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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Keyboard Viewer Help!!!!!!!!!!!!
zaddel - Jul 4, 2005 - 4:59 pm
Back in the good ole' days before all this "progress," I could click on Key Caps, find a special character in a nanosecond.
Now we have Keyboard Viewer. I've set it up and it appears in my top menu bar, only problem is that when I click on Show Keyboard Viewer, the keyboard pops up and the minute a touch it, it disappears. Then it just keeps popping up randomly but won't let me get to it.
Frustrating. Is there any way to get this thing to work?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Sandra
PS: I also notice that the font that is listed in the Keyboard Viewer when it pops up is Lucida Sans. My fonts are really screwy so maybe that's why it's not functioning. Some of my emails are coming out in tiny fractions -- a font problem. When I called tech support they told me I should have so many fonts in my System Fonts folder, so many in my library folder, so many in my Network folder, etc. I had way under the amount that should be in there. They had me reinstall the system and preserve my stuff, and it worked for a while, now it's back to its old behavior again.
I want to do reinstall my operating system, but should I delete all of my fonts from the zillion places this box puts them in? Is there any way to turn off all that cute stuff and just have a fonts folder, and load fonts the old fashioned way? FontBook is cute, but most of the time when I load a font, it shows it loading and it comes up 0 fonts loaded. I've given up on it. But right now I want to get these fractions out of my mail program and also my web pages. It's not seeing some system or network font that it needs.
Sorry this is so long, but I'm in the middle of a huge production job that is due tomorrow first thing and I've wasted countless hours trying to get this keyboard viewer and fonts to load. What a waste of time.
Now we have Keyboard Viewer. I've set it up and it appears in my top menu bar, only problem is that when I click on Show Keyboard Viewer, the keyboard pops up and the minute a touch it, it disappears. Then it just keeps popping up randomly but won't let me get to it.
Frustrating. Is there any way to get this thing to work?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Sandra
PS: I also notice that the font that is listed in the Keyboard Viewer when it pops up is Lucida Sans. My fonts are really screwy so maybe that's why it's not functioning. Some of my emails are coming out in tiny fractions -- a font problem. When I called tech support they told me I should have so many fonts in my System Fonts folder, so many in my library folder, so many in my Network folder, etc. I had way under the amount that should be in there. They had me reinstall the system and preserve my stuff, and it worked for a while, now it's back to its old behavior again.
I want to do reinstall my operating system, but should I delete all of my fonts from the zillion places this box puts them in? Is there any way to turn off all that cute stuff and just have a fonts folder, and load fonts the old fashioned way? FontBook is cute, but most of the time when I load a font, it shows it loading and it comes up 0 fonts loaded. I've given up on it. But right now I want to get these fractions out of my mail program and also my web pages. It's not seeing some system or network font that it needs.
Sorry this is so long, but I'm in the middle of a huge production job that is due tomorrow first thing and I've wasted countless hours trying to get this keyboard viewer and fonts to load. What a waste of time.
jghaffner - Jul 6, 2005 - 4:58 pm
Hi Sandra,
It sounds like you're pretty frustrated with your current font situation -- I can understand that. What version of OS X are you working with right now?
I don't know what's happening with Keyboard Viewer, certainly very frustrating behavior. It certainly could be due to a lack of expected fonts.
However, I can answer a couple of your other questions. First off, no, you shouldn't delete fonts from the 'zillion places' your system puts them. It's unfortunate, but OS X needs fonts in certain places right now. Maybe some day we'll get to a unified spot, but not yet.
I'd stay far away from FontBook -- others may disagree with me here. From what I know, most people use third-party font managers (e.g., Suitcase) to work with fonts -- if they have large font libraries to deal with. Otherwise, I'd just leave them alone.
Mail.app problem -- I just saw on MacInTouch.com that Mail requires Helvetica to be installed. If you removed Helvetica, that might be the cause of the "fractional" behavior.
Can you use font panels instead of Keyboard Viewer? (In Mail.app, it's command-T to show available fonts and their variations.) Honestly, I hadn't used Keyboard Viewer since moving to Tiger (and maybe OS X) because of the font panels.
Let me know how it goes!
Best Regards,
John Haffner
It sounds like you're pretty frustrated with your current font situation -- I can understand that. What version of OS X are you working with right now?
I don't know what's happening with Keyboard Viewer, certainly very frustrating behavior. It certainly could be due to a lack of expected fonts.
However, I can answer a couple of your other questions. First off, no, you shouldn't delete fonts from the 'zillion places' your system puts them. It's unfortunate, but OS X needs fonts in certain places right now. Maybe some day we'll get to a unified spot, but not yet.
I'd stay far away from FontBook -- others may disagree with me here. From what I know, most people use third-party font managers (e.g., Suitcase) to work with fonts -- if they have large font libraries to deal with. Otherwise, I'd just leave them alone.
Mail.app problem -- I just saw on MacInTouch.com that Mail requires Helvetica to be installed. If you removed Helvetica, that might be the cause of the "fractional" behavior.
Can you use font panels instead of Keyboard Viewer? (In Mail.app, it's command-T to show available fonts and their variations.) Honestly, I hadn't used Keyboard Viewer since moving to Tiger (and maybe OS X) because of the font panels.
Let me know how it goes!
Best Regards,
John Haffner
zaddel - Jul 6, 2005 - 5:25 pm
Hi John,
Thanks for the advice. I do have Helvetica loaded, the problem is that the system has it loaded and my clients have their own version of Helvetica. I just wish I could load a customer's font folder and not end up with all this duplicate mess. When I install fonts it does it one at a time. I'll install one and then have to quit FontBook, install another and quit Fontbook, that's the only way it would work.
