Fonts shown as installed by Font Book not available to applications

Try posting over in the Word Forums and the QuarkXPress QuarkXPressForums. The mac users over there should be able to figure out your font problems.

Hi John,

Since TextEdit and other apps can use the fonts, then there's nothing wrong with the fonts themselves, as you've already noted.

Fontnuke clears font cache files, but not necessarily all of them. Not as likely, but Font Book may be causing some of the problem. To reset Font Book, follow the steps in Undoing Font Book. Note that you will lose any font collections you have created. Doing this will also clear the font cache files for your user account. This also resets Font Book's database. Any fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ folder, or the the Fonts folder of your user account will now all be active.

With a clean database for Font Book and caches once again cleared, things may now work as they should. If not, continue on.

MS Office keeps its own cache files, which if corrupted, may be keeping Arial and other active fonts from appearing. Close all Office applications and remove the following files. The tilde (~) indicates your home account.

~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.browserfont.cache

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

For Office 2008, the latter is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Office Font Cache (12)

Next is Quark. It also keeps its own font cache files. Close Quark if its running. For version 6, go to the /Applications/QuarkXPress 6.0/jaws/ folder and empty it out. For version 7 and 8, I believe the jaws folder has been moved to the Quark folder within the Preferences folder of your user account.

Very glad to have your advice here, Kurt!!!

In Quark, pressing the Bold, Italic or other styles in the tool bar applies a faked version of the effect to the standard (Roman) font. The real italic, or other font style intended is never used. To use the real style, you must choose it from the font menu directly above the effects. RIPs will choke on faked effects as they always require the font to be available. If you make text a fake italic, the RIP will halt with an error that the italic font is not available.

Kicking things like this off your home printer will work, but not in a press shop. Also note that the italic button only slants the type (oblique). Compare a faked italic Times New Roman to the real italic font. The real font is a complete stand alone design with all kinds of flair and artistic swirls to the character serifs.

Word is different. It really does choose the real font each time you press the italic, bold or other buttons, but only if they're available. If I type a line in normal Times and then mark part of it as italic, it will use the real italic font, assuming it's active. But if I do the same thing with Geneva, it simply slants the type since there is no Geneva Italic font.

Hello John,

I did read that. I have never, ever seen Quark use the real font when clicking a button in the measurements palette. It's always a faked rendition, even if the font is available. I've been in prepress for about 25 years now. Never once has it worked clicking the attribute button to apply the real bold, italic or other font.

A RIP is a Raster Image Processor. It's intended mostly for PostScript rendering, though not exclusively. RIPs are used for various forms of image processing and are generally far more accurate for color, gradient and page rendering than a simple printer driver.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Type anything in Quark and make it italic by clicking the italic attribute button. If the real italic font is available, it will render it on screen just as you would expect. Usage also says that it's the real font. BUT, highlight the italic text and then check to see which font it's really using from the measurements palette by expanding the font list. You'll see that the Roman font is still checked as the font being applied, not the italic font. This will throw off any RIP. It's marked as italic, it looks like italic, but the italic font is not sent to the RIP because Quark says it's still using the Roman font.

The same thing will happen with a typical cheapie home inkjet printer. Many common fonts are burned onto a chip in the printer. So even if you use an attribute assignment, it will still come out looking right because the font is in the printer. But if you use a font that is not already in the printer and your print driver does not download used fonts to the printer, they will not come out italic because Quark's tag for that text is not italic.

HI Kurt,

I was hoping you would see that link above and help out... yahooo!


Carolyn 😉

No, you can, but you must select the font from the pop up font list in the measurement palette, not by clicking an attribute button.

Say you hold out both hands palm up and tell me to put a baseball in both hands when I only have one. It of course can't be done. That's essentially what happens at the RIP. The attribute button says the text is italic. Quark's PostScript tag says it's still Roman. Roman will be what comes out on the proof (if the RIP doesn't halt) since PostScript is the Gospel according to RIP.

Always choose the actual font from the font menu and you'll be fine. Then when you choose italic, the PostScript tag also says italic.

Yes, all four fonts are available for me in Quark 6.5.2 (normal, bold, italic, bold italic). If Quark is the only application giving you this trouble, you may want to consider reinstalling it. Or just remove its preferences to see if that does it. In the Preferences folder of your user account, delete the folder "Quark". Or just move it to the desktop. Then if that's not the problem, you can just move it back instead of having to redo all of your preferences for Quark.