Quark Forums

We just got new Macs and are using Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 and although we have Quark 6.5 and Quark 8 loaded we mainly use Quark 7.5. We turned off all the fonts in Font Book except Geneva, Lucida Grande, Monaco and the OCR A and B BarCodePro fonts as we did not want a ton of fonts showing in Quark. When checking there it does say the others are all off. We mainly keep Helvetica, Swiss and Frutiger turned on and then load from Suitcase Fusion 12.1.7 the fonts we require for each particular job. I was off over Christmas and when returning I now have tons of system fonts in Quark that weren't there before. The lady at the Mac beside me worked over Christmas and agrees they were not there then yet when we returned Jan 5th we both had all these fonts showing in Quark. These are fonts from our System. When I go to my hard drive/System/Library/Fonts they appear to be the one's showing in Quark. We were sure that Font folder had most fonts removed before so they didn't appear but somehow they are there again. My question is how do we get rid of these. We are not experts in the running of the Mac and don't want to remove things that make the system run and mess up our Macs. Our IT people are not knowledgeable in the running of Macs, they work in the Windows platform so we're sort of on our own on this one. We'd sure appreciate any help we can get on this issue.

Lyn. The Mac stores fonts in three places.

1) System>Library>Fonts: These are available systemwide, usable by the system and all apps.

2) Library>Fonts: These are available to all applications, but not necessarily the system.

3) Users>~username>Library>Fonts: Available only to that particular user.

You should note that Apple itself explicitly recommends against using FontBook in a production environment. Here's why: The way FontBook works is to actually PHYSICALLY move fonts in and out of the folders named above when you activate and deactivate them. If you have numerous fonts (and many production environments do) this has great possibility for FontBook to screw it up and then to leave fonts in places they don't belong.

On top of this you are also using Suitcase.

Take a look here: http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

This page will tell you what minimum fonts you need in the folders I named above. I'd also delete this file: com.apple.FontBook.plist

That file is in Users>~username>Preferences

The next time you open FontBook a new file will be generated. But I'd suggest just sticking with Suitcase. You can create some sets and then just use Suitcase to activate needed fonts.

For example, we have 2 main folders. Pueblo Standard Fonts and Pueblo Expanded Fonts. Inside are all the fonts (in seperate folders) that we think are either Standard to our use (i.e., used frequently) or Expanded (used less frequently and not standard). Suitcase sees those two main folders as sets.  We have other font sets, but we only activate those as needed.

Hope some of that helps. 

Thank you so much for the help and the quick response Erik. I printed out all the info from the site you gave me and when we have a moment this week we're going through it line by line. Hopefully we understand it, as I said, we're not anything near being tech type gals. Take Care Lyn

Well, if you need any help, let us know.... 

As my co-worker said "Think he'd like to come here and do it for us"?? - lol. Canada's a lovely place to visit, especially in January when the snow's a mile high. Rough trip to work today. Live about an hour away. Hope I haven't discouraged you from the trip?????? Too much sun where you are anyway. Lyn

No, no discouragement here. Actually quite the opposite, although I'd like to make the trip rather permanent – particularly in light of the cost of US healthcare and the past actions of a now lame-duck president I don't like.

In any case, organizing your fonts is not difficult, it's just time-consuming. I've had to do it about three or four times at the various places I've encountered disorganized fonts. Mainly, just identify which fonts you have and make folders for them and then place those fonts into those folders. Helvetica fonts go into a Helvetica folder, etc. Those folders go into a folder with the name of the set you want to create in Suitcase. Of course, you leave the necessary fonts in the various Library fonts folders alone.

Assuming a clean install of Suitcase (i.e., no fonts listed in Suitcase) you can then just drag the those folders (the ones named with the set you want to make in Suitcase) in to the Sets pane of Suitcase. It'll scan and add all the fonts. Then, all you need to do is activate what you need via Suitcase.

Now, if you can convince Glenn McDowall to come work on our press I might be able to convince my boss to let me go up there! 

Glad I didn't discourage you. Hear ya about the health care. As for Suitcase we do have a folder we call Fonts_06, inside are all the fonts we use in their own folders, named accordingly. That is all the fonts we use on jobs. These other fonts that appeared in Quark from the system we never use. Just didn't know how they got to show in Quark and don't want them to show there. We only have the three fonts I mentioned always opened in Suitcase. We have a folder there called Always Open, very original - lol. The rest are kept on the server and we load them temporarily as needed. We're rather neat freaks who don't like excess stuff showing thus the call for help regarding these system fonts appearing. We will clear out all that we are allowed to do from the files you sent and for sure we'll yell if we need more help. My son is an IT Manager but not for Macs or I'd nail him :-) Take Care and nice to talk to you Lyn

 Good. You are half-way there then already. Two words for your son. Windows Vista.   

 See you later....

We all use Windows Vista at home. His work is very busy, me thinks son just isn't interested in helping Mommy - lol Bye for now and thanks again Lyn