I have just looked at the fonts folder for the first time and there are 302 installed. When I validated them, there is an exclamation mark next to 37 of them and to proceed with caution.
When I first opened the font folder, it lists 86 fonts??
Am I missing something?
These came with the computer so why would it warn me about using them? I havn't removed them yet until someone can give a reason for this message.
Have I posted this in the correct place?

jaybass

There are at least three Fonts folders:

/Library/Fonts

/System/Library/Fonts

/Users/user_name/Library/Fonts

If you check the fonts with an exclamation point next to them in the Validation report window (open the disclosure triangles in the listing until you find the sub-item in each font with the exclamation point), you'll likely see that most of those involve duplicate fonts. Duplicates are indicated in Font Book's main listing with bullets next to them.

You can now do (at least) two things: run Resolve Duplicates (Edit menu), which simply disables duplicates, or remove duplicates (Remove..., File menu). To pick the correct font to keep when removing duplicates, you're supposed to inspect each of the duplicates to see if there are other issues (see Font Book Help). Otherwise, you can keep any one of the duplicates whose only issue is being a duplicate.

> Otherwise, you can keep any one of the duplicates whose only issue is being a duplicate.

Font Book shows that my "Duplicate typefaces" are of Wingdings 2 & 3 and Tahoma Regular & Bold, but those identified as the "dupes" have higher version numbers than their "non-dupe" counterparts; also, the "dupes" are all located at /Library/Fonts while the "non-dupes" are at ~/Library/Fonts.

How do I decide which fonts to disable/remove, or does it matter?

The question of which duplicate font(s) to remove is not all that easy to answer, but at the same time shouldn't be something to worry about too much. All other things being the same, it seems to me that more recent fonts may be the ones to keep. You could test that by simply removing the older duplicates and backing them up rather than deleting them outright.

At the same time, however, one could wonder what the harm is in using 'older' fonts that have been performing just fine without any untoward side effects (assuming you'd notice those). FWIW, I have occasionally deleted duplicates without much scrutiny and any noticeable bad effects.

That said, I wonder how long it would take for new duplicates to appear after removal of the current batch. Bottom line, it probably doesn't matter a whole lot, particularly since you can 'reset' your System font holdings by reinstalling the OS or perhaps even by running the latest OS Combo updater.

Finally, there is one other option beyond the two I outlined in my previous post: doing nothing, as long as there is no obvious negative associated with this beyond Font Book's complaint.

I have looked at all 3 font folders and the important one is the system fonts which when clicking the ? mark, advises you not to remove any of those fonts. When I checked the system fonts , it lists 39 but when I click one of those fonts, it shows 199.
In view of what you have said, I will leave well enough alone.
Note: when I opened each of the three libraries, each one lists a different amount of fonts, but when you click on any font in those 3 windows, they all list 199 fonts.
Any reason for that?
Thank you all for your responses.
jaybass.

You may be looking at the difference between a font and a font family. The latter is essentially a single font, but in addition to various sizes it encompasses styles (like roman and italic) and weights (like regular and bold) that you might interpret as separate fonts.

Thanks for the input.

Since I got involved in this exercise only as a result of this thread, and since nothing's broken, my question was really rhetorical...asked out of curiosity, because, as I said, my fonts that are labeled "Duplicate typefaces" by OS X are the lower numbered versions.

I also wonder why I have dupes in the first place, and why those in /Library are the ones labeled as such, rather than those in ~/Library?

The only font I'm consciously aware of having installed is not one of the dupes, and although I suppose Office X might have installed its own fonts it doesn't seem likely that Wingdings 2 & 3 and Tahoma Regular & Bold would be the only dupes it installed.

Can anybody confirm that a pristine OS X installation actually includes duplicate fonts?

Depends on what you mean by 'pristine'. For the most part, the dupes I've seen in the past occurred when Classic was a factor. (the dupes were caused by those in OS9's System Folder/Fonts).

Thank you for the explanation.
Now I won't be confused about the numbers.

jaybass

FYI a list of all the fonts installed by OX 10.5 and what folders they are installed in can be found here.

A pristine OS X installation doesn't include any fonts in ~/Library/Fonts, so your duplicates would seem to have arisen from some other source, such as the migration of your user data.

Appropriately enough, my pristineness has been sullied by:

~/Library/Fonts/Charcoal

Listed below are a few links to relevant font issue discussions:
- Bugs & Fixes: Font duplicate misadventures (Ted Landau)
- Font problems | Mac OS X (Adobe)
- Problems with Fonts (NeoOffice)

> A pristine OS X installation doesn't include any fonts in ~/Library/Fonts, [....]

I was scratching my head, wondering where I'd find a pristine volume to check on that, and had just realized that my test user account was such an animal, when I saw your post.

Indeed, there are no fonts installed in ~/Library/Fonts in my test account, so those in my main account must have been installed by Office X.

Interesting that in all instances of dupes, those installed by OS X are labeled "Duplicate typeface," not those installed by Office X.

I just took a look at Mac OS X 10.5: Fonts list to see if my system fonts (which are not "Additional Fonts") that are marked as dupes can be deleted and found this...


Despite the above, though, I just deleted all 74 fonts in /Library/Fonts without being asked to authenticate; I guess something changed between Leopard and Snow Leopard? (All fonts in /System/Library/Fonts that I tried to delete required authentication.)

If a font is called for and it doesn't exist in any of the standard locations, what happens?

Thanks.

I don't know about other applications but every time I open Power Point or Keynote, to look at things that have been sent to me, I get a dialogue box cautioning that a couple of fonts are missing. It's never made any difference that I could see, so I assume a substitution was made.

It's been a while but it seems to me that it was always the same fonts.

ryck