Missing fonts in iWork documents

Yvan --

You are absolutely correct, of course. The font is mentioned in those support documents -- along with many other typefaces that are not system fonts, strictly speaking, but are commonly used for design. What I'm saying is that the OS shouldn't pre-empt my typface selections and make it necessary to install and activate .dfont versions of fonts that I would prefer have installed as OpenType or Type 1.

I have had some success creating templates and documents for Pages using other fonts, eliminating the warning and the need to activate Helvetica. Being able to replace fonts globally is a big help. A better interface for editing styles would help even more. I'm trying to keep in mind that Pages is still a new application and will only improve with each revision. And despite what I said in my previous post, I am grateful to Apple for providing an alternative to Word.

You can go open a Pages Template, and after dismissing the warning replace all instances of the font manually, as follows:

1. Open Font Inspector (⌘T)
2. Open Style Drawer (⇧⌘T)
3. For each paragraph style:
3.1 Click option arrow next to style
3.2 Choose "Select all uses of (style)"
3.3 Change font manually
4. Save document
5. Close and re-open document to check

You could even re-save as a template into the Pages package, where it's templates are stored. Though I would not advise this.

Apple really needs to check all the templates, redo them for Leopard standard fonts and issue a Software Update.

matt

Wow... it feels nice to be not so "alone" in this... LOL.

I'm having the same problem too, but not only with Helvetica/Helvetica Nue, but with Gill Sans (reg+ital) as well (from the "Photographer's Invoice" template). Super annoying. And what's worse, both Gill Sans are in the font menu, and I haven't installed my other PS/OTF versions of Gill Sans yet. Hmmmm.

I actually plan on calling apple care this afternoon, so I'll report back if any fixes are found.

e

PS, fwiw, I've always experienced MUCHO problems with Helvetica... I'm a designer, and whenever I open up my PS or OTF Helvetica family, my system gets all wonky. I really wish Apple would tag those system fonts with a big, fat DO NOT OVERRIDE code, or something. Jeesh.

Ok... here's how I fixed mine (w/ AppleCare's help). And I really hope that it helps at least some of you.

And, well, duplicates were/are the problem. And I used a combination of FontBook and Finder to get rid of them.

The Gill Sans was an overlap from my MSft Office 2008 install, which placed a whole folder of fonts into my /Library/Fonts folder. You know, the folder WE can't touch, but MSft thinks IT can? Lol.

And, without even asking me ⚠, my system disabled the other versions of Gill Sans pages wanted to use.

The Helvetica duplication was in my User/Library/Fonts folder, and I merely deleted that one, after checking that it was, in fact, a duplicate (in every way) via FontBook's "info" feature.

That's the good news... The bad news is, after talking to 3 Apple reps about it, the ongoing "system override" of default Helveticas is unavoidable for designers, or people who merely want a PS, or OTF version, or family, to use. It seems the only solution is to keep those OFF, disabled, or even OUT of your collection until you absolutely need to use it/them. And then put up with "wonky" system appearance (from the conflict) until you're done w/ using it in CS3, or whichever.

Again, I think this is an unfortunate thing that Apple should help provide a fix for. Helvetica is still a workhorse font for designs, etc...

Hope this helps somebody?

e

Sounds like a good solution for the Gill Sans users in the thread.

I fear there's a couple of font problems, as the Microsoft folder (yes, I have this too) doesn't contain a Helvetica and the replacement that Pages does involves changed font names rather than a mssing or conflicted file.

No change to my bug report with Apple. :/

I think I was the only Gill Sans problem on the thread... unfortunately.

Is there any consistency among those having problems with how your hard drive is formated? I have my drive formated as case-sensitive. That has caused a problem with a few installers. For example, in applications I have one folder named epson, and another named Epson, which have duplicates of some files (I should probably combine them one of these days).

I have tried copying the fonts to the user folder with no luck.

My iMac is Apple Store new, so I'd have to figure out how they are formatted as shipped.

I'm not an expert on fonts but I think you just might not have the font you are using active. I know you can enable and disable fonts as you wish. If you have your font already installed it might just be disabled thats all.

In general, in Unicode/ISO10646 imaging substitution serves a specific purpose. Originally, Unicode was intended to be a monoplane 16-bit model with 65,536 code points and ISO10646 was intended to be multiplane code model with many, many times more code points.

