Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'How to salvage OS X when fonts go awry' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
How to salvage OS X when fonts go awry
Authored by: foilpan on Mar 29, '06 09:43:34AM

i agree with isaac on this. the tip is way too extreme and time intensive.

if necessary, restart in single user mode, mount / read-write, then delete the com.apple.ATS font cache directories as needed. reboot, and you should be all set.

also, if the installed fonts really are corrupted beyond use and deleting the caches does nothing, it might be a good idea to use font management software to keep things running smoothly. alternately, you could keep a "fresh" stash of the default OS X fonts in some other backup directory and then only copy them into /Library/Fonts if necessary. if you even need to resort to that tactic on a regular basis, you probably have bigger problems to tackle.



[ Reply to This | # ]
How to salvage OS X when fonts go awry
Authored by: babbage on Mar 29, '06 11:30:01AM

The parent hint is the best and most correct solution given here.

The article hint is way too extreme. Single-user mode is far easier and more reliable for this kind of troubleshooting than ssh, and you definitely shouldn't be indiscriminately `rm -rf`'ing anything under /Library unless you absolutely know what you're doing. It's almost never the solution to a given problem.

If you think getting rid of something is going to solve a problem for you, the safer way to test that assumption is to first move it out of the way -- `mv /Library/Fonts /Library/Fonts.MOVED` -- then reboot and test. If the symptoms disappears, your guess was right and you can delete it. If your guess was wrong, you can move it back and have things back the way they were, before going back to test another candidate for removal.

This article is an anti-hint and should have a disclaimer stating as much. It may, in some cases, solve a problem, but it's at least as likely to make things worse if used in the wrong situation.

---

--
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL



[ Reply to This | # ]
How to salvage OS X when fonts go awry
Authored by: Gigacorpse on Mar 29, '06 12:17:08PM

Keeping a backup copy of the core required fonts sounds like an excellent idea; I think that I will have to create a backup for emergencies.

And thanks to Crackmac for the required font information. I wasn't aware of that.



[ Reply to This | # ]