Expert: Amy - 10/5/2007

Question
Hi,

I am on a Mac and installed upwards of 400 fonts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English) onto my Fontbook. However, a very short list shows up on my Illustrator. What could be the issue?


Answer
Hi Christine,

A couple of issues may be affecting you.

One - Foreign Language font support. Not all foreign language fonts are supported in all versions of Illustrator. You didn't specify which version you're using but... keep that in mind. I wish I could point you to an exact article about Mac and Unicode fonts but the Adobe forums have been under construction this whole week and I can't find the article.

Two - Way too many fonts. Try quitting AI, then removing half of the non-essential (non-system) fonts and see if that works. Any one of those fonts could be corrupt, too. If you have time, try to remove a bunch, then put them back a few at a time - you may find the corrupt one. If you have a font utility that can examine your fonts and tell you if any are corrupt, great!

Three - Your font lists may be corrupt. Adobe apps don't use Fontbook cache - they build their own. Do a search on your mac for all instances of files matching the pattern adobefnt*.lst where * is a number and delete them. These are built by Adobe apps upon the first launch, then used to speed up startup upon each consecutive launch.

So, I guess I'd start by doing #3. Make sure that no adobe apps are running when you do it, okay? Then, if the fonts don't show up, try #2. I've heard "250 fonts" as a number but I have more than that myself. If your foreign language fonts still don't show up, you might be a victim of #1. I encourage you to read up on foreign languages and Adobe apps at some point in the future when the forum's up and running and easier to navigate!

-Amy