Is there a way to "reset" system fonts to installation state

Question

Is there a way to "reset" system fonts to installation state

I kind of bollixed things up here and I wonder if there's a way to get back to fresh-out-of-the-box state with fonts. Here's my tale of woe.

1) I copied a big old folder full of fonts I've used in the past over to a new G5. That was probably mistake #1, in that some of these are 20 years old and only run on a Vic-20 or something. Okay, maybe not that bad, but I'm sure a lot of them long since belong in the trash. I had this idea Font Agent pro would sort them out for me.

2) I tried importing them into Font Agent Pro. Mistake #2 was probably trying to import everything at once. It succeeded, except then it wouldn't activate them-- they said they were activated but no program could see them. I messed with plugins, I tried a bunch of stuff, something weird with that. I gave up, shut it down.

3) Next I tried Linotype Font Explorer. Again, stupidly, I tried to import everything at once. It hung up, twice, on importing Cairo. (Wasn't that a Mac Classic-era picture font? Should it even exist any more?) That failed.

4) I ordered Suitcase, go back to the old reliable, I thought. It hasn't come yet so at least I couldn't import everything with it, too. Yet.

5) I started surfing, etc. And I discovered two things:

- There's some weirdness with Safari. Somehow some of the default fonts are now changed to weirdo Cyrillic or fraction fonts. So certain things are no longer readable, or half readable. I can't seem to reset this.

- I seem to have every single font I own up through the letter J open at once. I no longer know even which program has them open. Or how to shut them. (Thankfully, I have 2.5 GB of RAM so things are still functioning with a couple of thousand fonts open.)

Clearly everything I do just digs me in deeper and makes the mess worse. Here are my questions (I'll roman numeral them for easy reference):

I) Is there some way-- besides wiping the hard drive and reinstalling everything-- to get my font situation back to the state of grace it was in when I opened the box? I'm afraid to open or close anything at this point without guidance from someone wiser.

II) What's the best way to clean the old, useless stuff out of my font folder and just use fonts from now on that modern computers actually recognize and are happy to use? Do I look for certain types of files and delete them? Or what?

III) Any other suggestions for how to better manage things going forward? (Besides the font FAQ, which is obviously a real source of riches and which I printed out to study in detail already.)

Many thanks in advance, o wiser ones than I.

Posted on Nov 1, 2005 11:04 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,216 points

Nov 1, 2005 11:22 AM in response to Michael Gebert1

To fix Safari, get rid of Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic for starters.

In general, you might just want to clean out your Library/Fonts folders so you have what the OS started with:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301332

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Answer 2

SharonZ

Level 2

490 points

Nov 1, 2005 4:03 PM in response to Michael Gebert1

My first suggestion is that you just set up another account on your Mac with Administrative privileges and start relatively clean in that, eventually dumping your original account. But, frankly, I dont know what your font wrangling may have wrought at this point that would affect the fonts for all accounts on your machine; at the very least, whatever you might have done to the /Library/Fonts folder, since its shared, would affect the new user account too.

So, lets say youre not setting up a new account. Heres a get back to square one approach:

1) Turn off whatever font management utility youre using. (Maybe you have dueling utilities at this point and thats part of the problem? You mentioned Font Agent Pro, Suitcase, and Font Explorer.) Then restart.

2) Round up your fonts. It sounds like youre not sure where they are and I dont know where the various utilities youve used might have put them. In a way, it doesnt matter - you want to clear up four folders. Whether you empty them (almost) entirely and then put stuff back in or only take out the things that dont belong again, sorry, without knowing what your utilities did in terms of rearranging fonts, I cant be very specific. I know that if I were doing a real cleanup job, Id empty the folders and then put back what I need. I strongly recommend the shareware program Pacifist, which will let you extract from your Tiger install disk the Fonts folders, without having to reinstall the system.

The four folders to clean up:

* [username]/Library/Fonts - totally empty this one

* /System Folder/Fonts this is if you have Classic installed. Empty this one, too (make sure Classic isnt running first)

* /Library/Fonts you can empty this one, too, for now.

* /System/Library/Fonts take out everything except: Keyboard.dfont, LucidaGrande.dfont, Geneva.dfont, and Helvetica.dfont.

3) You can check out lists of the fonts that came with Tiger, search for them on your hard drive and put them back in their folders but its easier to use Pacifist to extract the various Fonts folders from your Tiger install disks and start fresh with the fonts from those folders.

4) If you have Microsoft Office, run one of its applications, because when it finds that your User Fonts folder is empty, it will reinstall the fonts that come with Office.

- - - - -

At this point, you should have clean system Fonts folders, and then, if youve found them, a BIG folder of miscellaneous fonts that youve gathered from wherever theyre hiding. (You can do a Spotlight search for all the font files using KIND criteria like Font Suitcase (you probably have 2000 of them, since this covers bitmaps and Mac TrueTypes), TrueType (for Windows TrueType), OpenType, and Postscript Type 1.)

- - - - - - -

Before you install any of the extra fonts, try tagging the pure fonts in each folder so you can always tell what were the originals, even if you wind up moving them later. Go to each of the three/four folders, Select All, and apply a Color label to them.

As for installing youre right when you surmise that some of your really old fonts are just not going to cut it anymore. (Cairo yes, the original picture font!!) Here are the problems with installing old fonts:

* Bitmapped fonts work only in the Classic Fonts folder for the Classic environment.

* A TrueType or bitmapped file that is NOT a suitcase file isnt supported in OS X. (From System 7 thru 9, you could use either suitcases or single-font files doubleclicking on a suitcase icon would open a special window showing the individual font files, which could also work on their own, outside the suitcase file) (*this isnt entirely true; the party line is that you cant use them, but they do work in the Classic Fonts folder.)

* PostScript Type 1 files (the printer file and the bitmap companion for the screen) dated prior to 1992 often cause problems.

* They are probably not Unicode compliant, which can c

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Answer 3

Nov 3, 2005 2:17 PM in response to SharonZ

Thanks, it was a little easier than everything you describe since I didn't have Office, I haven't run Classic in about 3 years and best of all, I had my old Mac sitting over there as was, so I could trash things with impunity knowing I could always get them back.

So, yes, I successfully wiped out all non-Font Book apps, got back (with the additional help of a friend who confirmed for me what should be in my original state font folder) to square zero, and am now slowly bringing things I actually need and feel confident about into Font Explorer (I decided to go with that after all). Thanks for your help!

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