Garbled fonts in Entourage. Corrupt fonts in Safari. Weird symbol fonts in Apple Mail. How frustrating!
Click on any of jumbled font examples that you might be experiencing. We’ve documented a fix for each font problem on a separate post in our troubleshooting blog.
This post includes a fix for one source of garbled fonts in Mac OS X. For other fixes check out our special Garbled Fonts Troubleshooting Guide.
The Problem: Safari, Entourage or other applications show unfamiliar characters overlapping each other. If you’re seeing garbled text similar to our example above, it is most likely caused by a corrupt font cache file.
This is one of those tips we hope you’ll never have to use.
Should you find yourself needing to recover lost files from a problem hard drive, we’ve had the most luck with Data Rescue II by Prosoft Engineering:
Link: Data Rescue II
You can download this data recovery tool and scan your hard drive for free. You only need to buy the $100 software if it succeeds in finding files you want to recover.
Many OpenType fonts include a collection of alternative character glyphs which can be used to add an extra flourish to your typography. This is particularly useful in Adobe’s OpenType script fonts such as Bickham Script.
AppleJack is a great troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X. With AppleJack installed, you can troubleshoot a computer even if Mac OS X won’t fully start, or don’t have a startup CD handy.
We recomend AppleJack in our tiny-but-popular My Mac Won’t Start! guide. We’ve been holding back this tip for a new version that is compatible with Apple’s new Intel-based Macs. Happily, version 1.4.3 which adds Intel-compatibilities was released this month.
This is the oddest line item in the Creativetechs marketing budget for 2006. 55 bucks for our message on a digital piece of toast?
Link: Your Name on Toast
I’m a Seth Godin junkie, and he mentioned this site on his blog. I would have dismissed this out of hand from any other source.
This is admittedly last-minute, but if you’re in New York City looking for something to do tonight we suggest you stop by the SOHO Apple store (103 Prince Street; corner Prince and Greene) for a multimedia presentation by Seattle-based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis.
Part of a free lecture series presented by Apple and ASMP.
