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narc_monkey
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Q: 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

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narc_monkey

Q: Altered Font Spacing Crippling for Designers

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  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Sep 23, 2009 6:21 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 8 (38,049 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2009 6:21 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    I've seen seen a fix for only one OS issue at a time.


    Typo. I've never seen a fix for only one OS issue at a time.

  • by Eddie Strauss,

    Eddie Strauss Eddie Strauss Sep 25, 2009 9:06 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 3 (992 points)
    Sep 25, 2009 9:06 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    I have a font spacing issue in FileMaker Pro using a music font "MetTimes" to add sharps and flats to music database information. It's a very old font. Now, as with others in this thread, the spacing between lines that use it is much larger and cannot really be repaired by changing some line spacing settings.

    If I somehow can change this font type to something more modern would that fix it?

    Does anyone know if there is a font that would work in SL that has some musical symbols, notably sharps and flats?


    Thanks.

  • by Kurt Lang,

    Kurt Lang Kurt Lang Sep 25, 2009 11:27 AM in response to Eddie Strauss
    Level 8 (38,049 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 25, 2009 11:27 AM in response to Eddie Strauss
    If I somehow can change this font type to something more modern would that fix it?


    Translating is never perfect. Different encoding and other issues. It may be close enough though. For that, you could try TransType Pro.

    Does anyone know if there is a font that would work in SL that has some musical symbols, notably sharps and flats?


    Adobe sells Sonata. It contains all normal musical notation. $26 for the regular face is a lot cheaper than the conversion software. But not only will things not fit the same, you'd likely have to redo the entire piece since glyphs won't be the same.

  • by RC@CCDA,

    RC@CCDA RC@CCDA Sep 29, 2009 8:23 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 29, 2009 8:23 AM in response to Kurt Lang
    a quick thanks to the authors of the posts here. we brought in snow leopard to install enterprise-wide in our design firm and i'm glad i found this thread before we went ahead with the install. will not proceed with any upgrades until this issue is resolved.
    it would have been a disastrous time suck if we had moved forward.
    thanks again.
    ,r

  • by iQuad,

    iQuad iQuad Oct 1, 2009 8:02 AM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iLife
    Oct 1, 2009 8:02 AM in response to narc_monkey
    Also glad I found this thread before updating to SL. Our company will not update to SL until this font issue is resolved.

  • by Frozo,

    Frozo Frozo Oct 3, 2009 8:36 PM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 2 (274 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 3, 2009 8:36 PM in response to narc_monkey
    From a Quark employee on the official Quark support forum:

    IMPORTANT UPDATE:
    Quark recently discovered a serious issue when using PostScript Type 1 fonts with QuarkXPress, QuarkXPress Server and QuarkCopyDesk running under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
    Text using a Type 1 font can shift position when opened on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, affecting the leading and vertical position of the text, as well as any drop shadows applied to the text. Quark is therefore recommending that customers who rely on Type 1 fonts not use QuarkXPress with Snow Leopard until this issue is resolved. Customers who don’t use Type 1 fonts are not affected. This issue is specific to Mac OS X Snow Leopard only and does not impact other operating systems. *Quark is working with Apple on a resolution.* Please watch the Quark Web site for updates as we have them.

    Its so nice to have to hear from Quark that Apple is working on the problem.

  • by rexex_design,

    rexex_design rexex_design Oct 5, 2009 4:47 PM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 5, 2009 4:47 PM in response to narc_monkey
    Hi All,

    I have the same problem in Flash CS3 and Flash CS4! I first did the upgrade, then read noticed the font issues, did a wipe and reinstalled Snow Leopard clean and still the same. I have already spent hours looking for a solution. I wish Apple would take a stand and let us know if the fix will come soon or if we have to wipe Snow Leopard and start over with a clean install of Leopard.

    Apple, I am relying on this computer to get my work done and I cannot work productively if the fonts are messed up!

    Thank you,
    Alexander

  • by Frozo,

    Frozo Frozo Oct 9, 2009 3:58 PM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 2 (274 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 9, 2009 3:58 PM in response to narc_monkey
    I wonder why this topic has slowed down... has anyone found a fix?

