Fontbook - a complete nightmare

Question

Fontbook - a complete nightmare

Hi all !

So I switched to Lion when it came out during my holidays. Now I'm back to work and try to get things up and running. And Fontbook seem to be a MAJOR problem. I have about 4-500 fonts installed (mostly Adobe OTF) (referenced by fontbook, not all open), and when I launch Fontbook, it takes literally HOURS to get to the point when it will diplay the fonts. And I get the beach ball in the meanwhile...

I have tried quiet a few things to start with. On Snow Leopard, a run at Onyx would mostly clear the issue (i had this problem with Snow Leo, but to a lesser degree), trashed all fonts from the library folder, trashed Fontbook preferences, to no avail.

Can anyone help me on this one ? I'm supposed to be working on this machine, not troubleshoot...

Regards,

Posted on Aug 17, 2011 2:18 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 17, 2011 8:46 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

I'm having the exact same issue and I have no idea what to do. I only have about 250 fonts installed. All but the system fonts are disabled and I only enable non-system fonts when working on projects. Another bug I've found is that I'm unable to drag fonts from the main list to a collection.

I need and use Fontbook everyday and would love any advice on what to do about this issue.

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Answer 2

EJW Tas

Level 1

51 points

Aug 17, 2011 9:00 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Me too!!!

I have around 500 fonts (Apple & Microsoft) installed with all but 40 or so disabled

When I start Fontbook, it takes 2 minutes of spinning beachball to show font lists etc

If I select on a library or collection, another minute of spinning beachball

Absolute garbage performance! I have logged it with Apple twice (feedback pages) but no solution to date.

I have asked for and received a refund for Lion from Apple Australia - its worth asking the same where you are

good luck with this!

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Answer 3

Aug 17, 2011 9:31 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Hi Everyone

No problems here with Fontbook v3 or Linotype Font Explorer 1.2.3 Build 833 (Free).

Have you tried cleaning caches and permissions?

Sometime with fonts and new OS is a good thing to do.

I run Adobe PS Illust & INDesign every day and so far its been

quicker than SL.

Hope this may help you.

Cheers Tomi

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Answer 4

LMW24

Level 1

0 points

Aug 18, 2011 10:55 AM in response to Philippe Mingasson

I'm having the same issue and it's driving me crazy, as I am always downloading and installing new fonts. Font Book will open but I immediately get the spinning wheel of death and have to force quit.

@tomidownunder, Font Explorer is great and I use it, but the only way I know to install a new font is via Font Book. Is there another way?

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Answer 5

Sep 2, 2011 6:39 PM in response to LMW24

Open Font Exporer-File-Import Font.

Cheers Tomi

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Answer 6

jaystad

Level 1

12 points

Sep 29, 2011 2:54 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Exact same problem... rainbow wheel of death spins endlessly and will not let me into Fontbook to work with my fonts. Has anyone found a solution yet? Thank you in advance!

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Answer 7

EJW Tas

Level 1

51 points

Oct 1, 2011 12:13 AM in response to jaystad

I actually deleted 90% of my fonts from my machine - left the ones in the System Library and kept the 4 or 5 that I use, and the rest went out the window.

Purged all font caches with Cocktail or Onyx, restarted and all is sweet. No problems with FontBook, no problems with MS Word taking 2 minutes to start up, etc

Useful web page at http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

If you don't *need* 500+ fonts (Apple, Microsoft and Adobe) nuke them and just keep the ones you actually use. Font management on Macs has been a disaster for many years and it doesn't appear to be getting better with so many variants/flavours of font types out there. Of course it doesn't help tha MS installs older versions of systm fonts etc but seriously - the sorts of font management hassles under 10.7 should have been resolved under System 9 - oh wait, they were ...

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