Re: Why your Office 2004 Fonts want to keep loading in OS X - an explaination

From: Paul Berkowitz (berkowit_at_spoof_silcom.com)
Date: 02/16/05 

Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:29:29 -0800

Thanks for this summary, Jeff.

[Unfortunately, your setting follow-up only to a newsgroup to which I'm not
subscribed and which cannot be reached from the news server (Microsoft) on
which I'm reading your post, all previous attempts to send this reply
errored and backfired. So please don't do that again. Thanks. It took some
effort to get this to the right place.] 

-- 
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.
PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X  or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
> From: Jeff Wiseman <wisemanja@earthlink.net>
> Organization: Earthlink
> Reply-To: <wisemanja@earthlink.net>
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,microsoft.public.mac.office.word
> Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.apps
> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:21:45 GMT
> Subject: Why your Office 2004 Fonts want to keep loading in OS X - an
> explaination
> 
> Why your Office 2004 Fonts want to keep loading in OS X
> 
> (please note followup-to newsgroup)
> 
> 
> After spending a LOT of time screwing around with this, and with
> with the gracious coaching by Matt Neuburg (thanks a lot Matt!)
> as well as some other participants on various newgroups, I've
> finally come to a fairly solid understanding of this problem and
> why it is occurring. I want to get this summary down so others
> running into it won't have the aggravation that I've had.
> Unfortunately, there's not much can be done about the problem
> except avoid it until Apple stabilizes their font support
> software and Microsoft stops using strange undocumented controls
> in their products.
> 
> 
> SYMPTOMS:
> 
> Every time someone starts an Office 2004 product such as Word for
> the first time, they get the entire office font set dumped into
> their home font folder ~/Library/Fonts, EVEN IF the fonts are
> already installed there or anyplace else in OS X (usually the
> /Library/Fonts folder).
> 
> 
> VARIATIONS:
> 
> It's possible on a system with multiple accounts for some users
> not to see this problem (i.e., fonts never load) and other to see
> it. The chances of incurring the problem increase with the use of
> the Font Book utility.
> 
> 
> MECHANISM:
> 
> Office seems to detect a first run on its products by the absence
> of Microsoft office related preferences in the
> ~/Library/preferences area. When an application like Word is
> first started and it determines that this is a first run, it
> checks the OS X font environment of the User for the presence of
> one or more specific Windows True Type fonts distributed with the
> Office Installation. The font(s) checked for is from the
> following list:
> 
> Batang.ttf
> Gulim.ttf
> MS Gothic.ttf
> MS Mincho.ttf
> MS PGothic.ttf
> MS PMincho.ttf
> PMingLiU.ttf
> SimSun.ttf
> 
> I do not know which of these fonts is the trigger but it does
> seem to be one or more of these. Note that this set is the
> COMPLETE set of Windows Truetype fonts provided with Office. Also
> note that they are all Asian type fonts.
> 
> When Office is checking for the presence of whichever font it is
> looking for, it does so by using the OS X font management
> facilities and not just looking in locations by itself. This is
> significant as I will explain later. If it does NOT find the
> font(s) in question, it then copies all of the fonts in the
> Applications area for Office into the User's home font folder
> (~/Library/Fonts). This is a reasonable algorithm for
> Installation in that a user has control over their own fonts and
> an Administrator can move them to a common area if they so desired.
> 
> PROBLEMS:
> 
> The main issue is that Office tends to install all of its fonts
> even when they are already installed. In searching this out I've
> discovered that it is a result of 3 issues:
> 
> 1) The set of 8 fonts identified above are all wacko to start
> with and all exhibit the same characteristics in the Mac's font
> system. None of the other 70+ fonts installed by Office have any
> of these problems. None of the Windows TrueType fonts that come
> with the OS X have these problems. Some strange characteristics
> when installed in OS 10.3.6 are:
> 
> a) For any of these fonts, if you double-click on the font,
> although the Font Book utility opens, you will not get an install
> window.
> b) If these fonts are duplicated in the Font system, they can
> "disappear" from the font system. This doesn't mean they are
> Disabled, but rather they won't even show up as Disabled fonts.
> c) Disabling one of these fonts can result in it disappearing.
> 
> The problem in a nutshell is that these fonts are disappearing
> from the font system, even though they actually exist in the
> proper folders. Since Office uses the Mac's view of installed
