User profile for user: Francob
Francob Author
User level: Level 1
56 points

Font Book - Arial font problem

Hi to all, first of all sorry for my rusty english.
It's about some day that I found a problem on Font Book.

I noticed a problem using Gmail (and it's not the only): when replying to a message, the font in the editor was Times New Roman and not Arial. I opened Font Book and I noticed that there was lots of relevant duplicated fonts (including Arial), and lots of disabled fonts.

I manually removed all the duplicated fonts, checking in the finder both User Library Fonts / System Library Fonts. Then I cleaned all the font caches with Onyx, including Ms/system/adobe. Rebooted.

Everything was ok, but Arial was still disabled. I opened Font Book, checked Arial to activate it. After some second, it disable automatically!
I think that it disables because no program is using it, but when I reboot, open Gmail and try to reply to a message, it always come in Times New Roman.

Anyway to force Arial Font to always be activated?

Thanks in advance.

MacPro 2006 / MacBook Pro 2009, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 2, 2009 1:59 AM

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User profile for user: Kurt Lang
Kurt Lang
User level: Level 9
72,455 points

Posted on Dec 2, 2009 5:13 AM

If a font is active, it's always active, no program needs to be using it (though the OS kind of counts anyway).

Anyway, what you describe is a common problem when Font Book's database gets hosed. Restart in Safe Mode (restart the Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key). This takes a while as the Mac is doing multiple checks during a Safe Mode start. Once it's back at the desktop, restart again normally.

What this does, among other things, is trash all cache files in your user account and Font Book's database. It also clears your font collections, so be prepared that any you've created will be gone. All fonts you have installed will also be enabled regardless of their state beforehand.
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Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Kurt Lang
Kurt Lang
User level: Level 9
72,455 points

Dec 2, 2009 5:13 AM in response to Francob

If a font is active, it's always active, no program needs to be using it (though the OS kind of counts anyway).

Anyway, what you describe is a common problem when Font Book's database gets hosed. Restart in Safe Mode (restart the Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key). This takes a while as the Mac is doing multiple checks during a Safe Mode start. Once it's back at the desktop, restart again normally.

What this does, among other things, is trash all cache files in your user account and Font Book's database. It also clears your font collections, so be prepared that any you've created will be gone. All fonts you have installed will also be enabled regardless of their state beforehand.
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User profile for user: Francob
Francob Author
User level: Level 1
56 points

Dec 2, 2009 11:03 AM in response to Francob

Thanks, solved.

Anyway after this tricky hint, I noticed duplicated fonts again. I manually removed them this morning!

I run the "resolve duplicated" command (don't know if in English is the right translation), but these fonts are still on font book, disabled.

10.6.2, Apple says, solved font duplicates, but I don't think so.
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Font Book - Arial font problem

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