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Solved: Need OSX system file

While tracking down a nagging problem with a certain app, I've discovered I have a corrupt system font. The app in question has data that is protected by a password, and the password seems to be corrupted; entering the correct password fails. I believe the corruption of the password is related to the corrupt font.

It's necessary for OSX and is probably the cause of my issue. However, getting a font from the install disks is a daunting task; so as a quick fix I'm hoping someone would like to offer to copy the file(s) and either email or post it on your dotmac account's shared folder.

There might (or might not; not sure) be an invisible file, and there's definitely a visible one.

Finder: Find:
file containing: keyboard.dfont
+
show visible and invisible files

If there is an invisible one let me know by posting here. I probably will need both if that's the case. If not, it's simple to go to the visible one at:
~/System/Library/Fonts

PM me and I will give you an eMail address. If there is an invisible one as well, you will probably have to pop both into a folder and compress it before eMailing it. You should be able to copy any invisible file from the Find result window (Option-click: copy then Option-click: paste into a new empty folder). If not, just attach the visible file.

Thanks.

Looks like someone has stepped up to the plate. Thanks to MacDoc.

Sorry no such font exists on my 10.3.8 rig

It's OK Andreww, MacDoc eMailed it to me.

Not sure what to say about you not finding it; it's one of a handful of fonts that OSX needs to work properly. The following are necessary for OSX:

Geneva.dfont
Keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
Monaco.dfont
LucidaGrande.dfont

Without LucidiaGrande.dfont, you Mac won't even boot. I'm sure you have them but just didn't find them for some reason.

Interesting topic Gordguide.

You sent me looking at my /System/Library/Fonts and I found some strange stuff in there.

Here's the Terminal output of that folder:

Code:

total 242640

drwxr-xr-x  29 root  wheel       986 12 Sep  2003 .

drwxr-xr-x  52 root  wheel      1768 11 Feb 19:54 ..

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   5829310 12 Sep  2003 Apple LiGothic Medium.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  10225257 12 Sep  2003 AppleGothic.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     67648 12 Sep  2003 AquaKanaBold.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     67620 12 Sep  2003 AquaKanaRegular.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    390012 17 Sep  2003 Courier.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     82868 17 Sep  2003 Geeza Pro Bold.ttf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    106944 17 Sep  2003 Geeza Pro.ttf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    150624 17 Sep  2003 Geneva.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   7517243 12 Sep  2003 Hei.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    217250 17 Sep  2003 Helvetica.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     21834 17 Sep  2003 Keyboard.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   6099134 17 Sep  2003 LastResort.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   2288714 17 Sep  2003 LucidaGrande.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    212869 17 Sep  2003 Monaco.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   3629900 12 Sep  2003 Osaka.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   2306535 12 Sep  2003 OsakaMono.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     75120 17 Sep  2003 Symbol.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    409153 17 Sep  2003 Times.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    154172 17 Sep  2003 ZapfDingbats.dfont

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  10114744 12 Sep  2003 ???????????????????????? Pro W4.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  11585924 12 Sep  2003 ????????????????????? Pro W3.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  11097336 12 Sep  2003 ????????????????????? Pro W6.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   9367476 12 Sep  2003 ???????????????????????? Pro W3.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   8876804 12 Sep  2003 ???????????????????????? Pro W6.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   4281976 12 Sep  2003 ???????????????????????? Std W8.otf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  15429564 12 Sep  2003 ????????????.ttf

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  13563388 12 Sep  2003 ????????????.ttf

Now what the heck are all those ?????.otf and ?????.ttf files. I'll assume .ttf = TruTypeFont and must be Japanese fonts?

Yep; otf is an OpenType Font and TTF is TrueType.

For example one of them in your list is called:
Hiragino Mincho Pro W6.otf
... the ??? are chinese/japanese/etc characters which won't display in the font used by Terminal.
The ? comes from one of the system fonts, LastResort.dfont, which will display something in place of any character that the current font you're using can't.

Depending on how you installed and what languages you have active, you should have quite a few with a standard OSX 10.3 installation. You could have fewer or sometimes even more than this list, but here is the typical install:
31 fonts at System/Library/Fonts and another 78 at ~/Library/Fonts.

Add in any font in the Classic System/Fonts folder and most users are starting up with around 150 installed, before you add in any applications, many of which add some more, although not always in obvious places.

Anything from Microsoft or Adobe will throw in some more, for example, usually in the application's own folder or the Application Support folder. 250 fonts is pretty common in a basic working system.

At the other end of things, if you really are using your OSX system for specialized, dedicated purposes, you must have the 5 mentioned earlier but could conceivably delete the rest for speed optimization (because they load into memory at startup). Please don't consider that an invitation to delete fonts; if you don't know what you're doing it's going to cause problems with common things like web browsing.

Just wondering if deleting the com.apple.ATS.plist file in your user folder/Library/Preferences would fix this. Launch the font book after doing this and see what happens.

I prefer to leave the /System/Library/Fonts directory alone. Only current and reliable fonts will go into /Library/Fonts. The ~/Library/Fonts directory is where I place the rest. Some of the fonts I placed in my home fonts directory are very old, some from the early '90s. They seem to work fine for such old fonts...we'll see.

Only the Apple OS Installer is supposed to place fonts in System/Library. Everyone else is supposed to place them in the various other places fonts can reside.

Like I said, it's not a big drain to leave them there. If you know what you want, and know what you're doing, then do what you know. Otherwise, leave 'em.

" ... would fix this. ..." It's fixed. The font was corrupted, and has been replaced with a known good copy.