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narc_monkey Author

Level 1

0 points

Altered Font Spacing Crippling for Designers

Installed Snow Leopard on the first day, not a good idea. I am a graphic designer, I work in Quark and the Adobe Suite, with Suitcase Fusion 2. That said, not long (a couple hours) after I made the jump to Snow Leopard, I had work to do.

I open my first flash doc, activate Univers PostScript and I notice my whole layout has gone sour. This is because an extra bit of vertical padding is being added at the top of my text. It happens with some TrueType and OpenType fonts as well, while some others are not subject to the spacing issues. Very odd, and very menacing.

So far I have seen this as a major problem resulting in alot of reformatting on several occasions. Anyone else had this issue? Is Apple going to patch this or are there any workarounds? When they do, are all the files I have now fixed going to re-flow with poor vertical spacing in the opposite direction? When I send my collected files to people running 10.5, are my text fixes going to effect how the documents are displayed on their machines? I can't have this, I would have expected Apple of all developers to take this into consideration, especially with the volume of designers that pay the extra cash use their products.

iMac Intel 3.06GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Aug 31, 2009 12:08 PM

130 replies

Frozo

Level 2

289 points

Oct 21, 2009 7:07 AM in response to rexex_design

You assume this issue will be resolved in 10.6.2. However, as I listed above, there is no mention of any problems fixed in the font area. Despite that another poster assured us that Apple was fixing this, it doesn't look like they considered it enough of a problem to get into this revision (if at all).

This font problem has been devastating my work flow left and right. I've given up on working on my tower and am now forced to so all my work on a slower laptop.

Yes, yes, shame on me for upgrading on my tower first – but in my history with Apple since System 7, I have never had such a crippling issue in my career as a designer.

Oct 21, 2009 7:16 AM in response to Frozo

Frozo wrote:
You assume this issue will be resolved in 10.6.2. However, as I listed above, there is no mention of any problems fixed in the font area. Despite that another poster assured us that Apple was fixing this, it doesn't look like they considered it enough of a problem to get into this revision (if at all).

I'm disheartened that I'm beginning to feel that designers and desktop publishers may have become not enough of an interesting clientele for Apple to fix promptly such a huge system-wide problem… Let's hope that the font issue is related to another problem altogether (meh, it never hurt to dream).

Yes, yes, shame on me for upgrading on my tower first – but in my history with Apple since System 7, I have never had such a crippling issue in my career as a designer.

I too never had such a crippling issue before. I've tasted SL and to know that my Mac performed better with it is frustating considering that fonts go awry with SL… and I CANNOT justify to my employer the purchase of a font converter just to get performance boosts and eye candies.

JmasterT

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2009 12:39 PM in response to RemyGrondin

Not sure if this is of any significance, but worldofapple.com is reporting on the upcoming release of 10.6.2 and there is some reference to Type 1 fonts. There is a line that reads:

# ATS: Certain LWFNs and fonts compatibility fix

I believe LWFNs are the Type 1 postcript outlines portion of the font. Just holding out hope like everyone else!

Here's the link to the announcement http://news.worldofapple.com/archives/2009/10/11/apple-begins-work-on-mac-os-x-1 062-seed-notes/

Frozo

Level 2

289 points

Oct 21, 2009 12:42 PM in response to JmasterT

That is hopeful, thanks. Perhaps the list I posted contained only additions to the current build and not the history of 10.6 builds before it.

Oct 23, 2009 9:48 AM in response to Frozo

Anybody know when 10.6.2 is going to be released? I don't know how much time I have already wasted because I had to publish my files on my secondary machine!!

