Font problems after 10.6.7

Here's my answer to this related thread and a work around.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2798058&tstart=0

Thanks Kurt. I know this was a heavy investment of your time to root this problem out. I thank you. Now we need Apple to make a move to acknowledge and correct this problem.

I used Onyx to delete all font's cache and it solved all my problems with 10.6.7 and fonts management (also with Frutiger wich is the font I use the most).

Have you reported this to the PTB?

First I had to figure out that PTB meant Powers That Be. 🙂

Yes. I submitted a full bug report at Apple's Developers site.

It will only seem that way until you run across an OpenType PostScript font that simply won't work. The bug (oddly) doesn't affect all of them.

Kurt Lang wrote:
It will only seem that way until you run across an OpenType PostScript font that simply won't work. The bug (oddly) doesn't affect all of them.

I think it would be much odder if it did affect all OpenType PostScript fonts, since that would be just about impossible to miss during beta (or maybe even alpha) testing by both Apple & outside developers like Adobe.

I wish I knew more about the subject, but according to my limited understanding of it (here & in the following paragraphs), PDF is a subset of the Postscript programming language which does not support all the features of the PS superset but has become more popular because it is less resource intensive. Both support to slightly different degrees the features of the three principle font file formats in use today: Type 1, TrueType, & OpenType.

Type 1 is the only format that was developed exclusively by Adobe. Apple originally developed TrueType as a less expensive but compatible alternative to Type 1, licensed it to Microsoft, & both companies have extended their versions so there are two major variants. OpenType was jointly developed by Adobe & Microsoft, & is based partially on the MS TrueType variant (which in turn is based partially on Apple's original TrueType) & can roughly be considered a superset of the older formats, the main benefit of that being extended support in the PDF language for features otherwise only available in the Postscript language.

*In theory*, any Postscript or PDF interpreter, even older ones that don't know how to handle features of the newer OT font format, are supposed to be able to rasterize documents using any mix of the formats without problems by simply ignoring what they can't interpret, so while there may be small variations in the output of different ones there are not supposed to be any gross differences like missing characters or completely garbled pages, much less crashes or freezes.

Obviously, that isn't happening for everybody but I hope the above, as oversimplified as I'm sure it is, will provide some background info that might lead to better insights about why that is so.

That is a pretty accurate summary, R C-R. Good info for everyone to read.

The only thing we know for sure is that it is only OpenType PostScript that are goofed up in 10.6.7, and then only with PDF files created through OS X, and only when viewing them in Acrobat Pro or the Reader.

Beyond that, we can only guess where the fault is. It's very easy to say it's Apple's fault since there was no problem in 10.6.6 and earlier using the same fonts and methods. But like any other company or person, Adobe is not infallible. So it could be a long standing bug in Acrobat that doesn't conform to Adobe's own SDK on the PDF format, and now sticks out in PDF files created with OS X.

Though PDF files created directly from Adobe apps through the Distiller and in Quark 8 seem to disprove that. Such PDF files display fine in Acrobat under OS X, 10.6.7. And even that can be argued that Adobe and Quark just know how to work around an undocumented issue.

Hello everybody. I got the same problem described by all of you. This little trick has worked like a charm for all the users in our company. We download a little app called Onyx (I'm sure everybody here knows it, but if not the case you can google). Then under the Cleaning Tab, run clear font cache (select all). Restart your Mac. Open any app you had the problem before (Flash CS5, Illustrator, etc). You'll see everything works perfectly.

Cheers.

run clear font cache (select all). Restart your Mac. Open any app you had the problem before (Flash CS5, Illustrator, etc). You'll see everything works perfectly.

Cleaning the font cache may help Adobe PDF creation (from within Indesign, Illustrator etc), but this is not the problem here. This issues relates to PDFs created using the Apple 'Save as PDF' menu in the printer dialog or variants of it. Clearing the font caches was the first thing that I performed when this problem came up and it had no effect.

I can confirm that saving PDFs from TextEdit and Word 2011, that contain OpenType PostScript fonts, through Apple's Printer Dialog, will result in PDFs that do not display well or even hang up Adobe Reader 10.0.2 or Acrobat Pro 9.4.3.

Fonts I tested were Adobe Minion Pro, Adobe Myriad Pro and Adobe Tekton Pro.

Interestingly, I get good results when creating PDFs using Pages '09.

Same fonts and apps on X.6.6 create usable PDF files.

I tried to print out the following PDF from the IRS site this morning and got an invalidfont error from the printer:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4506t.pdf

Assuming it might be related to this issue as I've never had font issues printing from OS X until after the 10.6.7 update. It displays fine in preview but it won't print.

I updated to SN 10.6.7 last Friday. I did delete the font caches before I saw this thread, and as such, I have NOT been able to reproduce any of the problems in this thread. Since I saw info that there was a problem with 10.6.7 and OpenType PS fonts, I did several tests and have not run into any problems with PDFs in Acrobat, or with any output, so this could be related to font caches.

Thanks to all for sharing. Good tips and thoughts abound.

We have two macs on Snow Lep 10.6.7 and BOTH can no longer use Word (Office Mac 2008) to make PDFs to send clients. Mac or PC, they hang in Reader and don't display, only a force quit gets out of it. Worked fine for years without a hitch. Then early last week, we upgraded to 10.6.7 and the issues began.

After blowing the weekend trying to solve this, I determined it had an issue with fonts, in particular OpenType fonts, but other fonts, too. Like Georgia. I can make all kinds of PDFs in Adobe Creative Suite CS5 with no problem. It's freaking Word (which my wife uses far more than I do). She needs this solved like: yesterday.

Considering a re-install of 10.6.6 on her current iMac. I can ride things out until the next update. So, I have no advice to offer, just posting so Apple will read this and come out with a fixer update asap. Thanks for reading.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3574696

Major font issues with Flash.. and i guess other apps when reading what's on here.. Is Apple becoming the New Microsoft ?!

I'd agree that it's an OpenType PS issue as the problem appeared in printing in Quicken and then a test I did of several fonts using Pages. While Myriad prints, it's compressed and the letters are improperly formed. At first I was worried that my HP Laserjet 5000 was finally dying, but it did prove to be the fonts. The ONLY change was upgrading to 10.6.7.