Cannot use fonts in Font Book - Please help

Just because I was on a bit of a roll, I dug a little deeper. 🙂

Turns outs this is a problem Apple themselves have created. It all goes back to where Seravek and the other fonts I mentioned earlier won't show up in Apple's own apps. Apple dumps a whole bunch of paired files onto the drive that go with each font installed by the OS. They're at:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/

Frameworks/ATS.framework/Versions/A/Resources/FontInfo/

While they've been included with the Mac OS for a long time, these dumb things now appear to be tied to SIP and have something to do with protecting the system from hacked versions of the fonts. That's my assumption anyway since this whole issue with "ghost" fonts started with the introduction of SIP. If the checksum (or whatever method Apple is using) doesn't match the info of these files, the fonts won't appear in Apple's apps. Third party apps can still use them, though. Which makes the entire idea of checking them in the first place entirely pointless.

How do these buried files figure in? Charter used to be in the list of OS supplied fonts that wouldn't work. In the 10.13.4 update, Charter was updated, and I presume also its matching support files. All of a sudden, that font started working everywhere! They also updated Iowan Old Style further back (don't recall which OS that happened in), but then that font suddenly stopped working and has been broken since.

Seriously. Why does Apple bother with these .ATSD and .fontinfo files? All they do is cause unnecessary problems.

Can you get around it? Yes, if you have a font editor and do nothing but generate a new, unique font file. I opened Apple Chancery in FontLab IV and did nothing but save it back out as a .otf OpenType PostScript font. And voila, now being considered a third party font, it appears everywhere, just like it already should!

The Apple Chancery font is installed by High Sierra into /Library/Fonts. It would be available to you automatically, unless as Kurt suggests and for some unknown reason, the System font database has become corrupted. The process of booting into Safe Boot mode will rebuild that System font database, and upon a normal reboot, your access to Apple Chancery should resume.

Maybe I can try and find a simple non-expensive one to try this to get Chancery back? LOL!

There's one free font editor I know of. The open-source FontForge. I goofed and wrote FontLab IV above. It's VI, not IV. But that's a pretty pricey app most users wouldn't spend the money on. Still, I would think FontForge would accomplish the same thing. Open Apple Chancery in FontForge and just generate a new OpenType font.

Also to note, Apple Chancery is an Apple copyrighted font. But, that copyright is listed as 1993-1999. So, does that mean Apple has dropped the copyright for this font? Meaning, is it legal for the user to generate their own version of the font so it will work as it's supposed to? Might be a question to ask Apple Legal. They may not care as long as it's for your own use (no distribution). But, still. I'd ask, first.

Is Apple aware of all this?

Yes. I've reported these broken fonts on their bug reporting site at least three times. I think the second time was during the beta of Sierra. They finally fixed them all (Athelas.ttc, Charter.ttc, Marion.ttc, Seravek.ttc and SuperClarendon.ttc at the time) in the beta 3 release. They remained fixed in the initial release of Sierra and the 10.12.1 update. Then the 10.12.2 update came out, they were all broken again, and have been that way since! They fixed Charter in High Sierra, but broke Iowan Old Style at the same time.

I reported it again sometime after that, but nothing has happened to fix these five fonts in over three years. The one and only way to get Athelas.ttc, Iowan Old Style.ttc, Marion.ttc, Seravek.ttc and SuperClarendon.ttc working is to get copies of these fonts from Yosemite and replace the ones included with any newer version of macOS with them. Then they magically appear everywhere - as they should.

Ah, got it. It's another OS supplied font Apple has somehow partially screwed up. When I was quick testing yesterday, I simply missed it being listed in TextEdit. Right there in front of me, but looked right past it, despite being right where you would expect to find it alphabetically.

I had someone email me a while back that they couldn't use Zapf Dingbats in Pages. Sure enough, nothing you tried could make it appear in the font list. After much playing around, I finally discovered you could copy/paste Zapf Dingbats text you set in TextEdit into Pages. Sure enough, Apple Chancery did the same. Neither it or Zapf Dingbats will appear in the font list even after that, but at least you can get it into the document.

Once pasted in, you can keep typing in Apple Chancery, too, with Pages all the while continuing to pretending the font doesn't exist. It even matters where you paste your Apple Chancery or Zapf Dingbats text from. TextEdit - works. MS Word 365 - doesn't work. Using TextEdit as a bridge is the only workaround I've found to get a font into Pages it won't show you in its own list.

Preview is different yet again. It ignores any attempt to get a font into the app not in its font list. Apple Chancery won't show as a choice, and you can't copy/paste it in from TextEdit, or any other app. Here I tried to paste Apple Chancery in from TextEdit, and all I got was Helvetica. Just as with Pages, Apple Chancery is nowhere to be seen in the font list.

That's usually a sign Font Book's database is damaged.

Restart the Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key. Keep holding the key until it asks you to login. That will bring you to the Safe Mode desktop. Restart again normally.

Test.

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

Starting up in Safe Mode (among other services the Mac performs when doing this) is all cache files are removed from the user account you logged into in Safe Mode, and Font Book's database is reset.

Some items need to be handled separately.

Close any apps you have running. Open the Library folder of your user account. One way to get there is to click anywhere on the desktop so Finder is the foreground app listed at the top left by the Apple logo. Hold down the Option key and on the top menu bar, choose Go > Library.

Now that the Library folder is visible, open the Preferences folder. Put these two items in the trash.

com.apple.FontBook.plist

com.apple.FontRegistry.user.plist

Next, from an administrator account, open the Terminal app (in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder) and enter the following command. You can also copy/paste it from here into the Terminal window:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

This removes all font cache files. Both for the system and the current logged in user. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

If that still doesn't help, try these next.

Back in the Library folder of your user account, open the FontCollections folder. Put all items within that folder in the trash. Except for any sets you many have created, these are not even slightly important. They're just examples of how to use sets in Font Book. The reason for removing them is damaged sets can cause Font Book to behave very badly.

BDAqua has already mentioned the other item I was going to. It can be a very useful test. No problem in the new account? Then the issue is confined to your normal account. Same problem? It's a system wide issue that typically means you need to reinstall the OS.

I think that's where you're at. Seeing the same problem in a brand new account always means the OS is damaged.

Make sure to first create a full backup of your system as it is. If anything goes wrong with the reinstall of the OS, such that the Mac won't startup to the main drive, you'll at least have a working backup you can restore.

When you use Font Book to install your own fonts, the Fonts folder in your user account is where they go by default. If you haven't added any third party fonts, then yes, it will be empty.

Yes, those are all the default collections the OS installs for Font Book. But they'll also be in the new test account you just created. Since the problem is the same there, it's very unlikely removing these files in your normal account will help.

Also I'm still running High Sierra so am I correct that I can just do this from the recovery disk in my computer by restarting with Command+R?

Yes, and with that particular key combination, it will reinstall the same OS already being used.

Only OS items are replaced. All user installed apps, settings and such remain as they are. Assuming nothing goes wrong, that is.