Font menu won’t open, can type name, but cannot open menu – help!

C
Posted By
chebello
Aug 28, 2004
Views
491
Replies
13
Status
Closed
Hi All,
I opened a case with Adobe, but everything we tried failed, I have Photoshop 7 & CS, they both behave the same way. Illustrator, After Effect, In Design, Acrobat all work fine. I have blown away the Photoshop preferences files, tried a new user, even reinstalled. No joy. I am running Mac OS 10.3.5 on a G5.
It worked yesterday just fine. Today, I opened a new file, then selected the type tool, and clicked in the window.. a small black square appeared, it created a new layer and no text. The font was stuck as ‘gadget’ Fontbook shows all the fonts (a ton of them) I can enter the name in the font menu window and it recognizes it.
But I cannot get the menu to open and display the font list.

Any suggestions?

I have fonts under /library/application support/fonts & /user/[username]/library/fonts The other apps see all of them, photoshop seems hosed.

Related Tags
font help menu name open type

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Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 28, 2004
Did you Repair Permissions both before AND after installing new software? This is essential in OSX.

Also, run Cocktail which will automatically do a number of maintenance tasks for you.

FontBook could also be a source of the problem. Find it’s pref. files and trash them too.
R
Ram
Aug 28, 2004
Fontbook shows all the fonts (a ton of them)

Have you tried a true professional font management utility like FontAgent Pro?

For now, try doing a search for "gadget" and remove anything you find by that name that sounds related to the gadget font. Then try using a utility like DeepSix to "remove the infamous AdobeFnt files that seem to replicate across the system. Secondly, it removes the font cache files from the various libraries across the system. All of these files that are deleted are automatically rebuilt new when they are needed. Normally these can all be removed by hand, but that can be a tremendous time-waster to have to do various times a day in a busy environment. DeepSix will remove these files for you automatically each and every time.
C
chebello
Aug 28, 2004
Okay, it’s not gadget, I changed the font manually to charcoal besides, I can type in gadet font within photoshop. I just can’t use the pulldown menu to see the fonts I have installed. All of the other adobe programs work just fine.

I have run ‘repair on the permissions’ again, no changes.

No, I do not have a ‘professional’ font management tool. Up till now, I didn’t thnk I needed one. I enjoyed searching through all the fonts to find the best one to use.

This is not a system problem, photoshop is not functioning correctly. I lost an external firewire drive the same time I lost the menu functionality.. The 2 have to be related. Anyway to clear the font pathes? I’ll blow away the photoshop pathes and prefs again.

More suggestions are welcome.. I’ll look into getting cocktail and a font managetment program.

Chebello
R
Ram
Aug 28, 2004
Run DeepSix as per my post #2.
C
chebello
Aug 28, 2004
I downloaded DeepSix and ran it twice, then I blew away the photoshop preferences again. Then I restarted photoshop.

Helvetica shows up as the feault font, still unable to pull down the font menu. I opened the character tab and it won’t allow me to pull down the font menu either.

Then I typed in ‘char’ and the font menu filled in the font name ‘charcoal’ I typed ‘cha’ and it fills in th font name chalkboard. It knows about all the fonts, I can use them IF I know the name and type it in manually. I’ve lost some crucial functionality and don’t know how it happened or how to fix it.

I’m still trying your suggestions..
EH
Ed_Hannigan
Aug 28, 2004
I seem to remember (somewhere) an issue where the menu would not work if there were more than a certain number of fonts loaded. Maybe if you tried remove say half of them and restart something might happen. Worth a try.

That’s what the Font Management utility is for. Surely you don’t need all those fonts "on" at the same time.
C
chebello
Aug 30, 2004
You are ALL correct! I had too many fonts active. I bought Adobe Type Manager Deluxe and turned off all but the included fonts and one that I need right now. I then disabled all of the fonts with Font Book and took it out of my dock.

After restarting Photoshop, everything works as expected. Except the firewire drive which is dead.

I’ll bet that photoshop has a limit around 1024 active fonts. I discovered with ATM that I had 1158 active. That has now changed.

Thanks to everyone for their kind support and suggestions, I followed all of them. Deactivating the fonts, quitting Font Book and installing ATM worked fine. Thanks again.

Che Bello!
R
Ram
Aug 30, 2004
Chebello,

Are you on Mac OS 9.x??? I thought you said you were in 10.3.5!

ATM Deluxe is NOT supported in OS X. It won’t even run in OS X, and it is not supported in the Classic environment under OS X.

Something is wrong with this picture.
C
chebello
Aug 30, 2004
Well that make sense of one thing.. I wondered why OS 9 started up when I installes it.. yep, I’m running OS X 10.3.5 Hummmm

BUmmer, looks like I wasted $65.. should I use Font Book then?

Wat IS supported/recommended for OS X ?

okay.. now I’m confused..
C
chebello
Aug 30, 2004
I just rechecked, the download instructions at Adobe store lists OS X w/ Internet explorer 5.1 as being okay. Why would they list that combo if it was incompatible?
B
Buko
Aug 30, 2004
ATMD is only for OS9

FontAgent Pro is the best Font manager for OSX.

Font Book pretty much sucks if you have more than 100 or so Fonts.

Never activate more fonts than you need.

Just because you can download something in OSX does not mean it is made to be used in OSX.
R
Ram
Aug 30, 2004
CheBello:

Adobe discontinued the development of ATM Deluxe when Apple was at Mac OS System 9.1. It is not compatible with OS X (any version) nor will it ever be.

You must have missed the Adobe warning at:

<http://www.adobe.com/products/atm/atmOSX.html>

Here’s the pertinent excerpt:

Using ATM Deluxe 4.6.1 and Mac OS X v.10.2

The current version of Adobe Type Manager® Deluxe for the Macintosh (version
4.6), Adobe’s font management application, is not compatible with Mac
OS X, in either native or Classic mode. The supported Macintosh operating systems for ATM Deluxe 4.6 are Mac OS 8.1 through 9.0.4. (Though ATM Deluxe is not officially supported under Mac OS 9.1 or 9.2, initial testing has uncovered no known problems.) As an alternative for users of Mac OS X, Adobe is recommending that customers evaluate [other font management] products. Adobe has no plans at present to create a version of ATM Deluxe that runs on Mac OS X.

An unfortunate expenditure indeed. 🙁
C
chebello
Sep 1, 2004
Thanks for the info, I’ve disabled ATM, gone back to Font Book for now. Deactivating the massive list of fonts corrected the Photoshop bad behaviour, I’ll look into FontAgent Pro.

Again, Thanks for the interest and effort!!
Che Bello!

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