Q: Font problems after 10.6.7

So has anybody seriously considered the possibility that it is just certain OpenType Postscript fonts that cause these problems, or just certain typeface styles that might not be included in every distribution of those fonts?

Yes, I've mentioned that in quite a few of my posts. I can for example apply all one typeface of a randomly chosen OT PS font to a test document, print it out using Apple's "Save as PDF", and it would open without a problem in Acrobat under 10.6.7. But then pick another font, change all the text to that typeface, save a PDF again, and it won't open.

This happens with any OT PS font; Adobe's, MacFonts', converted fonts I made, etc. It's seemingly random, though more fonts than not won't work. I have no idea why some work and other don't. I only know the issue is limited to OT PS fonts.

Same problems here. Print/Save as PDF from Filemaker causes unreadable fonts. PDFs open fine in Preview and look correct. Can sometimes open them in Acrobat and looks correct but gives me a +"Cannot extract the embedded font 'SLOKJS+Gotham-Black'. Some characters may not display or print correctly."+ (Gotham Black is just an example, depends on what fonts are in the doc I am saving to PDF). Other times will cause Acrobat to hang on open. Sent a few of my PDFs to folks still on Leopard (10.5)... and the PDFs crashed their machines. Not good.

*Interesting thing is, if I take on of these "corrupt" PDFs, open it in Preview and simply 'Save As' a copy ... they then work fine.*

Kurt Lang wrote:
Far more than a few, I'm afraid.

I was talking about casual users who have discovered some new fonts after installing Adobe Reader. Full press and prepress shops should have already rolled their single test machine back to 10.6.6. They may not even need to do that since their applications don't use the system PDF generation routines anyway.

Interesting thing is, if I take on of these "corrupt" PDFs, open it in Preview and simply 'Save As' a copy ... they then work fine.

Now that's interesting! Hadn't thought of trying that. Preview in 10.6.7 must be writing PDF files differently from Save as PDF.

OHYEAH332 wrote:
*Interesting thing is, if I take on of these "corrupt" PDFs, open it in Preview and simply 'Save As' a copy ... they then work fine.*

Never mind... less rendering anomalies after the resave, but still not fixed.

I was talking about casual users who have discovered some new fonts after installing Adobe Reader.

I've never noticed that the Reader installs any fonts. I don't believe it does. But yes, casual users won't normally even have any PostScript fonts to use. Those OpenType fonts that do come with OS X and Microsoft Office are all of the TrueType variety.

OHYEAH332 wrote:

OHYEAH332 wrote:
*Interesting thing is, if I take on of these "corrupt" PDFs, open it in Preview and simply 'Save As' a copy ... they then work fine.*

Never mind... less rendering anomalies after the resave, but still not fixed.

OK. Just talked to someone who is running 10.5.8... The original PDFs (Print/Save to PDF from FileMaker) I sent them were crashing their computer... Preview and Acrobat, whichever they tried to use to open them. If I take one of those same crash-causing PDFs and 'Save As' from within Preview on my machine, and send it to them again, their crashes no longer occur. Preview opens the file on their machine, no errors, no display anomalies. Acrobat opens the file, no display anomalies, yet still gives the error message "Cannot extract the embedded font..."

Give this workaround a try, see if it works for you.

I've never noticed that the Reader installs any fonts.

Not in the usual way, but buried in the app package (MacOS/Resource) there are some which can be extracted.

Those OpenType fonts that do come with OS X and Microsoft Office are all of the TrueType variety.

I think the Japanese Hiragino fonts are otf/postscript.

Not in the usual way, but buried in the app package (MacOS/Resource) there are some which can be extracted.

Yes, but I wasn't counting those. If a person wanted to, they could copy them out to a Fonts folder and use them.

I think the Japanese Hiragino fonts are otf/postscript.

Son of a gun, these two are:

Hiragino Sans GB W3.otf
Hiragino Sans GB W6.otf

Never paid attention to that since I immediately delete them from a new install of OS X. For the same reason, looking again just now, I also never noticed these fonts are OT PS:

ヒラギノ丸ゴ Pro W4.otf
ヒラギノ丸ゴ ProN W4.otf
ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3.otf
ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W6.otf
ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3.otf
ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W6.otf
ヒラギノ角ゴ Std W8.otf
ヒラギノ角ゴ StdN W8.otf

Kurt Lang wrote:
I've never noticed that the Reader installs any fonts. I don't believe it does. But yes, casual users won't normally even have any PostScript fonts to use. Those OpenType fonts that do come with OS X and Microsoft Office are all of the TrueType variety.

It could have been Photoshop Elements too. I'm happy enough without Reader, but layers alone is enough to keep Elements around.

At least one of those fonts even had Adobe in the name. I have a new iMac that is still Adobe-free and the only OpenType Postscript fonts are the Japanese ones from Apple.

I have been having an issue with both InDesign and Word on the Mac.

I was running InDesign yesterday morning (March 28th) and downloaded the update to 10.6.7. After I had installed the update, I opened the InDesign file I had been working on and my Adobe Garamond Pro font was missing. I called Apple tech support and spoke with an upper level tech rep who said it was an issue with the font - Adobe Garamond Pro.

I told him that made no sense whatsoever since as far as I know, fonts aren't "updated" with new versions when an OS is updated.

He told me my option was to contact Adobe to get a "new" version of the font or re-install the Mac OS and not update to 10.6.7.

Today, I tried opening a Word file that has Adobe Garamond Pro, and Word bombed. I received an error message that there was a problem with the Adobe Garamond Pro font and the font was being de-activated.

I re-installed Adobe Garamond Pro from the original font installation CD with the same result, so how can the "font" be at issue?

Come on Apple. In all the years I have used Windows (I am ambi-OStrous now) � I have NEVER had to re-install the OS! This will make the fourth time in two years I have had to re-install OS X.

I might add that when I downloaded FireFox 4, the fonts were screwed up in that program as well. EVERY time I have installed an upgrade to FireFox, the fonts get screwed up and the only way to "fix" it is to uninstall FireFox and re-install it.

Something else I just noticed while going through this thread. My Magic Mouse now seems to have a mind of it's own. When I try to do a partial scroll the page just keeps on scrolling to the bottom - same thing while scrolling up.

I have been having an issue with both InDesign and Word on the Mac

Which version of Indesign are you using? I am fine with Indesign CS5, but was having considerable problems in PDFs produced by our database (now successfully downgraded).

Don't know if it will work for you or if this has been suggested but it worked for me.
In Font book > Edit > I removed font duplicates.
Then I copied the font that Acrobat could not open to user and it solved the problem...at least for now.

Has anyone been able to get the Adobe PDF driver to work instead.

Topher over at Macfixit said:
'one option is to use Adobe PDF to create PDF documents and then print them if desired. Install Adobe Acrobat and then "Adobe PDF" should appear as a printer option in OS X that you can use to create the PDF.'

That does not seem to work for me. Does it for anyone else?

Then I copied the font that Acrobat could not open to user and it solved the problem...at least for now.

Doesn't that rather defeat the whole point of PDF? I have literally hundreds of users, the font should be embedded in the PDF file and display as sent without sending fonts about. Not to mention the licence implications of copying fonts to multiple other users!