Quark Forums

Can anoyne tell me, what the FontStubs-folder is used for? (user->Library->Preferences->Quark8->Jaws->FontStubs->WesternFonts)

We are using Universal Type Server 2. But some fonts are not auto activated, when a document is opened. When we try to activate them manually, an error tells us, that font activation could not be completed because of an operating system activation error.

We guess, that the font is already on the system and because of that, Universal Type Server does not activate the font.(occurs not only for this one font.. in this case, it's Formata BQ Regular)

We only found in FontStubs some PS-Files, which are named like fonts. When they are deleted, they are replaced automatically....

We are using OS 10.4.11.

The better question is what is the jaws folder for. Explaining that will explain the font stubs. JAWS is the internal PDF engine that QuarkXPress uses to generate PDFs when you export. The JAWS engine uses a jaws folder to keep track of what fonts are active while XPress is open. It does this by writing little font stubs in to the Font Stubs folder in the jaws folder. Anytime you open XPress, it checks to see if this folder exists. If it doesn't it recreates it and then the JAWS engine notes which fonts are active and writes to that folder.

None of these font stubs are actual fonts. They are just indicators to the JAWS engine. They don't have any effect on installed fonts, font issues, missing fonts, etc as they aren't actual fonts. What they do do, is slow the system down. Many people (such as myself) are in the habit of denying the system access permissions to that folder. If the JAWS engine cannot write to that folder then the system doesn't slow down as much.

The whole JAWS/jaws folder issue is a real PITA for those who do not use Export to PDF. 

 Thank you for this detailed answer. Really interesting. I learned something new :)

Today we had a document, where approximately 25 fonts were not automatically activated. So I talked to Extensis about the font activation problem. They gave me the hint, that I should clean the font cache files. I used the program Font Finagler. Result was, that the problem was solved :) After that, the fonts were activated automatically when I opened the document again. And in addition, the manual font activation problem in Universal Type Server was solved too :)