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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 11, 2011 5:18 PM in response to LHAnderson

The only solution at this time is to downgrade to 10.6.6.


To ensure you will not have problems with OpenType PostScript fonts, yes, that is the only sure solution to cover all printing methods.

You could still produce working PDF files out of the Adobe apps and Quark, but you still wouldn't have much luck printing them to a PostScript printer or RIP.

Apr 11, 2011 8:09 PM in response to -mcs

WTH?

Unembedding fonts?
Does apple even test their updates?

I've been using CombinePDFs for a couple years without a problem.
Now with 10.6.7 I get errors "Cannot extract the embedded font "LBPHU+UniversLTStd-BoldNcObl"

Now I gotta spend a couple hours going back to 10.6, thanks a bunch Apple.

Apr 11, 2011 8:40 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Was surely hoping we'd see a true solution (either 10.6.8 or a 10.6.7 Font Issue Addenda) posted by this time. About the only thing that works for me is doing a restart into Single User Mode (?), running Applejack (to clear the font caches), and then trying to get some work done. If I do this every few hours, I'm not bogged down by the problem.

Message was edited by: coreworksnet

Apr 12, 2011 6:03 AM in response to coreworksnet

Was surely hoping we'd see a true solution (either 10.6.8 or a 10.6.7 Font Issue Addenda) posted by this time.


Me too. It's a pervasive issue, the kind which Apple usually trounces on pretty quickly. There's no doubt they know about it. etrosoft and I have both filed bug reports at the Developer's site, as I'm sure others have. I also noted the issue to the hosts almost from the beginning. And they normally move such issues up the line to make sure the problem is known to those who can do something about it.

Apr 12, 2011 8:16 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Kurt Lang wrote:
It's a pervasive issue, the kind which Apple usually trounces on pretty quickly. There's no doubt they know about it. etrosoft and I have both filed bug reports at the Developer's site, as I'm sure others have.


I hate to be the one to keep mentioning it, but even just considering only your & etrosoft's descriptions of the problem & how to reproduce it, the two do not seem to be completely in agreement. Considering the wider range of reports, things get much more complicated in a hurry, & they cannot all be due to user error or lack of clarity in their descriptions. For instance, for some the problem is intermittent, or can be cleared at least temporarily by emptying caches, or affects only some OT PS fonts. For others, none of these things are true.

Maybe all these things are somehow manifestations of the same basic bug. But until the "somehow" & all its implications are understood by Apple (probably with the cooperation of Adobe & possibly with other vendors) we won't see a fix. Otherwise, the fix is likely to break something else, & it might be even harder to fix that.

Apr 12, 2011 8:32 AM in response to Kurt Lang

+"Was surely hoping we'd see a true solution..."+

I've narrowed it down to one module:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/A TS.framework

Replacing the ATS.framework package, with one from a working 10.6.6 installation, relieves the
problem and PDF's work again as expected.

I haven't had very much time to test it, but so far it seems to be stable. I also do not own
very many of the required varieties of software needed to conduct a thorough test.

If any of you try it, please post back with the results.

Kj

Apr 12, 2011 9:21 AM in response to R C-R

R C-R wrote:
I hate to be the one to keep mentioning it, but even just considering only your & etrosoft's descriptions of the problem & how to reproduce it, the two do not seem to be completely in agreement. Considering the wider range of reports, things get much more complicated in a hurry, & they cannot all be due to user error or lack of clarity in their descriptions. For instance, for some the problem is intermittent, or can be cleared at least temporarily by emptying caches, or affects only some OT PS fonts. For others, none of these things are true.

Maybe all these things are somehow manifestations of the same basic bug. But until the "somehow" & all its implications are understood by Apple (probably with the cooperation of Adobe & possibly with other vendors) we won't see a fix. Otherwise, the fix is likely to break something else, & it might be even harder to fix that.


What I see is that I create an rtf file using one of the "accursed" fonts, and save a pdf file from it, then that particular pdf file is broken or works, and its behavior doesn't change. But I can take the exact same rtf file and write it out multiple times, without rebooting, and the different pdf files produced from the same rtf file will be broken in different ways.

This has all of the hallmarks of one of those "I'm using memory I don't actually own for something important, and some other process -- the one that really owns the memory -- is randomly sticking stuff in there" bugs.

If my guess is right, that kind of bug can be REALLY hard to find...

(I've been a programmer long enough that this is one of those occasions where I'm mostly just grateful that it's not MY fault!)

Apr 12, 2011 2:35 PM in response to benwiggy

I'm encountering similar problems when incorporating Adobe Illustrator figures containing Myriad Pro into a pdf document using MacTex (Latex typesetting).

The workaround I found is to disable the font in Applications > Font Book; secondary click 'Myriad Pro' > Disable "Myriad Pro" Family.
Then rather than converting a eps file into pdf using MacTex save a pdf copy of the figure directly in Illustrator and type set using that, as the encoding in Adobe Illustrator seem to be unaffected.

Font problems after 10.6.7

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