AC12 MAC problem with Fonts

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm on AC12 on several macs in a work environment. Our problem is, we always used the font called Tahoma on PC with Archicad. This font contains letters for the hungarian language too. (eg: éáőp...)
I've read on this forum that if I install the tahoma true type font into the Mac HD:library:fonts and restart the machine, AC 12 should see the font....

I've tried and checked everithing but the tahoma true type font will not appear in the list in AC.

Please help It's very important.

[Ralph Wessel]

SmileyMan wrote:
Yes, I had some CadImage software loaded. But that is not it. I uninstalled everything AC related -- all add-ons included -- back to a native Mac with Leopard.

I think you're right to conclude that this arose from a change in Leopard. If ArchiCAD doesn't pick up all the fonts, neither will 3rd party software such as CADImage's. The fact that it is missing from their list is just another symptom, not the cause.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ralph. Well put. And the thing is, I am not asking for the program to read some ridiculously crazy font. When I first purchased and installed AC six years ago, Tahoma was the default font! EVERYTHING I have done for the last 6 years (templates, projects, objects, favorites, dims, modules, etc.) has been done with their original default font.... which now does not work! I have also taken Rod's suggestion and put the font in all Font Folders on the computer -- nothing! This is a huge problem for me. I am trying like hell to upgrade all my equipment and software, only to find that Graphisoft did not properly test their product on the new operating system.... which looks like it will move to "Snow Leopard" (or 10.6) by January '10. I am very frustrated and still stuck on my old system. If anyone has an "in" with someone at Graphisoft, I would appreciate some help.

[Anonymous]

Okay! The Graphisoft tech support guy called a couple hours ago and noticed something by accident. On some computers he was having a problem, on others he was not. For whatever reason, he noticed that Tahoma (and some others that would not show) are Windows based fonts. The computers where Tahoma was showing up had MS Office installed and the ones with font problems did not!! This was also the difference between my two computers, too. Since I never use MS Office, I decided not to install it on my new system. However after installing it on my new computer, ALL of my fonts are now available!! Unbelievable!!

If anyone else is having a problem with fonts, try installing MS Office. That should make them ALL available.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I have MS Office installed in the system and it does not show.
- Copied the font to my User folder and logged out, does not show either.
- My version of Office is X running in rosetta.

I think that a reinstall of Office and a restart might do the trick.

[Rod Jurich]

SmileyMan wrote:
/........ I have also taken Rod's suggestion and put the font in all Font Folders on the computer -- nothing! /.....

Smiley, look again at my screen shot. It needs to be in your USER collection in Font Book.

[Anonymous]

Rod, I DID that and it did not work! After installing MS Office, everything has worked perfect.

[Greg Kmethy]

The Tahoma.ttf that comes with your Mac in default is a windows true type font which ArchiCAD can not handle. Office for Mac installs another Tahoma font which ArchiCAD can use. (It sits in /Library/Fonts/Microsoft). If you copy this font to a machine not having MS Office, Tahoma *might* start working correctly in ArchiCAD. On my Mac it does, but on some machines the 'old' Tahoma still wins. In this case the sure way to get Tahoma working is to delete the original Tahoma font, which is redundant anyway. To be perfectly honest, I was not able to figure out the logic how one or the other takes precedence over the other. There are three locations you can keep fonts (Library/Fonts, System/Library/Fonts, and Userhome/Library/Fonts) but it did not seem to matter where the font files are located. ArchiCAD checks all three of them.

Greg

[Thomas Holm]

gkmethy wrote:
The Tahoma.ttf that comes with your Mac in default is a windows true type font which ArchiCAD can not handle.

Greg, please elaborate a little on this.
- Is this a problem regarding this specific Tahoma edition, or is it something concerning all Windows TTF fonts?
I'm asking because I tend to use some other windows ttf fonts on our Macs, and we haven't had issues with them AFAIK.

[Greg Kmethy]

This problem is probably not Tahoma-specific but neither does it apply to all windows-fonts.

The technical background is that the Tahoma font provided by Apple as part of the standard installation does not have a mac-format "font names table" in it. In other words, it is a purely Windows-format font. Some text engines can still use it, so you might be able to use such fonts in some applications but not in others. The Tahoma font suitcase provided by Microsoft for Office does have the mac-style font names table, therefore ArchiCAD can recognize it. Many other fonts on Windows are also compatible with ArchiCAD on Mac. Really the only way to find out is trying.

[Thomas Holm]

Thanks Greg for that info!

All I can add is that all .ttf Windows fonts I have tried up to now (since 2002 or something) have worked in MacOSX as well. No experience with Tahoma, though.