    HUGE let down... just saw an article about the forthcoming 10.6.2 OS update (2nd seed to developers) and font issues were not even mentioned. This is bad, bad news.

  • by rexex_design,

    rexex_design rexex_design Oct 9, 2009 4:01 PM in response to Frozo
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 9, 2009 4:01 PM in response to Frozo
    This would be very upsetting, I was waiting for this update because I assumed this kind of an issue would make it to the update! If any designer upgrades to SL they would have this issue, hopefully more people start complaining and this gets fixed asap!

  • by mvrana,

    mvrana mvrana Oct 10, 2009 5:15 AM in response to rexex_design
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 10, 2009 5:15 AM in response to rexex_design
    I won't link to it here, since I'm sure the mods will remove it. But a google search for 10.6.2 fonts brought me to a list of the 10.6.2 release notes, where ATS, CoreText and Fonts are all mentioned, as are mentions of 'character kerning'. Who knows if these are going to fix the problems people are seeing, but it's got me hopeful.

  • by rexex_design,

    rexex_design rexex_design Oct 10, 2009 10:32 AM in response to mvrana
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 10, 2009 10:32 AM in response to mvrana
    I think that would be exactly what we need. I think that character kerning is responsible for my flash CS3/CS4 font issues. Thank you mvrana

  • by Frozo,

    Frozo Frozo Oct 10, 2009 11:40 AM in response to mvrana
    Level 2 (274 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 10, 2009 11:40 AM in response to mvrana
    Good to know. The list I saw was truncated, but I figured it was a big enough problem to be listed in the forefront. Anyway, lets hope!

  • by HandyMac,

    HandyMac HandyMac Oct 17, 2009 6:22 AM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 2 (427 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 17, 2009 6:22 AM in response to narc_monkey
    For any who may wish to try converting PostScript fonts to OTF to address these problems (or just on general principles), note that FontXChange is on special at MacUpdate this weekend (Oct 17 & 18):
    http://www.mupromo.com

  • by Frozo,

    Frozo Frozo Oct 17, 2009 7:03 AM in response to HandyMac
    Level 2 (274 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 17, 2009 7:03 AM in response to HandyMac
    This is a good tip thanks.

    However this is when Apple's silence on bug reports becomes a huge problem. I dont know if and when the problem will be addressed, so I pay $50 for an app to fix it –- only to have possibly wasted my money when Apple fixes this in the next update. And if they don't? I'm wasting time and adding aggravation by NOT buying this.

  • by RemyGrondin,

    RemyGrondin RemyGrondin Oct 21, 2009 5:32 AM in response to narc_monkey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 21, 2009 5:32 AM in response to narc_monkey
    I've had to crash-downgrade to 10.5.8 (at least, thanks Time Machine :)!) at home AND at work after experiencing that nasty font bug in SL…

    I made sure QuarkXPress 7.5 and Adobe CS3 but never did I expected such a bug as that in an Mac OS X release (should've been careful…). I went through the painful transition from OS 9 to OS X (more than a couple of times, to be precise) years ago, but the current font bug is, to me, light-years away in terms of complications and headaches.

    So far, I've read all that I could on the subject and it's not encouraging. The "solution" seems to be converting all of my fonts (a MERE 1.3 Gb…) to OT format and even that is not a 100% perfect solution. And the issue may never be fully resolved by Apple just because Type 1 fonts may have been arbitrarily labeled as "archaic and prehistoric"… The shame.

    I've subscribed to some discussion threads about the problem to keep track of the situation, but I feel kind of… resigned to stay in 10.5.8 for a longer time that I was hoping. Despite THAT bug, Snow Leopard was, for me, quite a major improvement in speed and it offered some things that I liked a lot…

    I'll keep my fingers crossed that 10.6.2 might solve the problem, but as a Cardassian tailor once said "I always hope for the best, but experience, unfortunately, has taught me to expect the worst"…
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