Cannot use fonts in Font Book - Please help

Hmm, it's really strange to me you're having the same issue on two entirely different Macs. I used High Sierra well into Mojave's release (it was too much for an old 2010 Mac Pro, even with an upgraded video card installed). Never had those kinds of font issues. But then, I also never use Font Book or Mail (both removed from the drive).

But that does make the idea of reinstalling OS seem rather pointless. It won't hurt anything to try, but from what you describe, it may not change anything, either.

The "English" set in Font Book is rather self explanatory. It doesn't list non-English language fonts such as Kohinoor or Myanmar MN. All, of course, just means all fonts collectively in the three main Fonts folders (System, Library, user account).

What you're seeing is pretty odd. You've already done all of the easier steps that normally work, and you're still not seeing fonts that are active. At least, I presume if you look at Apple Chancery in Font Book, the name is displayed as black for active, and not gray for inactive?

Uh, oh! This could be another one of those mystery "ghost" fonts. There are a handful of OS supplied fonts that simply will not appear in any app written by Apple.

The current "ghost" fonts I know of are Athelas.ttc, Iowan Old Style.ttc, Marion.ttc, Seravek.ttc and SuperClarendon.ttc. You can use those in Office, the Adobe apps, and literally any other third party app that allows you to choose fonts. But they will not appear in TextEdit, Pages, or other Apple titles.

I just opened Preview now and Apple Chancery will not appear in the font list. Nor in Pages or TextEdit. But I have no trouble using Apple Chancery in MS Office, or any other third party app on my Mac.

Sorry for the unintentional runaround. I'd never had an issue with that font before either, so didn't think to check.

Yup, because LibreOffice is a third party app. You can use these "ghost" fonts in any third party app as you should. But all apps written by Apple won't show them. Or in the case of Apple Chancery, TextEdit would, but not any other Apple apps I tried.

Whatever Apple is doing different with the OS supplied fonts, they really, really need to stop.

The venerable /Library/Application Support/Apple/Fonts/iWork folder is no more in Catalina after being installed by ten years of operating systems. I have a clean install of Catalina that was updated to 10.15.1 and I have exactly one font (Arial Unicode) in the /Library/Fonts folder.

I then updated Pacifist to v3.6.2 so I could peer inside Catalina installers, and there are no fonts in the base 10.15.0 Library, or in the updater. Just vapor. So yes, it is time for Apple to get their act together with fonts.

The iWorks fonts in Catalina moved to:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FontServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Fonts/ApplicationSupport/

But yes, I don't get why Apple is trying to "protect" fonts installed by the OS. Or whatever is the reasoning behind this mess.

There was an issue several years ago where perps were using an old malware trick with fonts. The process goes all the way back to the days of MS DOS viruses. You attach malware code to a normal file. When the OS reads that .exe or .com app you launched, it was also forced to read the extra attached code. That's what they were doing to some fonts. The OS reads the font to load it, but also reads and loads the attached malware in the process.

That was blocked at least a few years ago, but I bring it up as the possible reason Apple appears to treat the included fonts as something that needs to be watched for tampering. That sounds logical until you think about it a bit.

Athelas.ttc, Iowan Old Style.ttc, Marion.ttc, Seravek.ttc and SuperClarendon.ttc will not appear in any app written by Apple. That makes you believe the OS doesn't trust these fonts. Well, if the OS thinks that, then they shouldn't load at all ! The fact that you can use them in any third party app means the OS did read and load these fonts at startup. If they were infected, then so now is the OS. So, what's the purpose of blocking them from appearing in their own apps? The answer of course is, none. If they were going to do any damage, it will have already happened by allowing them to load in the first place.

Side note: I tried the same little trick for Zapf Dingbats by pulling a copy from Yosemite. That one doesn't work. Apple's apps still won't recognize it in the font lists of Pages or Preview. You have to bridge the text across from TextEdit into Pages. And with Zapf Dingbats, you can only do that by first entering the symbols from the Character Palette into TextEdit, and then finally cut and paste from there into Pages or Preview.

For some reason Apple Chancery is at the bottom of the otherwise alphabetical list

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250113123

Kurt,

By the way, Apple Chancery and ZapfDingbats also appear in the the LibreOffice Writer v6.3.3.2 font menu.

Tidbit of extra info. If you pull a copy of Apple Chancery from Yosemite, that one also works everywhere. TextEdit, Preview, Pages, etc.