Fonts shown as installed by Font Book not available to applications

Well, guess what? Only the regular Arial is available in Quark.

Even a bad result is a result.

When I click on Quark's font window I see each of the following on a separate line (not to the right of a triangle):

So it's only seeing the normal font. Or Quark is damaged and not showing font family sets.

Arial is in /Library/Fonts/ while Arial Black and Arial MT Condensed Light are in /System Folder/Fonts/.

Arial Black and Arial MT Condensed Light should be in the /Library/Fonts/ folder, not the system folder. Not that it really matters to have them there, it's just not where they should be.

Arial Italic, Arial Bold, and Arial Bold Italic do not appear in the Quark font window, although Bold, Italic, Bold Italic, and Regular do appear in Font Book when I click on the triangle to the left of Arial.

If italic, bold and bold italic show up in all other application font menus, then the problem must be Quark. Reinstall it and apply all available updates.

In case it matters, the one copy of Arial is in /Library/Fonts/, not ~/Library/Fonts/.

Nope, doesn't matter. The only difference is that in the former folder, any user can access any fonts in that folder. In the latter, only the person who is currently logged in can use fonts within their account.

One more quick thing. This may sound like a silly question, but when you click on the font list in the Measurements palette to expand the list of fonts, is there not a right pointing arrow next to Arial? If there is, move the mouse up to it to expand the list of that font family out.

To quote a passage, put a > at the beginning of a paragraph.

Quark is correctly dealing with font families.

The problem then is either Quark or the font. A font that works in some programs doesn't necessarily mean it's okay, even if Font Book says it is. Quark is very fussy about the integrity of a font. Try replacing Arial with a fresh copy from the OS X install disks.

I think Carolyn linked to this earlier. Font Management in OS X. At the bottom, you'll find instructions for reinstalling just the fonts that OS X comes with.

All four varieties of Arial show up in TextEdit but not FileMaker.

Then I'd lean more towards the font than Quark. Worst case, the OS itself is damaged and not handling or reporting fonts properly.

The link, or one of the links above directs you to my personal web site. While the information is free, it does ask for a contribution. As such, I am required by Apple's rules for these discussions to include the following disclaimer.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

This may seem silly, but would you double-check that?

He's thinks I'm fibbin'! 😉



I can only think that Quark needs to be reinstalled, OS X does, or both.

Or give this a quick try. Put Font Book in the trash. Don't delete it, just put it in there and restart the Mac. Now Font Book is completely disabled and is not controlling your fonts in any way. Do the fonts show up correctly now?

Just trying to be thorough!

Heh! I know, just kidding a bit. 🙂

Hi All,
I have a couple of thoughts to throw into this mix.

The first has to do with the appearance of this Arial Font. I wonder if we are all talking about the same version of the font. I just gave this one a go...Postscript name: ArialMT, Format: TrueType(Mac), Version 3.05, By: Monotype. I am loading this via Linotype's Font Explorer and I have no other Arials loaded as I have removed all fonts from font locations except the System/Lib location. I have the same issue as John within QuarkXPress and MS Word (Arial is listed without font styles in the menu). My thought on this matter is that QuarkXPress and MS Word both use font information provided through the System via the Carbon font APIs. I believe TextEdit uses the Core Text APIs, and the Adobe products use their own method of obtaining font information directly from the font files. My guess is that it is the way these specific Mac Truetypes are handed off through these Carbon APIs. The same problem exists with other Mac Truetypes such as Trebuchet MS (v1.26), and Verdana (v2.45) in both QuarkXPress and MS Word.

The second thought disputes a bit of what Kurt had stated earlier (that QuarkXPress will only use faux styles if bold or italic styling is chosen from the bold or italic buttons/checkboxes). This is not true. QuarkXPress is using the exact same system function that MS Word uses. This function will use the intrinsic font if it is loaded in the system and faux style it if it is not. Checking the actual font file/PostScript name that is used in the More Information section of the Font Usage dialog will indeed tell you if a font is faux or not. This cannot be determined by the Measurements palette, or Style menu user interface. A quick test will prove the point. In the case of our friend Aria (above) if you apply Arial Italic via the Italic button, you will find that in Font Usage the PostScript Name is reported as Arial-ItalicMT. If we export this QuarkXPress layout to a PostScript file, we can search for the actual PostScript font definition in the exported postscript file. See below.
{
%%BeginResource: font Arial-ItalicMT
%%BeginFont: Arial-ItalicMT

Now, I completely agree that the ability to determine if an intrinsic font or a faux style is used within QaurkXPress is completely bogus. I am fighting to remedy this situation.

Cheers,
Scott Wieseler (QuarkXPress Technical Product Management)

Hello Scott,

Good to see a Quark employee weigh in on this.

I was unable to duplicate your issues with fonts refusing to show their family lists. I used versions of Arial from OS 9, Leopard, Tiger, Office 2004 and Office 2008. All worked as expected in Quark 6.5.2. Sorry, that's the latest version I have so can't test for versions 7 and 8 (though I do have a Quark 7 trial CD around here somewhere).

This function will use the intrinsic font if it is loaded in the system and faux style it if it is not.

Correct. My mistake earlier. Don't know why I wrote that Quark never uses the real font when clicking an attribute button. It does. I meant to say it never worked at the RIP doing that. In two different shops I worked at, they used Scitex RIPs. Both the original running on an IBM PS2 and later on Brisque stations. Whenever a font didn't come out italic, bold or whatever where it was supposed to on a ripped PostScript file, we knew exactly where to look for the problem. It was always an attribute applied to a font rather than choosing the font from the menu. We never thought of it as a RIP problem, but it probably was.

But I guess I don't understand why I'm having no trouble getting font family lists where even you are seeing the problem. I see you're using FontExplorer X. I'm using Suitcase Fusion. You wouldn't think that would make a whole lot of difference, but you never know.

Hi Scott, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