Quark Forums

We have a strange font problem that is happening more and more regularly. We are running 6.52 with Suitcase XI on 10.4.9 on 5 different Macs g4/g5 on a peer to peer network - no server. We have exactly the same set of fonts on every mac.

Our main clients font is Helvetica Neue that we use on hundreds of documents and recently if we copy over and open a file from another mac, the fonts decide to change by themselves. For example if Helvetica Bold 75 was used it is being changed to Regular 55 {bold} and some fonts seem to disappear all together - with the name in the usage menu changed to "Unknown", with the screen preview looking different again.

I have flushed out all the system and quark font caches, and downloaded the fontface XT - but still no joy.

Anyone come across this or have any ideas?

Hello Maxbrooker,

I haven't heard about this problem so far. FontFaceXT won't help you with Suitcase X1 - it was designed for Suitcase Fusion and Font Reserve in mind.

I would recommend using Suitcase Fusion which identifies Fonts via Font Sense and activates them accurately.

Regards,
Martin

Extensis
Product Management

Thanks for the advice.

I cannot understand why this is happening, our system has been working fine for months, and this is starting to spread almost like a virus. Everyone is now having problems and not just with one font family, but with many different font families.

Different weights are just swapping by themselves. Bolds are going light, condensed is going extended, and these are Postscript versions of fonts.

I don't know what to do - I'm not sure that buying new software will fix a problem that up until a few weeks ago was not a problem - although Fusion does sound good.

Any other ideas anyone?

OK this is getting serious!!!!!

We have quite a few jobs that we need to get out of the studio to print and this problem is getting out of hand! I Hope the people at quark are reading these forums???

I wanted to try and eliminate a few factors so installed Fusion and it made no difference - So then quit Fusion and manually installed the clients fonts in the system folder - like we used to have to do in the old days! AND STILL THE SAME PROBLEM!!!!! So it can't be a font management software problem.

The only left to try is a system software re-install - and if it is still doing it - then it has to be a Quark problem.

One scary thing I noticed though - I have a quark project with 2 identical layouts - except one has a different address. One layout is perfect and one layout has the font problem - so it's got to be a Quark issue - surely???

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!!!

...oh and yes I have flushed ALL the font caches, repaired permissions, dumped quark prefs, deleted all the fonts and made a new suitcase/fusion database... what else is there to try?

I'm depserate now!

Here's another thing I have noticed - when we open our documents, suitcase says there are countless duplicates of fonts that are being activated - THAT WE HAVEN'T EVEN USED IN THE FILE??? most of which are system fonts?

OK... (if anyone is following this) I have re-installed a clean system and re-installed Quark and a fresh set of fonts - and I still have the same problem!

So the quark files must have got corrupt somehow?

BUT... I have discovered a work around - This only seems to happen on multi-layout projects, so we have split down our layouts into separate files - and voila... no problem - so far anyway!

So I have a temporary work around - but it is still not satisfactory - I mught try taking the system back to 10.2.8 which was the last stable system we had - prior to updating to 10.4.9 which is when he problems started.

Anyone else suffering the same problems???

Not sure this will be any help beyond letting you know you're not alone - well sort of not anyway.

I had, and I stress had, exactly this problem when I first went to v7. However it went away with v7.1 (and now 7.2). I've not since seen a font change to its faux bold (or whatever) variant.

And my situation was really only a simple thing - not as messy as yours sounds. Basically a file with, say, 75 helvetica neue bold as a sub head would change on next opening to 55 helvetica roman <bold>. A simple font replace would fix it of course, then I'd save, close, re-open and bingo back to the <bold> version even though no fonts had been activated or de-activated. Very weird. But like I said it went away in v7.1.

I use 6.52 (sadly) at work (my 7 copy is on my home kit) and I've never seen the problem, not once.

Here we use OS 10.4.9, Quark 6.52, Suitcase X1 at home I have 10.4.9 (previously on a G5, now on an Intel machine), Quark 7.2, FontAgent Pro.

Clearly there's something up, but I'm not convinced it's a Quark thing. I personally think Suitcase is history. Have you, by any chance, considered a change of font management software? Font Explorer is (I believe) free, FontAgent Pro isn't, but it is good.

Whatever you do I feel your pain mate, sounds nasty. Best of luck nailing it!

Greg

I had the same problem with the fonts changing. I had to totally wipe my hard drive clean and re-install ALL applications. Seems once the problem starts just dumping Quarkxpress and re-installing doesn't fix the problem.

I don't use Suitcase, not anymore haven't for ages! Caused way too many problems. So the problem isn't with Suitcase.

I feel for you, it took me days to re-install everything on my computer.

Thanks for your supportive comments guys!

Here's the latest in my week of font hell....

I removed suitcase X1 from the system and installed font explorer - No change, still the same problems.

WIPED the hard drive clean, re-installed OS 10.2.8, from scratch - Just installed Quark 6.5 and nothing else. Copied Helvetica Neue Family to Fonts folder on the system. Opened quark file - still the same problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So installed 10.4.9 on top and still the same problem!!!!!!!!!!

I am at a loss! Whatever was doing the damage may have permanently damaged the quark files or the fonts are corrupt? What else is there left that could be causing the probelms?

At least I have a work around (sort of) with single layout quark projects - which seems to be working OK, for the moment. Not the best solution but until that fails, it is all I have.

Depressed :-(

Another thing I've tried when I have font problems that I've noticed. I go into the font files itself, and look at the fonts. For some reason they seem to make copies of some fonts, not all of them, but some which really causes havoc (still haven't figured out why this happens either). I then remove those copies from the font file and trash them. Seems to straigten out the problem.

If you have a relatively small set of fonts (100 or less) that you use constantly I would recommend NOT using Suitcase to manage your fonts.

Either put them directly into the fonts folder of the user or use a ‘lighter’ font manager such as Linotype Font Explorer X.

Regular housekeeping of font caches, especially with Xpress 6 on OS/X is vital.

http://www.dtptypes.co.uk

LATEST:

I downloaded a demo version of 7.2 today - and it appears to fix the problem!!!!

HOWEVER... Upgrading all our software at 250GBP +VAT x 6 seems a little steep just to fix a problem! But I can't see any other way around it. Then what if after upgrading, the problem comes back? We might buy one version and see how it goes for a few months.

I am speaking to Tech support at quark at the moment, but they are a bit slow to respond between emails.

Watch this space...

i have the same problems can any one help!!! im using suitcase server/client latest version quark 7.3 os 10.4.10 on G5 Macs Intel & PPC's anyone any ideas font nuke seems to temporarily fix the problem so it must be to do with font caches? am i correct?

We had this problem, too. Very frustrating and downright spooky.

It has something to do with Open Type fonts. I'm not a font expert, but it seems that each time a different user opened these files we had trouble with, cache or preferences got saved somewhere in their system that played havoc with the unseen font list of the document.

If I gave enough of a crap, I would investigate it further by examining the font list with AppleScript on each person's computer, but I had an easier time banning open type from our company until we move away from 6.5.

It didn't have anything to do with Suitcase, as far as I could tell.