Interesting font convesation between two YVOD consultants. Thought I would capture it in my trusty blog =)
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I need some advice. I have a font problem! All of my thousands of fonts are showing up in all my apps in the font lists. Therefore it is making the apps work really slow. This just happened suddenly.
I checked the status of the fonts in Font Book. All the fonts that should be on are on and the ones that are not needed daily are turned off like always. So why are they showing up on my lists in my apps? This is really a strange thing to happen!
I have restarted my computer a few times to see if it will reset as
normal! I am on mac os 10.4.8 I upgraded InDesign the other day – Adobe asked me if I wanted to update – so I did.
Please let me know if you have any ideas of what I could do.
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Hi Jules,
It might have been, that your system, or some program, tried to re-install all fonts again. Microsoft Word is a typical candidate for such an action. When you install Office, the installer looks into the system library, and not realizing the fonts are there but only not active, it installs them all again. That’s just due to bad programming on the developers side. I don’t know, but it’s possible this also happened with InDesign. It might even have asked you to do it and you clicked okay, without knowing it would cause this havoc.
The way to get rid of the problem you won’t like, but I don’t see another way: You have to look into your system library, and manually remove the fonts in there. They are stored inside “Username” > “Library” > “Fonts”. If this folder is empty, they are stored in the system library, not the user library. Then it’s in “Macintosh HD” > “Library” > “Fonts”. But beware, there are a lot of fonts that must be stored there! All system fonts should be there, such as Lucida Grande and the fonts that came with the Mac OS. I know this is confusing, because how can you tell what is supposed to be in there and what not?
The key here is to understand, there are three libraries on your system, but only one should contain some fonts, but not all, just the ones that come with Mac OS.
Mac OS comes with its own font management tool. But it’s not really the best tool. It’s way better than Extensis Suitcase, simply for the fact that Suitcase has a reputation of destroying the fonts it turns off/on. But personally, I prefer a different tool, which I found much better. It comes from Linotype, but it is capable to manage all fonts, so I don’t have to use Fontbook any longer. It looks and works a little bit like iTunes, so it’s straight forward and not hard to learn.
FontExplorer is freeware and you can read more about it and download it here:
http://linotype.com/fontexplorerX
Once you install it and run it for the first time, it will move all your fonts out of your fonts folders (except for the system fonts) and put them in a library of its own. You need administrator access on your system to do this.
All my desktop publishing contacts (print companies etc.) use it now, so it has become a standard here.
I hope this helped a little. If not, I’m also available on iChat and Skype, or here.
Best Regards,
Henning
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Then I installed it and replied to him…
Thank you so much. I just installed it and it asked me to either copy or move the font files. I actually asked it to copy them as I was a little worried about moving them ! Did I do the wrong thing? Anyway, just wanted to let you know that it seemed to have worked. I no longer have six million fonts show up in Photoshop! Will open all the apps in a minute! Thanks so much for your help! I could not even see the text in emails at one point!
Let me know if I installed it right! If i did not then what should i do now?
Cheers
Jules
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Well, it’s good to be cautious. 🙂 But the problem is, by not moving them, only copying, you now end up with both, the new font library, and your fonts are still stored in the system library as well. Which means you duplicated your problem of a slow computer, because now it will load your fonts twice.
This can’t be reversed, except if you delete the preference file for FontExplorer, as well as the library it created. 🙁 Which I assume is not something you feel comfortable with doing on your own.
If you have no longer millions of fonts showing up in Photoshop, and in addition your computer isn’t too slow now, maybe you just leave it as it is. The way FontExplorer works is very similar to iTunes. It creates an XML file (a database) that stores all fonts and locations. It may be I’m wrong with duplicating the problem—it’s hard to tell, without having a peek on your hard drive.
Bottom line is, if it works now, leave it like that! 😉
And you won’t have to use FontBook again. It’s better you use FontExplorer from now on. It’s a lot faster too! And you may have figured out already how to create sets, for projects, or by font vendor. You turn off/on a font by clicking the familiar blue check box next to the font’s name. By the way, double clicking a font gives you a nice window with some example text.
You should keep in mind, this works similarly like iTunes. So Fonts are all stored in the library left atop, but you can create sets that contain font references, for easier management.
Best Regards,
Henning