What are font caches and why do they exist? |
To work properly, Mac OS X must activate and cache
fonts. Font caches are used to speed the display
of text on your screen. Other applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress
and Microsoft office have their own caches which they use for display in their document windows as well.
When these caches work, everything is fine, but when they don’t, your documents become unusable. Before you do, you might want to understand why you need to clear them. You know you’re having application font cache problems when you see any of the conditions listed below.
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| Jumbled text |
Text appears jumbled or as gibberish in a document you open |
| Incorrect text reflow |
Text flows incorrectly from line to line in a document |
| Printing problems |
Mysterious font substitutions, unintelligible printing errors, PostScript problems, PDF jobs that won’t distill or other strange printing behaviors |
| Font menus fail |
Font menus in your applications are not updating when you activate or deactivate fonts |
| Inconsistent font problems |
Documents or specific fonts behave inconsistently from one use to another |
Clearing Mac OS X Font Caches
When you find that you're having font cache problems, use Smasher to clear them. It's best to save your work and close all your open applications before you run Smasher's cache clearing service.
- Click the Caches button on the Smasher toolbar or select Smash Font Caches (Command+K) under the Tools menu.
- Click the Mac OS X option in the Caches options sheet.
- Click the Smash Selected Caches button.
- You will be prompted to Authenticate as an Administrator. Type your user name and password into the Authenticate dialog box and click the OK button
- You will then be told that the system, local, and user font caches have been deleted. You must choose to either Shut down or Restart using the respective buttons on this new dialog sheet. When you restart, your system will rebuild the caches from those fonts that are active in the various system fonts
folders or in your font manager.
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Note: Clearing Mac OS font caches removes cache files that keep track of deactivated fonts in Apple's Font Book it is advisable that you open Font Book after your system restarts and deactivate the fonts you do not plan to use in your applications.
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