Weird font on pages in Safari and Preview

Question

Weird font on pages in Safari and Preview

Hi everyone!

I've got a problem with Safari that's driving me nuts...and Preview as well. A lot of times when I open a web page, or a manual in Preview, the text shows up in this crazy, unreadable font and it drives me bonkers. I could not find anything in Preferences for either application that would change the font to something much more readable. How do I fix this? Why is this happening? Many thanks for your help with this....

Sally

Too many to list, including vintage Macs :), Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Apr 25, 2007 9:27 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 25, 2007 9:33 AM in response to Sarah Schrock

Hi Sarah

Two problematic fonts that can cause viewing problems are Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic.

Go to your Applications folder>Font Book. Search for either font. If they are present, either delete or disable them. Then restart Safari.

Post back

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Answer 2

Apr 25, 2007 9:38 AM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Hi Starman,

Wow, that was a quick response.. I looked for those two fonts in Font Book, and neither one is installed. Sooo, what do I do to fix this problem? Thanks in advance for your help!

Sally

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Answer 3

Apr 25, 2007 9:59 AM in response to Sarah Schrock

Hi Sally

Have you installed any applications recently that have their own font set - Microsoft Office would be an example? Or did you install any individual fonts recently?

Curious about the state of your Fonts. Go back to the Font Book>Edit menu and select "resolve duplicates".

A black dot will appear next to those Fonts having more than one of the same font. Do you see any duplicates?

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Apr 25, 2007 11:31 AM in response to Sarah Schrock

I looked for those
two fonts in Font Book, and neither one is installed.

Send me a screenshot, I might be able to identify the font (tom at bluesky dot org).

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Answer 5

Apr 25, 2007 12:26 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Hi again Starman,

I did go into Font Book and found about four or five fonts that had duplicates, and resolved them. None of them, however, were the font that's appearing on Safari (and FireFox too) webpages as well as Preview. Too, I've not installed any applications with their own font sets. As a matter of fact, I just recently acquired the computer (dual 1.25GHz MDD G4) and the only major app I've installed is Manga Studio EX, just last week. I was having trouble with this font before then...

So where do I go from here now?

Sally

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Answer 6

Apr 25, 2007 1:59 PM in response to Sarah Schrock

As Tom suggested, send him a screenshot of a page (/Shift/4 Keys held down at the same time - drag the crosshair over an area of the screen showing the font script - the file will appear on your desktop). Tom's quite a wizard with font issues.

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Answer 7

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Apr 25, 2007 2:12 PM in response to Sarah Schrock

Thanks for the screenshot. It's some kind of junk comic font. Only way to find it for sure is to look at the sample pane in Fontbook for each font until you find the one that looks like that and then dump it. Most likely it has a common name like Helvetica or Times and is sitting in Home/Library/Fonts.

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Answer 8

Apr 25, 2007 4:50 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom and Starman,

I found the junk font in Font Book; it's called Jungle Life. LOL, what an appropriate name for it -- trying to read it was/is like trying to hack through a dense jungle with a dull machete!

Problem is, it's still displaying the font in the Manga Studio manual.. how do I get it to display a more readable font? Again, many, many thanks for your help!

Sally

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Answer 9

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Apr 25, 2007 4:56 PM in response to Sarah Schrock

Problem is, it's still displaying the font in the
Manga Studio manual.. how do I get it to display a
more readable font?

Assuming you have trashed all copies, clean your font caches with FontFinagler (use Google to find it).

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Answer 10

Apr 25, 2007 5:31 PM in response to Sarah Schrock

FontFinagler.

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