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Font problems after 10.6.7

I'm getting lots of strange behaviour relating to fonts since updating to 10.6.7. This is all in things that used to work perfectly.
PostScript output causes errors in Distiller (problems in font definitions); and manipulating PDF objects can cause embedded fonts to become .... unembedded.

As I understand it, there were lots of security fixes to font handling in the update, but it seems to have caused loads of trouble.

The developers for an app I use, Imposition Wizard, have confirmed that things aren't working as they are supposed to and have filed bug reports with Apple.

However, as I do a lot of work with PostScript and PDFs, I will have to reinstall the OS to 10.6.6.

iMac 2006 2Ghz, Mac OS X (10.6.7), MacBook 2008

Posted on Mar 22, 2011 3:07 PM

Reply
424 replies

Apr 8, 2011 6:00 AM in response to R C-R

Hi R C-R,

but I've lost track of who said what.


Haha! Yes, I find myself looking back through posts to try and remember who said what.

Pretty much all of your questions are answered here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13295716#13295716

I did only test the latest version of the Acrobat Reader. I wanted to keep the test drive as much of an OS X install only as possible. But I think the results were conclusive. All fonts work in 10.6.6 using the methods OS X allows in its menus. Which are really just "Save as PDF" and "Save as PDF-X". I could open the PDF files in Preview or Acrobat with no issue no matter what fonts were used. As soon as I installed 10.6.7, Acrobat could not open PDF files containing OT PS fonts.

That is specific to 10.6.7. PDF files I created in 10.6.7 with OT PS fonts could not be read by Acrobat. But PDF files created under 10.6.6 with the same fonts could still be read.

Apr 8, 2011 6:17 AM in response to schmidhauser

schmidhauser wrote:
A precision: it wasn't me who created the PDF but an author who goes by the name "u674" (presumably one of people at the Press); and Adobe InDesign CS2 (4.0), which is specified as the Content Creator, was running on his or her machine.


But you are the author, correct? I would like to submit this document to Apple with your permission.

It does indeed fail to open in Preview on 10.6.6. Even though it was created by InDesign, I suspect it uses the new 10.6.7 routines to compress the embedded fonts. That is one of the things that causes problems for Acrobat Reader. I don't know why Preview in 10.6.6 has problems. This is new. Perhaps that version of Preview is using Adobe code and Apple switched to their own code in 10.6.7. It will open with Preview in 10.6.7 and it will open with FoxIt for Windows. Still, Apple has made the Portable Document Format distinctly non-portable.

Apr 8, 2011 7:00 AM in response to benwiggy

I'm late to this discussion, I know. I'm wondering if my problem is related to what's going on here. Using Acrobat Pro 9.4.3 I can print a document to my Canon iPF8000 wide format printer but none of the type prints out. In other words, images print fine but all font/type content is missing. Fonts display on screen OK in PDF documents generated from InDesign CS4's own internal Export>PDF function. And yes, I have downloaded and installed the latest print driver from Canon after proper deinstallation of the extant driver. Nothing has changed on my system except the 10.6.7 update and everything was dandy before that... Any ideas folks?

Apr 8, 2011 8:17 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Not so fast. See this: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13355208#13355208

I couldn't print a one-line PDF containing only the text "This is a test of Times" in TrueType times font from a 10.6.7 machine to one specific Canon printer shared by another 10.6.7 machine.

I give up. This 10.6.7 issue is making me look like an idiot. The only fix is to roll back to 10.6.6.

Apr 8, 2011 9:19 AM in response to etresoft

I'm going to go back and hide in the "MacOS X Technologies" forum until 10.6.8 comes out.


Nah! You help a lot of folks out. Keep pluggin' away.

This whole mess is really bad for people buying new Macs. There is someone in these threads who bought a new MacBook Pro to use rather than trying to downgrade the Mac he had. The new Mac came with 10.6.7! No recourse on that one at all, or for anyone else getting a Mac shipped with 10.6.7. They have no choice but to wait for a fix.

Apr 8, 2011 9:47 AM in response to etresoft

@etresoft & @Kurt Lang

I must have been imprecise. The file has been produced by a reputable Press called Springer and may be downloaded by anyone with a subscription from SpringerLink (www.springerlink.com/content/0039-3215). They have thousands such files in their repositories. I'm neither the creator nor the author of that particular paper. (Which of course also means that I have no idea how the file was exported; but the creator was certainly not running 10.6.7.) Please do NOT submit this paper. You may take one which is in open access: http://www.springerlink.com/content/0039-3215/open/

What happened is that I downloaded the file in question last week, while I was still running 10.6.7. Merely opening and reading the file—and I think saving it once—was enough to render it UNREADABLE for anyone running 10.6.6. Of course, if you download the file while you’re on 10.6.6, everything’s fine. Rather extraordinary, methinks...

Font problems after 10.6.7

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