Common Lab Problems #1 - Corrupted Fonts

July 14, 2000 - Today’s article is the first in a series related to very common problems in the labs and how to solve or avoid them. Some of these may seem very simple to you computer gurus (I, personally, prefer the term, "Geek"), but you may learn something new.

One of the most common causes of computer problems or document problems on the Mac can be traced to that most insidious addiction of the graphic designer - Fonts.

Fonts are wonderful things, really. They allow you to express meaning through typography and make your documents interesting and enjoyable to read. Unfortunately, fonts, by their very nature, are somewhat corruption-prone and can, if corrupted, begin to corrupt documents that use them. Don't worry, I will explain further.

First of all, it might be helpful to define exactly what a font is in terms of its relationship to the operating system. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single definition that defined "font" this way. I will attempt to explain it myself.

A font is, according to the fourth edition of MacWorld Mac Secrets,
"A typeface; a file that contains the characters in an alphabet, numbers, or additional letterforms in a particular style." More specifically, fonts are files that, when dropped into the System Folder, can be used in applications, in documents, or by the system itself.

Fonts are subject to corruption because they are open files -- the system opens all the suitcases in the Fonts folder at startup. When your system crashes, all open files are subject to being corrupted. - MacFixIt Forums member - LT

Because fonts can basically become very important parts of the actual operating system of the computer, if one becomes corrupted, you can have a myriad of problems that you may not be able to trace immediately to a specific font. Symptoms can include, and are not limited to, any of the following:

1. Inability to open a specific document. This will usually happen when opening a document, which freezes the computer before it has the chance to display more than the document window and margins. Solution: Always keep a list of specific fonts you use for a project. Replace those fonts with known good copies, and try opening the file again. You should be back in business.

2. The computer locks up at start-up while loading extensions. Font corruption can be the cause of this. It is not, by any means, the only cause. Conflicting extensions can do this as well. But, it's a place to start. Solution: Use a Start-up CD, and move suspect fonts to a different folder on the hard drive. Then, restart. You can use Norton Disk Doctor to identify corrupt fonts. They should show up as having damaged resource forks. This can happen when you store and copy fonts from PC formatted disks frequently.

3. At start-up, you get a message something like "XXXX cannot be loaded due to insufficient memory." You remove the offending extension, start-up again, and get the same message, but with the name of the next extension in the series. Took me a bit to figure this one out. It was traced to a corrupted resource fork of a few (try about 400!) fonts, and the fact that about 650 fonts had been installed on that machine (we'll talk about that in a bit). Solution: Run Norton Disk Doctor to locate the damaged fonts, remove the fonts, and replace them from a known clean copy. Always install fonts properly by dragging the font over the System Folder icon. All font files will go to the correct place in the System Folder.

Now that you have a bit of troubleshooting information, I will pass along a few tips.

1. You can only install 128 Font Suitcases into your System Folder. Any more and you can have big problems. This is why you need to install fonts properly (the whole "drag the font over the System Folder icon…" thing). If you try to install more fonts than the OS can handle, you will get a warning dialog and the fonts will not be installed. A lot of people try to get around this by opening the Fonts folder in the System Folder and directly copying the fonts to that folder. Yeah, it'll work for awhile, but it's like those paper towel commercials; the thinner towel holds the fruit for a bit when wet, then it all comes tumbling down. You get warned for a reason. Next time, your computer may stall on start-up.

2. Do not try to install every font you have at the same time. This will only slow down your computer and make it more difficult to determine which font may be causing problems. Because fonts are stored in the System Folder, they get accessed at start-up (mainly because the font used to display text for the OS is in that folder). If you have a lot of fonts cluttering it up, you can significantly increase the start-up time. Most professionals have learned to have only the fonts they need for a specific project installed. This speeds things up.

3. Don't store your Mac fonts on PC disks. You can have big problems. PC formatting can strip out the resource fork of a file. While this isn't such a big deal for some files, it is a very big deal for fonts since they are sort of "behind the scenes" files that only get opened by other applications, one of which is the Operating System. Use Mac formatted disks for this purpose.

These hints should help you avoid most font-related problems. If you think that you are having font problems on the machines in the labs, please let me know and I will fix it for you.

–J

Jennifer Nieland is the lab coordinator for the College of the Design student computer labs. Her new favorite fonts are CropCircle and RotoDesign Dingbats.