Just a note:
After adding this font to user library, OSX starts using it as a default for menus in Safari and several other apps.
Weird, but true.
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Infantile OS...what can we do, really....
Sure, that's a good way to examine the problem, just blame the OS.
Now for the real answer. Alien League is a bad font. It has an incorrect internal name of Arial. So it conflicts with the real Arial font and replaces it in just about every display of a font where Arial is supposed to be.
Delete Alien League and the problem will go away.
Titanics_Cruncher wrote:
Weird, but true.
Not that weird. Put garbage software on your machine and all kinds of stupid things can happen...
It's not like Windows had a problem with it..;) But it does make sense. The problem is gone since I deleted it, though took few months to find help...
It's a very common problem with free fonts. Windows users must have some sort of favorite free font editor to see this so often. What I mean by that is whatever editor this is, it must not show all of the internal names you need to set.
People start with a font that's already finished (commonly Arial), clear out the characters and put new ones in. You then need to update the font names. Here's what you ran into.
Note the incorrect Full Name. I can only guess the editor being used doesn't show this field since this happens to often.
If you really like this font, a fixed version has been replacing the old one on many sites. Even though it has the same name of ALIEN5.TTF, the internal names are correct. It was actually kind of difficult to find one that was still bad. Here's a good one.
Yepp, that is the way I sorted it.
I would understand if Windows had this problem. After all, there is a single Fonts directory containing both user and system fonts, but OXS separates those. Imho, it's a severe negligence to allow system apps to pick Fonts from the User context (unless a required font has been installed there specifically) rather than default to System Font directory for well known fonts.
Don't you think it makes sense?
After all, there is a single Fonts directory containing both user and system fonts, but OXS separates those.
It sure simplifies things, but it can also be a mess. If anyone installs a bad font that causes the system to have issues, then every user has the same problem.
OS X is built on top of UNIX, so much of the way things are laid out is because that's just the way UNIX is meant to be used. As a secure system. So you separate the fonts that are critical from the ones that aren't. And in particular, the fonts a user installs to their own account so they can't screw up anyone else.
Titanics_Cruncher wrote:
After adding this font to user library, OSX starts using it as a default for menus in Safari and several other apps.
Kurt Lang wrote:
Alien League is a bad font. It has an incorrect internal name of Arial. So it conflicts with the real Arial font and replaces it in just about every display of a font where Arial is supposed to be.
Now, hold on just a minute, folks. I don't know anything about this Alien thingie, and, by the sound of it, I shouldn't want to touch it with a bargepole, but on my system, menus in Safari and every other Cocoa app I've tried are in Lucida Grande, not in <shudder> Arial. What gives?
but on my system, menus in Safari and every other Cocoa app I've tried are in Lucida Grande, not in <shudder> Arial. What gives?
All versions of OS X use Lucida Grande for system and applications menus. You cannot change the system at all. Tinkertool will allow you to change some application fonts, but not all.
Kurt Lang wrote:
All versions of OS X use Lucida Grande for system and applications menus.
Fair enough. So how come this Alien whatchamacallit font took over the menus of Titanics_Cruncher's copy of Safari and "other apps"?
Explained above. He had a copy with an incorrect internal name of Arial. So while that font was active, it was bumping all instances of where Arial was supposed to be, and Alien League was being used instead.
Thank you, Kurt, but, I'm sorry, I still don't understand. If the Alien thingamabob bumped all instances of (vade retro!) Arial, how come it replaced Lucida Grande?
Here it is by the way: http://www.dafont.com/alien-league.font
Not touching with a barge pole is a great idea, though..;)
I re-ran the tool and actually, there are plenty more fonts derived from Arial, Courier and Lucida (as per Kurt's explanation). Though, they don't seem to cause problem.
Of course, that isn't a conclusive deduction - simply an observation. I am cleaning those at the moment.
If the Alien thingamabob bumped all instances of (vade retro!) Arial, how come it replaced Lucida Grande?
It shouldn't have been able to, but shouldn't isn't the same as can't. 🙂 Hard to say what the cascade effect was. With only part of Alien League bumping Arial, it maybe caused an offset in RAM which affected Lucida Grande. Or it just messed up the font cache data enough that when a call to draw Lucida Grande to the screen was made, the wrong part of the cache was being read.
Though, they don't seem to cause problem.
As long as the internal names are all set correctly, then you're fine. It's common to find all kinds of copyright information in such fonts that the person who modified it didn't bother to clear or change, but it's the internal font names that are important.
alien5.ttf - The Alien League Font problem
