Quark6 & Fonts: Printing problem

[BradyLS]

Hello,

We have a Mac Mirror Drive G4 with OS 10.2.8 and Quark 6 and Suitcase X1. Just today, we're experiencing printing problems with a particular font. The font looks great on screen but bitmapped when printed.

The font in question is Futura Bold, a postscript font with the appropriate screen and printer font which FontDoctor X gave a clean bill of health to.

The problem appears to be isolated to this one font, no matter which document (old or new) that it appears in.

ASking the designer if there was any memorable change in their system configuratrion between yesterday and today produced a negative.

Trashing Quarks preferences didn't help.

I'm going back to recreate the problem in another application on the same computer to be sure that it's isolated to Quark.

Can anyone help out? What am I forgetting to check? What might be the problem?

Thanks to you all in advance!

Brady

 

[BradyLS]

Update: Yesterday, Quark was sluggish and then today it wouldn't load fonts properly. Noticed also that Suitcase X1 wouldn't stay put in the Login Items folder. Quark also took a long tme to load. For a complex set of reasons, I decided to reinstall Suitcase and launch Quark under the Quark prefs that were in place yesterday.

Things are now largely where they were yesterday when I posted: Futura Bold, despite passing a test with Font Doctor, looks fine on-screen but prints with jaggies-- though it is a postscript font with the appropriate scrren and printer font in place.

So this may not be related to Quark, but that's where it was first noticed. It could be a font problem, a Suitcase problem, or (long odds, IMO,) a system problem.

Thanks for looking in!

Brady

 

[Baddoggy]

Were you able to re-create the problem on another mac?

Suitcase under OSX as any other OS does seem to throw up some problems with corrupt fonts or un-matched ID's between the font suitcase and postcript. Sorry to state the obvious...have you checked that the postscript is where it should be?

If all else fails...Maybe re-install the font from your original disk, (after deleting it from suitcase).

BD

 

[BradyLS]

Thanks, BD

I did swap and replace the troublesome font from the enclosing folder Suitcase is linked to, but did not delete and recreate the link from Suitcase. I'll give this a shot.

Thanks again!

Brady

 

[Baddoggy]

Make sure you delete it from the known fonts in suitcase rather than just out of the suitcase set.

BD

 

[BradyLS]

Thanks again for your help, BD! But I think all your concerns and advice were sound given the problem as I presented it.

None of the troubleshooting steps I've taken seem to make Quark and Suitcase launch any faster. However, the applications _will_ load together if we simply wait for computer/spinning beachball to do what it must.

The designer who experiences this in the severest case seems to wait about 10-15 minutes occassionally, but it's hard to isolate why that is. I generally recommend for the users in my group to launch applications from the Dock, but some will go to the 'Recent' menu and launch from there, or from a file on their desktop, instead.

Thanks again!

 

[Baddoggy]

I've had one user here who has experienced a similar problem. E.G. spinning wheel of death! Especially on start up and switching between applications.

After a fresh instal to 10.3.3 upgrade to CS and 6.1. The problems when away. Until...back comes the wheel of death.

Scratching my head...I pondered a while...took a look at his font sets in suitcase, only to see he had loaded every font available to users...I cannot repeat my reaction....But did delete every font from the Suitcase database and told him only to load the fonts he uses as Suitase struggles to manage a couple of thousand fonts...
The beachball has left us for a while...but I'm sure it will return...

BD

 

[BradyLS]

Well, I must admit that we HAVE loaded every font we own into Suitcase. Even if we only temporarily activate those fonts and sets that we will need to use. And the designer currently experiencing the problem does have to manage a lot fonts and open documents when assembling our magazine.

I have told them that Suitcase and Quark have to check out the font database every time it loads. And we all share pretty much the same database on our individual computers. But we only load the fonts we need and startup times seem longer for some than others. (Or it may may be that some are more impatient or sensitive to the time than others. I haven't clocked the load times for Suitcase and Quark on every machine!)

The designers in my group grumble occasssionally about the glory days of OS 9 and ATM when, seemingly, it was "all there and ready now."

I don't know what to tell them. After switching to OS 10.2.6 and Quark 6, we picked up Suitcase on the recommendation of our magazine's printer and even brought him in to share the philosphy of font management that their prepress room abides by. Overall, I like the features that come with Suictase better, but ATM Deluze did feel "snappier" under nine and Quark 4.11. But, that's just the impression.

Maybe if we ran Suitcase off a single, powerful server (like they do) then things would be different. Or maybe if we updated our fonts to the most recent versions published by Adobe or others among the more reliable font studios, things would be smoother.

Fortunately, we can get our work done as is, we just have some rough patches to smooth over...

Thanks again!

Brady

 

[Baddoggy]

Totally understand your situation...and users feelings about ATM...shame Adobe have decided to drop out of the font managment market with this product. But people...no matter what improvements they get to their working environment find something to moan about...to tell the truth, I'd rather take on some poor street dweller who is glad of having a paycheck at the end of the month rather than some of the people in the market place who seem to think the industry owes them a living....

All we can do is live with what we've got. Bet the printer's users have more disapline when managing what fonts they have open.

Basically, I've told my abusive user....if you don't work the way I know it works...don't come to me moaning...cos I'm not going to support your problems if you don't take my advise...harsh...but hey...lifes tuff sometimes....and if there's one thing I hate, its people who moan and when you help them....they don't take your advice.

Do what I did....delete all his sets early in the morning when he's not in...test to see if it fixed the problem....if it does...whoopeee....your a star....and he moans a little about the new way of working....if it don't....say...oh...has it...odd that....I haven't touched your machine....LOL....

Good luck Bradly

BD

 

[bigfeet1980]

This link is a must read by all OS X / QXP 6 Users - and is particularly helpful for all you pre-press buds:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?50@@.68908e3c

As for Futura, a few users in other forums have tested this problem and have been able to duplicate it using various machines, font managers and apps including Ilustrator.

They have concluded it's a OS X bug and have reported their findings to Apple.

Here's a link if you want to read an extensive thread on the subject that contains some work-arounds that may help until Apple fixes bug.

http://www.macintouch.com/quark06.html#mar23

 

[BradyLS]

Ouch. My boss will be "thrilled" to hear it could be an OS X problem. Thanks for the headsup though. Better to learn now than later, I guess.

 

[bigfeet1980]

If I were you I would conduct one final test before giving up on futura.

The Concluding remark in the above referenced Apple Link covering Font Issues in OS X (I've pasted it below), suggest that you track down and eliminate all of the duplicate fonts on your system. Do a find for "futura" and see what comes up. Then make sure the only remaing Futura Font (postscript) is what Suitcase XI has active. Be careful though. I'm no super expert on OS X font management.

Conclusion: Tracking down and eliminating all of the duplicate fonts on your system will allow you to use your PostScript versions through Font Book, Suitcase, Font Reserve or other font manager without interference from other versions automatically given higher priority by OS X, and should then appear properly in all of your applications.

 

[BradyLS]

Thanks, BD. I'm pretty sure we have but one copy of Futura in our system, but it never hurts to doublecheck.