Older fonts don't work with Catalina: Why/ Is it possible to fix them?

Question

Older fonts don't work with Catalina: Why/ Is it possible to fix them?

I have a fairly large number of both Type 1 PostScript and older TrueType and OpenType fonts that worked just fine until Catalina.

These fonts display properly in both FontBook and FontAgent 9 (current version).

Now Pages in particular has problems, including:

Font name won't display in the WYSIWYG font list, but the font WILL render in the text and in the font selector.
Font name doesn't display AND won't render.

It doesn't matter where they are installed (in system with FontBook or managed with FontAgent). I read in another thread that Type 1 Fonts just don't work anymore. But I am wonder about the other TrueType and Open Type fonts.

What is it about these fonts that's unacceptable to Catalina? Is there a way to clean them up or fix them?

iMac 27", macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 22, 2020 10:52 AM

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Answer 1

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VikingOSX

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Jan 23, 2020 5:46 AM in response to Steve Allison-Bunnell

I have a bunch of Type 1 fonts that I have kept since the Illustrator v3 days. These work on Mojave in Pages v8.2.1, and when I copied them over to Catalina 10.15.2 — they no longer appeared in Pages. I had copied them through iCloud Drive.

Then, I zipped the folder these fonts were in on Mojave, and copied that zipped folder through iCloud Drive to my Catalina machine. I unzipped the folder, and drag/dropped it into my local Library/Fonts folder. Then, Pages was able to see these undamaged Type 1 fonts; display them on its font menu, and use all sixteen faces of ITC Garamond (by example). The ITC Garamond entry on the font menu is styled in ITC Garamond Light, an worded, ITC Garamond.

As an aside, I also copied the EB Garamond and Cormorant Garamond OpenType Postscript fonts from within MacTeX 2019 into the above fonts folder and these are also now usable by Pages v8.2.1.

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Answer 2

Jan 23, 2020 3:56 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you for your answer.

I discovered that the problem for me was FontAgent v9. These are actually old TrueType Font Suitcase files ("FFIL") without file extensions. FontBook can import and render them fine. But something about FontAgent won't let them work with other apps, even though FontAgent can import, display, and activate them.

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Answer 3

Jan 23, 2020 5:03 PM in response to Steve Allison-Bunnell

You are welcome.

The stuff that makes your brain itch… . I didn't mention my suspicion of FontAgent, and probably should have done so.

Here is a living Font management in macOS and OS X site by one of our frequent contributors — Kurt Lang.

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Older fonts don't work with Catalina: Why/ Is it possible to fix them?

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