I hate corrupt fonts!

Here at IP our studio is all kitted out with Macs. I do love Macs and, let's be honest, who doesn't?! But sadly, even the mighty Mac is victim to poor computer performance every now and again. Finally, after trawling the internet to resolve several extremely annoying computer issues, I came across an article that put the blame on fonts!
I must admit I do find it hard not to turn down a good free font, but can this really be the problem? Well I have to say after following a set of instructions, not only did my computer resolve nearly all its issues, but also the performance was so much better!
I would thoroughly recommend following these instructions to make your Mac purr like it used to!

1. Consolidate All Your Fonts Into One Folder:
Move all fonts out of the /Users/[username]/Library/Fonts folder.
Move all fonts out of the /Library/Fonts folder.
Move most fonts out of /System/Library/Fonts except:
Geneva
LastResort
Monaco
Keyboard
LucidaGrande
AquaKanaBold.otf
AquaKanaRegular.otf
(Keep Helvetica and Helvetica Neue if you do not have PostScript or OpenType versions of these. Make sure that these two fonts are in your startup (permanent) activation set if you do remove them. See more on these two below.)

If you are using classic, take everything out of /System Folder/Fonts except Charcoal, Chicago, Geneva, and Monaco.

Remember that if you are using your older Type 1 Postscript fonts you still need the screen (bitmap) font suitcase and the outline (postscript) font. (In Mac OS X, font suitcases look and behave like other font files: You can't open them by double-clicking the file as you can in Mac OS 9. Use Font Doctor or Smasher to edit these font suitcases if required.)

It is also advised that you remove everything from program specific folders in the /Library/Application Support and ~/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support folders. This includes font folders for Microsoft products, Adobe, and Macromedia.
Adobe puts fonts here:
~user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
The exception is the Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd folder. Don't delete this file, or you'll break your adobe apps.

NOTE: iCal and a few other programs require Helvetica and/or Helvetica Neue. You don't necessarily have to use the version installed by default in OSX (dFont) - you can replace these with other TrueType or PostScript versions that you use for publishing.
If you use the dFont version of either of these fonts, you may find the type in your older jobs is reflowing. If you had a PostScript or TrueType version of these fonts installed before going to OS X, you should choose to install that version instead of the dFont. Programs that require these fonts will work correctly no matter what version of these fonts is installed.

2. Delete the Myriad Font Caches:
If you see garbled font display or your applications are crashing or freezing then a likely cause is a corrupt font cache.
Under OS 9 the system would read and write to font files directly. If a crash happened at the wrong moment it was (remotely) possible for the font file to become corrupt, which could lead to all sorts of crashes. In OS X, instead of opening the original font, everything is copied into a
cache. This protects the original from damage, but unfortunately, the cache files seem to become corrupt much more often under OSX than the fonts themselves became corrupt under OS9. (from link #2)

Adobe uses it's own font caching technology (of course) to delete all the Adobe font caches do a find for "AdobeFnt" and delete everything that it finds with a .lst extension (e.g AdobeFnt.lst, AdobeFnt08.lst etc). Warning - do not delete the AdobeFnt.DB files.

You can use an app to delete all your font caches (see links below) or do it manually.
There's a number of files and folders to delete - in all cases, delete the object listed:
/Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ATS.plist
/System/Library/Caches/fontTablesAnnex
/Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS (this is a FOLDER, not a file)
/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ (Office Font Cache)
Adobe Font Caches: any file that starts with AdobeFnt and ends with a .lst extension
/System/Library/Caches/All.files.whose.names.include.ATS or font. The com.apple.ATS.System.fcache and com.apple.ATSServer.FODB_System files are the most important ones to delete. But it doesn't hurt to delete of all of them.

Whichever method you choose, restart your Mac after deleting the cache files. That’s the best way to make sure OS X immediately and correctly creates new files. If a corrupt font is actually causing your problem, eliminating the cache files won’t help – but cleaning out your font caches is often effective and certainly easy.

3. Clean Up Your Font Library.
Run FontDoctor or Font Agent over all the collected fonts to remove corrupt, orphaned, duplicate and unnecessary screen fonts.
Normally you do not want dFont duplicates of any PostScript or OpenType fonts - especially the Helvetica, Times, Symbol and Zapf dFonts.
Once you've cleaned up all your fonts (Font Doctor does a nice job of putting them all in lovely alphabetised order) then you can use your font mangement utility to activate and deactivate as required. Don't have too many fonts activating at startup - let them auto-activate when possible and make sure the auto-activated fonts are set to deactivate on restart.

4. Burn a Master CD
We recommend burning a CD (or DVD if your font library is huge) to keep as a known good copy of all your fonts. Copy this CD to each workstation's hard drive and use Suitcase, Font Agent Pro or Font Explorer X to open and close them. If your font library changes regularly, burn the collection to a CD-RW. Try to enforce a strict font management policy - only one or two people in the studio should be able to add fonts to the company library.

5. Garbled Fonts in Safari, Mail
A common cause of this problem can be activating multiple versions of Helvetica. Mac OS X comes with a Helvetica.dfont already installed in the system. Activating another version of Helvetica can trigger this problem.
(Also, if you have the font Helvetica Fractions in your font collection, this can potentially trigger this problem as well. See above.)


FYI: Font Load Order (Hierarchy) under OS X
Mac OS X will use the fonts in the highest location first - later duplicates will not be loaded.
1. Application Font Folders
(eg /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ and /Applications/Adobe Indesign CS/Fonts)
2. Application Support Folders (in /Library or /Users/[username]/Library)
3. /Users/[username]/Library/Fonts
4. /Library/Fonts
5. /Network/Library/Fonts
6. /System/Library/Fonts
7. /System Folder/Fonts (if Classic is used)

Many thanks to Adam Dennis for this great Mac help.

Additional Resources:
1 A great PDF put together by J.S. McCarthy Printers, in Maine. You can find it as issue #3 on this page:
http://www.jsmccarthy.com/technical_tips.asp

2. An excellent PDF on font management with OS X:
http://www.ideastraining.com/DownloadAndTips/DownloadsAndTips.html

3. Extensis Font Management Best Practices Guide
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/pdfs/fonts_osx.pdf

Font Management Utilities:
FontFinangler (US$10) -- Font Cache Cleaner.
http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

FontDoctor (US$70) -- Coretech techos won't leave home without this wonderful software.
http://www.morrisonsoftdesign.com/with_fl/index.html

Smasher (US$50) -- a mix of Font Doctor and FontFinangler, also lets you edit font suitcases.
http://www.insidersoftware.com/SM.php