I did buy Extensis Suitcase for this box, but that was problematic too, I actually de-installed it. After talking to some folks in the business, I gather that FontAgent is quickly becoming one of the industry's favorites. I have a trial version loaded but haven't had the time to fool around with it yet.
What's happened here is this... about 35 years ago I was a linotype operator. Hot type. After a few years "cold type" came into being and I used to punch paper tape on an old Underwood typewriter. You didn't have any paper in the thing, but a roll along the side that would punch holes in the 8 level tape. I remember that an H was a punch on either side of the center perf, a T was 2 to the left and 1 to the inside right. Yup, we actually read our tapes. We'd put them through another GIANT computer and it would raise hell if it encountered an error in the code. You'd have to stop the tape, read the holes in the tape, create another little piece with the correct code, insert it, and then keep it going. Then came the Photons, and many others. Then real progress came when you could actually see a line of type on a little bitty screen (punching paper tape). Miraculous! So years later, after LISA and all the sons and daughters that came from her, we ended up where we are today. In the publishing industry, however, Macs, since their invention, have been the systems of choice for graphics. We use them like no other person on the planet uses them. Quark was a godsend. PageMaker made you want to call in sick. And with every upgrade and every update, things just kept getting better and better... until now. I get the feeling that Apple's selling out; sacrificing all that was good to capture the PC users out there. Instead of luring them to their side, their trying to get their side to look and behave like a PC. I've very familiar with UNIX, but this is too much. Too many bells and whistles from a production standpoint. We, in the publishing industry, all hope that it goes full circle one day. There used to be dedicated typesetting machines for production, then cold type put an end to that, but now it seems as though the time is coming when a dedicated computer for production is necessary. ITunes, IThis, and IThat are cute and wonderful for entertaining your family or whoever, but from a production standpoint it's all noise. We basically work with a zillion fonts, Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign (because we have to), and Acrobat. All of the editing is not done electronically through Acrobat, so yeah, Bob Dylan was right, the times they are a' changing, but not for the better if you ask me at least not yet.
One of my publishers (internationally known) is actually installing a stable of PCs with the same apps and are seriously considering a switcheroo. If they do, a lot of them will follow suit. But OS X and this box is just too unreliable for production. The font issue is a case in point, that used to be one of the easiest things to do -- no duplicates, no conflicts, just load and unload.
Oh well... now I sound like an ole fogie reminiscing on how much better the good old days were. Ahhh.
They were.
You have a great evening.
Sandra
Thanks for the advice. I do have Helvetica loaded, the problem is that the system has it loaded and my clients have their own version of Helvetica. I just wish I could load a customer's font folder and not end up with all this duplicate mess. When I install fonts it does it one at a time. I'll install one and then have to quit FontBook, install another and quit Fontbook, that's the only way it would work.
I did buy Extensis Suitcase for this box, but that was problematic too, I actually de-installed it. After talking to some folks in the business, I gather that FontAgent is quickly becoming one of the industry's favorites. I have a trial version loaded but haven't had the time to fool around with it yet.
What's happened here is this... about 35 years ago I was a linotype operator. Hot type. After a few years "cold type" came into being and I used to punch paper tape on an old Underwood typewriter. You didn't have any paper in the thing, but a roll along the side that would punch holes in the 8 level tape. I remember that an H was a punch on either side of the center perf, a T was 2 to the left and 1 to the inside right. Yup, we actually read our tapes. We'd put them through another GIANT computer and it would raise hell if it encountered an error in the code. You'd have to stop the tape, read the holes in the tape, create another little piece with the correct code, insert it, and then keep it going. Then came the Photons, and many others. Then real progress came when you could actually see a line of type on a little bitty screen (punching paper tape). Miraculous! So years later, after LISA and all the sons and daughters that came from her, we ended up where we are today. In the publishing industry, however, Macs, since their invention, have been the systems of choice for graphics. We use them like no other person on the planet uses them. Quark was a godsend. PageMaker made you want to call in sick. And with every upgrade and every update, things just kept getting better and better... until now. I get the feeling that Apple's selling out; sacrificing all that was good to capture the PC users out there. Instead of luring them to their side, their trying to get their side to look and behave like a PC. I've very familiar with UNIX, but this is too much. Too many bells and whistles from a production standpoint. We, in the publishing industry, all hope that it goes full circle one day. There used to be dedicated typesetting machines for production, then cold type put an end to that, but now it seems as though the time is coming when a dedicated computer for production is necessary. ITunes, IThis, and IThat are cute and wonderful for entertaining your family or whoever, but from a production standpoint it's all noise. We basically work with a zillion fonts, Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign (because we have to), and Acrobat. All of the editing is not done electronically through Acrobat, so yeah, Bob Dylan was right, the times they are a' changing, but not for the better if you ask me at least not yet.
One of my publishers (internationally known) is actually installing a stable of PCs with the same apps and are seriously considering a switcheroo. If they do, a lot of them will follow suit. But OS X and this box is just too unreliable for production. The font issue is a case in point, that used to be one of the easiest things to do -- no duplicates, no conflicts, just load and unload.
Oh well... now I sound like an ole fogie reminiscing on how much better the good old days were. Ahhh.
They were.
You have a great evening.
Sandra
jghaffner - Jul 6, 2005 - 5:40 pm
Sandra,
Sorry I couldn't be of more help. (Then again, maybe just being willing to listen is helpful, eh?)
I'll send this back to the pool for further stewing.
Best Regards,
John Haffner
Sorry I couldn't be of more help. (Then again, maybe just being willing to listen is helpful, eh?)
I'll send this back to the pool for further stewing.
Best Regards,
John Haffner
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