The SFNT Spline Font file format of Apple TrueType Specification version 1.0 published in June 1990 was, therefore, for a monoplane 16-bit model with 65,536 code points. ATTS1:1990 allocates half as useable and half as reserved.

Thus while the Adobe Type 1 Specification supported 256 active character codes at any one time the Apple TrueType 1 Specification supported 120 times more (if my mental math is roughly right). But it was and is non-sense to speak of "a Unicode font".

Neither ATTS1:1990 or the present Apple TrueType Specification have a concept of an SFNT Spline Font file whose obligatory CMAP Character Map supports all of the code space as it was or as it now stands after Unicode moved its model to ISO10646.

Such an SFNT Spline Font file would be massive in megabytes. By the bye the same problem occurs in ColorSYnc 2 since the subsetting and interpolation precision is not defined in the ICC Specification. If there were no subsetting an ICC PRTR profile would be around 65Mb.

What this means is that if the system sees a character code in a character string that is not imageable with the CMAP Character Map of the currently selected SFNT Spline Font (whether TrueType 1, Apple extended TrueType or Microsoft extended TrueType aka OpenType), it has to have a fallback. This fallback is substitution that looks for another SNFT with a CMAP that can image the character code. In this case there is an additional mechanism as the fallback does not simply try to match the character code in whatever SFNT, but tries to match the style of the glyphs in the original font (hence missing one sans serif it substitutes another sans serif and not a calligraphic cursive like Zapfino, for instance). Apple has some patents on this.

So, to try to determine why substitution occurs, copy the character string that triggered the warning into TextEdit, select Plain Text to remove formatting, step through the string using Show Character Selected in Application, and use the Glyph map for the SFNT Spline Fonts called out in the Document Warnings dialogue.

Or just accept what the OS suggests and skip the question of why this happens. Note that this form of substitution through the CMAP is not the same as subsetting of the glyph repertoire in the font resource when streaming a page description. In the latter case only the glyphs that are actually used are streamed.

Of course, all of this could be completely misconceived and beside the point which is the problem with self-testing and self-correcting technologies in operating systems. That is, trying to figure out what precisely is the problem is not easy -:).

Yvan,

Thanks for this! Looks like Adobe Type 1 Multiple Master technology is back. It's supported in Java, just as Apple TrueType Variations available in Apple Skia.

Henrik

YES! (sort of)

I'm not getting an error message any more when creating new documents from templates, but errors still appear in documents I have created using those templates.

Message was edited by: Matt Sephton

Highlight Narrow and at the bottom of that pane, click the small checkbox to turn it on.

Oooh, I looove technical puzzles.

In the ROM Read Only Memory of the original Apple LaserWriter the Linotype Helvetica Narrow was algorithmically generated from the Linotype Helvetica. In other words, the font file was not there, only the procedure to add the font on the fly.

Haven't rummaged around yet, but it seems Linotype Helvetica and Linotype Times are presently PS splines with Multiple Master style distortions. The operating system supports the older Multiple Master technology as well as the newer superior TrueType Variations technology.

Seems a tick did not tell the scaler to scale what it should be scaling - or something -:).

Best,

Henrik

Matt,

I noticed on your Font window, the second example of the "Helvetica Neue"s, there was no space between "Helvetica" and "Neue". I think if you corrected the second one, it would revert to only one copy. Just a guess.

Also, I have found that, the way the Font Help section describes it, anytime there is a duplicate, they will put a bullet next to each of the font titles. If you want to correct the duplication, first highlight the specific font with the bullet next to it, then go up to Edit and choose "Resolve Duplicate". Quietly, with no fanfare, the bullet disappears, and so does the duplicate.

And I had the hardest time trying to figure out how to remove a font from a folder in Font Book, not from the entire Font Book, but only from that specific folder. Highlight the font title in that folder, then choose from the File menu "Remove (blank) font family?" And when you choose it, a small window will appear, asking permission to permanently remove it from this specific folder. So easy. And this clarifies that it does not remove this font from the whole collection, just this folder. I am having a much easier time managing my fonts, now.

I know this only addressed some of your questions, yet hope this might be of some use to you (or others).