Damaged Fonts - Fix?

Question

Damaged Fonts - Fix?

I have an extensive collection of fonts (60,0000+). Several hundred of them will crash my system when I open one of them in Finder (double-click the suitcase). I picked one at random for some serious examination.

I looked at my sample with many font tools. My latest tool was FontDoctor (v5 and v7). FontDoctor reported "no problems found" with my font. Yet the crash persists.

Please suggest a tool that can do a thorough job of investigating and repairing my corrupt fonts.

Gary

G4, Mac OS 9.2.x

Posted on May 21, 2012 12:43 PM

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Answer 1

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

May 21, 2012 12:57 PM in response to Gary - former developer

I'd try allocating more memory to the Finder application. Click once on the program icon and select "Get Info." Under the Memory tab, increase the maximum amount of memory that can be used by it. See if that minimizes or eliminates the system crashes.

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Answer 2

May 21, 2012 7:54 PM in response to Gary - former developer

Mac OS: Maximum Number of Items in the Fonts Folder

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21991?viewlocale=en_US

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 3

May 22, 2012 5:23 AM in response to Texas Mac Man

My fonts folder has 14 items in it. That is NOT the cause of the crash. MacsBug reports a "divide by zero" error in a Text Edit system routine when I double-click on a corrupt font.

Gary

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Answer 4

May 22, 2012 5:24 AM in response to Jeff

Finder doens't allow me to increase its memory in the way you describe.

Gary

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Answer 5

Aug 6, 2012 7:12 AM in response to Gary - former developer

Well it turns out that NO tool can repair this font. So I wrote my own.

The problem turned out to be a bad 'hhea' table. The values for Ascender, Descender and LineGap were all zero.

Once I changed these values to something reasonable, the font appeared like magic and my system no longer crashes with a "Divide by Zero" error.

Gary

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