be very careful removing these fonts. I've never tested to see if removing any of them will cause the app you pull them out of to fail to launch.

  • by kpdesigns,

    kpdesigns kpdesigns Jan 13, 2015 11:44 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 11:44 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    I suspect if adobe installs them they are probably necessary. I like my font list to be small and easily readable, so I wanted to get rid of those extra fonts, but now I'm concerned about touching them.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 11:54 AM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 11:54 AM in response to kpdesigns

    Easy enough to test. I just now moved all of the .otf fonts out of the embedded fonts folder for Photoshop, and it came up the same as always. No errors, no funny menus. I would bet the only fonts it cares about in its "Required" folder are the two PS1 fonts.

  • by kpdesigns,

    kpdesigns kpdesigns Jan 13, 2015 11:57 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 11:57 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    Well if you did it, then I'll try too! Thanks.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 12:09 PM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 12:09 PM in response to kpdesigns

    Spoke too soon. Photoshop still works as expected, but a lot of fonts that are not on OS X's folder still appear in the list of fonts PS displays when I use the text tool. So it's likely reading the fonts from any other Adobe app it can find them in.

     

    The same fonts (plus a couple more) are also in the main Library folder under Application Support / Adobe. I moved all of those out and emptied the embedded Fonts folder in PS CC 2014. And still, all of these Adobe fonts show up in the list:

     

    Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 2.03.06 PM.png

     

    You'd have to hunt down the duplicated fonts in every Adobe app, move them all out and see if anything still works. If not, then put them back. Besides the root Library folder under Application Support, the same one are duplicated within each of these CC 2014 apps:

     

    Photoshop

    Illustrator
    Acrobat Pro

    After Effects

    Bridge

    InDesign (twice! for this one, believe it or not, in two separate subfolders)

    Media Encoder

    Premiere Pro

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 1:24 PM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 1:24 PM in response to Kurt Lang

    This is really strange. I removed and deleted every single Arabic, Hebrew and otherwise font from every location on the drive. I dismounted another physical drive the same fonts I know would be on (I have the same Adobe apps installed under a Yosemite partition). I even disconnected my Mac from the Internet. The same fonts keep appearing in every Adobe app. Not just show up, actually work. So there are actual fonts somewhere.

     

    I also searched the entire drive with EasyFind, allowing it to search in all application packages and hidden folders. Nothing.

     

    James Garnham asked the same question on Adobe's forums, trying to find out how to remove all of these "invisible" Adobe fonts to get them out of his lists. No one has answered it, not even the Adobe specialists. There's nothing on the Internet in general I can find out about these fonts or their locations.

     

    Can't even begin to guess why Adobe is protecting these fonts to the hilt. I don't need them, and I would imagine most other people don't want, or need them, either.

  • by kpdesigns,

    kpdesigns kpdesigns Jan 13, 2015 1:27 PM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 1:27 PM in response to Kurt Lang

    I heard there is an app called monolingual that removes fonts. Is that a possibility?

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 13, 2015 1:31 PM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 13, 2015 1:31 PM in response to kpdesigns

    Monolingual removes unused foreign language files, not fonts.

     

    Since I can't find any .otf or .ttf fonts anywhere on the drive for these "hidden" items, then they have to be compressed in another file the Adobe apps read and load when launched.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Jan 14, 2015 9:02 AM in response to kpdesigns
    Level 8 (37,820 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 14, 2015 9:02 AM in response to kpdesigns

    Okay, more info on the Adobe apps. It installs over a GB of what turns out to be useless fonts in numerous folders. I emptied every single Fonts folder within each application package that had them, and also emptied the same fonts from the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/… folder.

     

    This "fixed" almost all of the apps to show only fonts that are actually active on the system. And something I rather didn't expect, it didn't affect a single app. Not even InDesign, which not only had the same fonts in two separate folder within its application package, but one was also in the "Required" folder. Didn't faze it at all. The app still launched and behaved completely normally.

     

    So in the end, this is how all of the apps which had embedded fonts show their font lists after clearing them out.

     

    Acrobat Pro and Bridge work as expected. (Why did these apps have the same embedded fonts in the first place?)

     

    After Effects, InDesign, Media Encoder and Premiere Pro work as expected and show only the actual active fonts. Premiere Pro works as expected even with its embedded "Required" fonts folder emptied.

     

    Illustrator works as expected, but continues to list Myriad Roman (shown as missing). Also Myriad Pro and an Adobe Asian font of some sort (both available, but nowhere to be found) in its font list.

     

    Photoshop

     

    The bad boy. Continues to show many fonts nowhere to be found. The image here shows all of the fonts (highlighted) that cannot be found anywhere on the drive, which still not only show up in Photoshop's list, but also work. So they are live fonts PS is loading from somewhere on launch. The rest are all of the active fonts I expect to see in all apps.


    what.jpg

  • by Sparky Marky,

    Sparky Marky Sparky Marky Oct 11, 2015 2:09 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Oct 11, 2015 2:09 AM in response to Kurt Lang

    Hi Kurt

     

    I'm using CC 2015 most up to date version.

     

    I've just tried to moved the superflous fonts out of the InDesign > Resources > Required > Fonts folder and into a folder on my desktop. Much to my surprise instead of moving the fonts, they remain in the original folder and the "moved" fonts are aliases. It seems that Adobe are protecting these fonts and make it difficult to move / get rid of them.

     

    I presume there won't be any font conflict between the Minion and Myriad fonts installed by CC and the Minion and Myriad fonts I use dayly that I have placed in my Home > Libary > Fonts folder?

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