Nov 6, 2009 6:25 PM in response to neodar

I use Suitcase Fusion 2 v13.2.1, it does nothing to help solve the Snow Leopard font problems. I was able to purge all the Helvetica Neue fonts/files from my computer (along w/ the Snow Leopard mandated and embedded one's), and put back in my old trusted post script versions that I've been using for over a decade - that has always worked fine, and then clearing the font cache. Suitecase seemed to read and install my previous font version and disregard any snow leopard-related font versions... but the downward skew (or excessive leading) STILL occured. To me, it seems to be "how the sytem reads and handles any of the fonts", as opposed to "disregarding our old fonts and over-riding w/ Snow Leopard versions". It seems no matter what we try, the screwed up leading occurs on Snow Leopard. A HUGE headache for us. It's as bad as if Apple made it mandatory that every high-res image we've placed in our clients projects now is automatically shifted to be low-res, no matter what... it's that damaging to our business.

Nov 9, 2009 5:25 PM in response to waltersgroup

NOOOOOOOO, 10.6.2 doesn't fix the font shifting... at least in Adobe Flash CS4! Wow I waited sooo long for 10.6.2 and did not revert back to 10.5.8, just to find out that the new update doesn't fix the font issue??? Wow. Anybody else updated and had success?

Nov 9, 2009 5:36 PM in response to rexex_design

10.6.2 DID NOT fix our type 1 font shift in FileMaker. This is not good - especially when Apple lists:

Fonts fixes provided for:

an issue with font spacing
an issue in which some Fonts are missing
font duplication issues
an issue with some PostScript Type 1 fonts not working properly

...as part of what's fixed. Well, it's not.

- J

Nov 9, 2009 5:42 PM in response to rexex_design

UPDATE: I just turned my MBP off completely, started it up and one font that was broken started to work. Then I looked in Fontbook and removed all duplicates, restarted, republished and at first it didnt work, then it did... I am getting the feeling that this is not 100% fixed, BUT at least I am able to get my files republished sometimes now. Since the last time it messed up, I have not had any issues, crossing my fingers that this font nightmare is over now!
Good luck to everybody else struggling with this!

Frozo

Level 2

289 points

Nov 9, 2009 5:42 PM in response to rexex_design

And you are surprised, why? This sickens me to a new level of sick. And gee, Kurt Lang was so sure there would be a fix too. I guess not enough people complained about the bug after all.

Nov 9, 2009 6:14 PM in response to rexex_design

Hey rexex_design,

I just had a similar sequence. I repaired permissions and restarted. Opened FM 9, and if the font was not bold, it was spaced correctly. If the font was bold or italic, it was shifted.

I could actually go into into layout mode and change the font from plain text to bold and see the shift. Bold - shift down, plain text - back into the proper place. Very odd.

But then, I decided to try FM 10 to see if there was a difference. I opened the same file in FM 10 and the font was shifted in every case, plain, bold or italic.

So, I want back to FM 9, and it was the same. It just semi-worked in 9, but now everything was shifted, not just the bold text.

I have no idea why it partially worked, only to have it go back to not working at all.

PLEASE Apple, we waited for this fix, and it's still not working.

J

Nov 9, 2009 6:49 PM in response to Jerremy Jones

Hi, all-

Now that 10.6.2 has been released, has anyone upgraded? If so, has the problem been addressed?

Thanks
Eric

Emmett H

Level 1

4 points

Nov 10, 2009 2:20 AM in response to JerseyCityMac

Just installed 10.6.2 update on MB Pro - using Quark 8.12 and Suitcase Fusion 2. I ran Maintenance after installing the update to clean the font cache etc.

The fonts and Quark files I was having issues with previously in 10.6 are now displaying correctly. I have tried it with several files and fonts and all which were reflowing before the update are now opening correctly.

Maybe now I can update my iMac too.

*crosses fingers*

RC@CCDA

Level 1

4 points

Nov 16, 2009 4:34 PM in response to Emmett H

that's good news!
can anyone else corroborate 10.6.2 has universally fixed the font issues?
,r

Nov 16, 2009 4:47 PM in response to RC@CCDA

10.6.2 definitely helps with the font issues, but I STILL have some font issues, random fonts that won't display correctly. Rather than the weird font spacing it might be that they cannot be rendered by Flash and thus are REALLY messy looking. So if you hav 10.6.1 update for sure, but if you are on 10.5 stay there unless you are willing to take the risk of some font still messing up.

Altered Font Spacing Crippling for Designers