> fonts, It reports to Office that they do not exist and as a
> result, Office reinstalls another set of unneeded fonts.
> 
> 2) The fonts in each user's environment (i.e., the list of all
> enabled fonts that a user can see or use) are determined through
> the Mac's font management system. It appears that the files that
> track this information can be very unstable. This information is
> kept partly in the com.apple.ATS.plist file in the user's
> preferences folder. When fonts disappear from the visibility of
> applications and utilities such as Font Book, deleting the
> preference file and logging out then in can cause those lost
> fonts to again show up in the tool's menu (although collection
> enable/disable states can be altered and would need to be reset).
> I have found through several hours of experimenting that the
> Microsoft fonts listed above are the only ones that seem to keep
> being dropped from sight which has the same effect of disabling
> them. None of the other Office fonts are affected like this. In
> other words, the very fonts that Microsoft is using to determine
> whether or not their font set is installed are the very ones that
> are so ill-behaved that the font system keeps losing track of
> them, necessitating a preference file deletion in order to get
> them detectable again.
> 
> 3) The Font Book utility is very buggy IMHO (I've seen Beta test
> software far more stable than this thing). Without further
> experimentation using other font tools, I personally have become
> convinced that the Font Book itself is the main reason for the
> instabilities identified in "2)" above. I believe this because
> even the handling of collections seems to be just as buggy as the
> direct font handling. It has the appearance to work ok at first
> but if you look closer and actually try doing what it is supposed
> to do, you start seeing constant inconsistencies. If you don't
> use it for anything except previewing fonts, it seems ok. But, if
> you start creating multiple collections with large numbers of
> fonts in them (e.g., an "Office fonts" collection) strange things
> start to happen. I've seen collections that when you drag a font
> from the computer collection to it, it totally ignores it. Then
> when you try to delete the collection, it refuses to go away. If
> you then look into the Font collections folder you can see things
> like "test.collection" and "test.collection.collection" both
> sitting there.
> 
> When you have duplicate fonts in the system, it can get pretty
> confused here too. I saw it once where it wouldn't even let you
> assign one of the duplicates to a collection since it seemed to
> insist on locking it into a "Family" that it had found elsewhere.
> However, the Font Book's tolerance for the wacko font set given
> previously is particularly bad. When these fonts are present,
> especially as duplicates (which is what this problem is all
> about--installing the font set when it is already in place) you
> hardly have to do anything in Font Book to see them disappear
> from the view. When you can't see them in Font Book, your
> applications can't see them, and Office's font installation
> software can't see them resulting in the problem being documented
> here.
> 
> 
> RECOMMENDATIONS:
> 
> A) Don't try deleting the Asian Windows TrueType fonts. This
> triggers the problem. Even touching them or Disabling them from
> the Font Book can trigger the problem. MS put the fonts there,
> now you just have to live with them and the space they take up on
> your disk and font pulldown lists. Don't remove these fonts from
> the Applications folder for Office so they won't install. This
> will also trigger the problem.
> 
> B) Avoid doing or trusting anything significant in Font Book.
> Even though it is "supposed to" do things, I have lost nearly all
> confidence in it. If it doesn't seem to have all the fonts
> visible, delete the com.apple.ATS.plist preference and log in
> again. That will start you clean again but only a few keystrokes
> in the Font Book can regenerate the problem.
> 
> C) If Font Book is locked up such that you don't seem to be able
> to work on certain collections, try opening an application (such
> as text edit) that has the font panel. Although the font panel is
> functionally very much like Font Book, It will sometimes let you
> do things when Font Book has gone brain dead. For example, if you
> can't drag and drop a font from the computer collection into your
> own new collection, try the same thing from the Font Panel, you
> may find that it actually works there.
> 
> 
> I hope that this is useful to others. I wish I had this
> information before I had to start screwing around trying to
> figure it out myself. All this information is only my personal
> opinions based on the experience I've had over the last couple of
> days. Any additional information or corrections to
> misinterpretations I've made would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> - Jeff

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