font activation problem

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Level 1

4 points

font activation problem

We've been using FontAgent Pro for many years, on a dozen iMacs in our Studio.

I only recently upgraded all the iMacs to Mountain Lion, at the same time upgrading to v5 of FontAgent Pro.

We use the full suite of Helvetica Neue, so I've always followed Kurt Lang's well documented procedure to remove Font Book and replace the System HelveticaNeue dfont with our licensed OpenType versions.

Most of the iMacs were upgrades from Lion, and everything works fine – FAP 5 activates fonts and all is good.

However, two of the iMacs had ML installed on completely erased Hard Drives, and this is where I hit the problem:

On both of these Macs, after I removed Font Book and cleared caches, no fonts activated in FAP 5 now show in any Application ... from Adobe Creative Suite (with dedicated plugins), down to TextEdit.

Further – I notice that in FontAgent Pro none of the installed fonts will preview. Though they Verify, and Activate/Deactivate OK.

I have an ongoing support request at Insider Software, and they've had me try a few things, but we've been struggling with this for over a week now and it's driving me potty, so I thought I'd throw it out to the Apple community in case any of you guys have any ideas.

Cheers, Neil

(PS: I don't know whether I've posted in the right forum, though I'm convinced it's something at system level causing this.)

iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), FontAgent Pro (5.028)

Posted on Jan 28, 2013 9:27 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

neilypeelie Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 29, 2013 7:49 AM in response to neilypeelie

Ha... I've managed to solve my own problem.

Looks like it's to do with a combination of removing the HelveticaNeue dfont and clearing the caches using Terminal command sudo atsutil databases -remove

I used Pacifist to reinstall the System fonts, and hey presto FontAgent Pro is working again.

Strange this only affects Macs with a clean install...

Now I'm just back to the age old issue of our versions of HNeue conflicting with the System dfont 😟.

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Answer 2

PowerKey

Level 2

195 points

Apr 10, 2013 9:17 AM in response to neilypeelie

I recently upgraded to 10.8 and had a similar issue with FAP4 (and FAP5).

Fonts activated in FAP do not show up in any application. But I discovered that if you disable the "Verify fonts before activation" option in FAP's preferences, that activation works as expected.

I have not removed or replaced any of my system fonts, so this problem may not be related to that. It might be worth trying to remove HNeue again with the "Verify..." option disabled in FAP. You may get the best of both worlds.

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Answer 3

neilypeelie Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 11, 2013 2:54 AM in response to PowerKey

Thanks PowerKey, nice idea.

However I just checked, and "Verify fonts" is already disabled in my Preferences.

Suggestion might help other folks though. 😉

I have since removed the system HNeue dfont again, and fonts Preview OK now in FAP, so none the wiser re my initial problem.

The only issue I have now is that Auto Activation in InDesign is a bit hit and miss... sometimes I merely have to launch FAP, then quit, before InDesign sees the font.

It's a little niggle I can just about live with.

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Answer 4

Mar 17, 2014 1:35 AM in response to neilypeelie

Hi
just want to warn a little bit about removing the system dfont helvetica neue from your system font folder. I did this and suddenly my Wunderlist, CloudApp and Evernote didn´t start. It seem they are using exactly this font, and if the apps cant find it - then it wont work. As soon as i put it back (not easy without DVDs anymore) then all worked - exept my FontAgentPro 6.1 which still will not show me activated font in InDesign CC.

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