Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

More Mac OSX Font Problems

August 27, 2008 In earlier blogs we discussed the past Mac font issues. For those of you who don't use many this may sound strange. But for designers and service providers the latest OS may have solved some font problems but created more. Here's a few:

• There are more places to put fonts in OSX (6) then ever existed in the previous OS and more font types. As a result  I see many computers with the same fonts installed 2 or 3 different places, often the same font in different formats which is creating some of the font problems. Some companies (Adobe & Microsoft) create and look for fonts in more locations which adds to the complexity of management.

• In different versions of OSX there are different fonts that are essential for the system to work. If you move or something happens to one of these fonts the system may not work.

• While some font programs are offering an auto-activation feature – many people complain that it does always work relaibliy.

• While the  font caching capability in the new OSX speeds up font usage, in some cases that is a problem. For example, you remove a corrupt font, but the corrupted font is still in cache and continues to created problems.

• While many experts claim this does not happen, font corruption complaints seems to occur more frequently now.

• Some font utilities are server based. While this is often the best solution, these are often considered too expensive and requires a bullet proof network to insure usefulness.

• There are more issues with font substition in PDF files then ever before especially when TrueType fonts get embedded after Type 1 fonts are selected.

Posted by Howie Fenton on August 27, 2008 | Comments (0)