[artmaker]

OHHH NOOO!
I had photoshop running. (Probably should have shut it off.) Opened fontbook because I needed to make an arrow. I have a whole collection of picture type fonts in there, but turned off. I thought this would be easy! (I could have drawn the dumb arrow!!!!)
Found one full of arrows and tried to turn just that one on. (Now I don't actually use fontbook much. Probably should have read exactly HOW to turn on ONE font.)
Well what ever I clicked, it froze up. So... force quit. Tried again. And again, it was taking forever!
So... shut everything down, restarted the computer.
now... fontbook will NOT launch! I get the dreaded "unexpectedly quit" thing.
I opened my photoshop document again, and low and behold ALL my dumb picture fonts are ON! Photoshop is running at a snails pace now. (I do not need two twenty types of dingbats running here!)
And I cannot get back into fontbook to shut them back off.
Tried the self help. The only tidbit of help was to find it's prefs and delete it. But NONE of the preferance files appear to be connected with font book. At least none say font book.
Any clues here??? Obviously my fonts work. Even the long list of ones I DO NOT NEED!
Why is it suddenly unexpectedly quitting????
I use a G5,
if this helps;
CPU Speed:1.6 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):512 KB
Memory:1.25 GB

[robec1347]

The preference file you're looking for is located:
Users Folder>Library>Preferences>com.apple.FontBook.plist

[macnuke]

why use Fontbook for your Arrow?
you should give the Character Palette for most all your symbols a shot.

[artmaker]

Hi there,
Well.. arrows. Yea, heck I could have DRAWN ONE! And yes, there are tools in photoshop to do that too. But I still have a font problem.
Well.. I got a call from a good friend, VERY skilled mac tech. He walked me through clearning prefs etc. Sill font book quits. He then had me download Linotype font explorer. Told me this is better. But IT also crashes upon launching. We tried everything. Including REMOVING ALL my extra fonts and even with bare minimum apple fonts it still quits.
As he was scratching his head, suddenly my screen went black and I got a "you better force shut down now" notice.
TO which he replied... "ohhhh nooooo."
This is NOT good!
Seems there is something going bad with my os. Actually that black screen happened once before and it had nothing to do with fonts. Needless to say, I backed up ALL my files! Just in case.
So... if the snow and cold holds out, he should come over this weekend. Sure hope he can heal my sick computer. (Always has before.)
And the saga continues.

[bruine]

You had kernel panics. It's certainly a good idea to backup. You can try to log into another account (create one if needed) and see if the same problem persist. if so, you can then try to boot from your install disk (the one included when you bought the computer) and try to check and repair the disk with disk utility. Keep us informed of your progress.

[MarkDouma]

Hey.
The most likely reason that Font Book and LinoType apps are crashing is because of a corrupt Font Collection file. This problem may also prevent applications that use the standard Font Panel from being able to open it (For example, TextEdit, Pages, etc. but not Adobe apps).
Locate the following folder in the Finder:
/Users/~/Library/FontCollections/
Remove all ".collection" files within that folder except for the following which you may keep:
Chinese.collection
Classic.collection
Fixed Width.collection
Fun.collection
Japanese.collection
Korean.collection
Modern.collection
PDF.collection
Web.collection

The two most common collections that can cause problems are "com.apple.Favorites.collection" and "com.apple.Recents.collection". The problem is that they are corrupt and cause an unhandled exception when NSArchiver tries to read them. You can move them to your Desktop to disable them and then try to open Font Book.
I'm adding the ability to automatically detect these problems in the next version of Font Finagler.
Hope this helps....
P.S. Where abouts in Michigan?

[artmaker]

Thought I'd post a follow up here.
My computer it turned out had SERIOUS problems. I am SO grateful to my good friend who is so much smarter about this than I am. He first got a clue something was wrong after backing up my system, then doing a clean reinstall. FOUR items would not install. Ohhh nooo. He took my tower home, and a few tests later discovered a bad RAM chip. That would account for the program problems, kernel panic and a few other glitches. I WISH I could remember where I bought that extra memory but it was too long ago. OH well. He happened to have another computer with something ELSE wrong and swapped chips. Then installed updated versions of my OS and many other things. I'm humming along with os 10.4.8 now! (That dashboard thing is cool!)
So.. thanks to all who offered advice. It was a bigger problem than simple bad prefs files or anything. I'm just really glad it wasn't a hard drive problem. He suspected it might be. Not, just a RAM chip went nuts.
I'm baaaaack! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif