Font Book Problems

When the tech remoted in, they said that I did not have Lucida installed

Impossible. If Lucida Grande is not installed, OS X won't even start up. Font Book will not let you trash that font. Not even if you select, tell it to remove the font, and confirm. It still will not move to the Trash. The only way to get it there is to manually delete it from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. And even if you do that, it will immediately be replaced by a copy of the font buried deep in the system. Certain fonts are protected that way.

The three most likely causes are:

1) A corrupt font (or more than one)

2) A corrupt database (common, and commonly caused by corrupt fonts)

3) A corrupt font collection.

Try dealing with 2 and 3 first. For the second possible issue, do this:

Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command. You can also copy/paste it from here into the Terminal window:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

Terminal will then ask for your admin password. As you type, it will not show anything, so be sure to enter it correctly.

This removes all font cache files. Both for the system and the current user font cache files. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

If that doesn't do it, then remove the font collections. They are in your user account. To get there, first be at the desktop. Then hold down the Command key and choose Go > Library from the menu. Your user account Library folder will open. Within that, open the FontCollections folder and move all items in there to the desktop. Try launching Font Book again.

Sorry, wrong key. Hold down the Option key, not Command.

And dummy me, I didn't even give you the correct instructions for the one you tried. No harm in what you did. It just removed font cache files from the system. What I wanted you to do was clear Font Book's database. Do this:

Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup chime to boot into Safe Mode. Keep holding the Shift key until OS X asks you to log in (you will get this screen on a Safe Mode boot even if your Mac is set to automatically log in). Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally. This will clear Font Book's database and the cache files of the user account you logged into in Safe Mode.

But, earlier I thought I would have to delete the program and tried to delete the program by using appdelete.

It appears appdelete was able to remove part of the Font Book application package, but Lion prevented it from removing the whole thing. Since it's partially destroyed, it no longer functions. Hence, the "no" symbol.

Removing Font Book's database did two things. One, it removed what must have been a damaged database. Two, just having an active Font Book database on your system will prevent another font manager from working correctly. OS X reads that database each time it starts up. If it says font "xxx" is active, whether the Font Book app is running or not, OS X will try to keep that font active no matter what other font manager may be doing to try and deactivate it.

Font Book is dead, which is good for you since it cannot create another database. That only happens if you launch FB after clearing the database. To get rid of the now damaged Font Book app, do this:

Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. Copy and paste the following blue text into Terminal. Don't press Enter yet. You can of course type the command in yourself, but be very careful to enter it exactly as shown. UNIX shows no mercy for any misplaced or mistyped characters.

sudo rm -R

Put a space after the -R and then drag and drop the Font Book app into the Terminal window. It will fill in the path and file name. Now press Enter. You will be asked to enter your admin password. Enter it and press Enter once more. Font Book will disappear.

Since your preferred font manager is Font Picker, I wouldn't keep Font Book on the drive myself. You can copy the working version of FB back into the Applications folder if you want. You'll have to enter your admin password to complete the copy. That followed by a Repair Permissions with Disk Utility since its permissions will be wrong.

Now, Font Book will sit there as a benign app as long as you never double click a font. As soon as you do that, Font Book will launch and show you a sample of the font. As a result of launching, it will also create a new, unwanted database. So if you're certain you'll always use Font Picker as your font manager, I'd trash Font Book entirely. Maybe copy it to an external drive first so you can get back to it if you want.

Took a look at Font Picker and it doesn't appear to be a font manager at all, just a way to select active fonts from the desktop. So you'll still need Font Book.