Font Chooser Confusion???

I'm pulling my hair out trying to get the standard OS X font selection dialog (the one that comes up in most apps when you do Command-T). There seems to be a disconnect between the fonts in Font Book and the fonts in the font chooser dialog.

Specifically, if I install a set of fonts from the same typeface, I see these all called out (correctly) in Font Book. For example I might see "Futura BT" with a Medium and Medium Italic font, and "Futura Cn BT" with similar.

But when I then look in the font chooser, OS X seems to have tried to collapse the font into a single type face with lots of different weights/styles. This is fine except it more or less randomly eliminates some styles. For example if I install a bold version of Zurich and Zurich Condensed these both get wrapped into a "Bold" option under "Zurich", effectively hiding one font so I cannot select it. When I look in Font Book, it is all there and makes perfect sense, but the Font Chooser dialog appears to be trying to be too smart.

Does anyone know of a work-around for this? It's consumed most of my day trying to figure out how to make this work and i'm getting a bit frustrated.

TIA,
Tim

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.7), 2GB RAM

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 8:46 PM

Reply
1 reply

Aug 4, 2008 9:06 PM in response to Tim Hill1

Just to clarify. I have two fonts (ok, typefaces): Zurich BT and Zurich Condensed BT. Each come in the usual 4 "flavors" (regular, italic, bold, bold+italic), for 8 fonts total.

When I install these, Font Book (correctly) shows Zurich BT and Zurich Cn BT installed, and if I expand the entry I see each of the 4 individual font styles. Presumably as a whim of the designers, Zurich shows a "Roman" name for the base font while Zurich Cn BT shows "Regular" (whatever).

But in Font Chooser, when I try to choose a font in my application, I see a single "Zurich" generic typeface, with only FIVE fonts: Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic and Regular. Somehow Font Chooser has decided to collapse Zurich and Zurich BT into a single typeface and then decide that Zurich BT Bold and Zurich Cn BT Bold are the same font (they are not). As a result, three of the fonts are inaccessible to me.

Other than tinkering with the font names (these are all TrueType fonts), which i obviously want to avoid, i'm not aware of any workaround for this mess.

Again, TIA
Tim

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Font Chooser Confusion???

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.