Times is listed as missing, and its styles and that of Times New Roman are jumbled up in the Text Tool and Expression Designer:
Other fonts have similar problems. When is this going to be fixed?
I'm not certain what the problem may be but I certainly know what it is not.
Times is a basic System Font in the MacOS. (MacintoshHD)/System/Library/Fonts. You will see Times.ttc and your other System Fonts in that folder. You cannot add fonts to that folder nor can you remove any from it. If the font is corrupted, you will need to reinstall the MacOS.
Long time ago, Encore had this exact problem in MacOS 10.13.0, the very first build of High Sierra—all users were affected. Within a few weeks, Apple released 10.13.1 and the problem went away.
This could easily be a symptom of a failing hard drive. That needs to be eliminated or confirmed as a cause of the problem. Apple's Disk First Aid can diagnose and possibly repair the drive temporarily. OS 10.12 and earlier, it must be run from a bootable external drive. 10.13 or newer, this is not necessary. Run Repair Disk. If anything shows up in red, run it again. If the same error shows up 3x in a row, the hard drive is beyond repair. If it's green the first time, probably not the problem but if red and Repair Disk eventually repairs it, get your data backed up completely, preferably Time Machine, and replace that drive before it fails again anywhere from 15 minutes to two weeks later.
Back to Finale. How many others have reported this? None? If DU gives it a clean bill of health on the first pass, I would do the following in order:
1) Reset your System paths to Default by performing a Safe Boot holding the Shift Key (this can take awhile if you have corrupted System paths) and log into your User Account when prompted. After your desktop finishes rebuilding, shut down & boot normally.
2) Reinstall remove and reinstall the latest build of 27.
3) If the problem is still there, boot into your Mac's Repair Partition by holding the Command (10.13 and later) or Command R keys ( OS 10.12 and earlier) and Reinstall the MacOS. This will install the last build of whatever OS you are running. If your system drive was created by cloning, you might not have a Repair Partition—there are other ways to reinstall the MacOS that will install it properly including the Repair Partition.
If you cannot do a Safe Boot or boot into the Repair Partition, your Mac has a serious problem but it's not caused by Finale.
Hi John, there is an issue with the Times font related to macOS Monterey 10.12. This is not tied to a specific version of Finale, nor does the problem lie entirely within Finale's control (but it is an issue nonetheless).
For more details on this, please check out this knowledge base article.
Hi Mike, The problem has been confirmed by others, and my computer is a brand-new M1 Mac mini running OS 12.
Hi David, Thank you for the information. If the problem is Apple's, I don't understand why it doesn't occur in MS Word or Affinity Publisher. Nor does it occur in Dorico, although the Times font is omitted from their font list. Is there a way to omit Times from Finale's font list, so that the other fonts align properly?
The article you sent is almost a year old, and I am puzzled why such a glaring issue has not been fixed by now. I am concerned that the work I do now will be affected, if and when the font problem is fixed.
I stand corrected. It is a bug.
Per the Knowledge Base article,
Within the FontBook app (Applications > FontBook), the font will not be listed because the macOS does not detect the font even though it is a system font.
I've got news for whoever wrote that. System Fonts do not show up in Font Book.app in Monterey MacOS 12.5. It's the identical problem I observed in 10.13.0
Ooops! Let's hope that Apple fixes that.
I am reading various reports of font problems elsewhere. Something about Apple having replaced Times or at least renaming it Times New Roman. Whatever the problem is, some applications seem to be dealing with it, some not. If Finale can't fix it, I need detailed instructions on how I can fix it on my system.
Follow the instructions in the Knowledge Base article that David posted.
You can ignore most of the chatter. Apple is not replacing Times with Times New Roman, a Microsoft font that has never installed with the MacOS. Again, none of the System Fonts are showing up in Font Book.app on MacOS 12.5. If I boot from my Mojave external, they show up as they should.
This issue was caused by Apple. It never occurred to me that they would screw this up again as they did with 10.13.0. BTW, although I’m on OS 12.5, I’m not experiencing this issue in Finale 27.2. Likewise, I’m trying some Apple tricks I know to see if there’s a better workaround and, if any of them work, I’ll post here.
BTW, it’s easy to get Times New Roman for free by downloading any of a number of apps including Microsoft Office for evaluation but Apple doesn’t install it.
David Cusick suggested installing the following Times font:
That fixed the problem on my computer.
Times does not appear to be a system font in OS 12 according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212587
Here is an excerpt from the list of fonts in OS 12 from that site:
You are misreading that support document. Times.ttc is absolutely a System Font. Once again, the real problem is that Font Book.app is not showing any of the System Fonts in Monterey 12.5.
There are four places the MacOS can store fonts:
1) Inside the application — these will not show up in Font Book.app unless you locate them inside the app and run their installers. Unlike 25, 27 no longer include fonts inside the app.
2) Fonts available to all Applications (MacintoshHD)/Library/Fonts These appear in Font Book.
3) (MacintoshHD)/Users/Library/Fonts — Though these appear in Font Book, as of OS 10.12, no fonts should be found here. This used to be the default location for application fonts which causes problems for Finale users who have upgraded if older versions of Finale fonts are still found in this directory.
4) System Fonts are found in (MacintoshHD)/System/Library/Fonts If not here, they aren't System Fonts
Follow the path I gave earlier (MacintoshHD)/System/Library/Fonts You should see Times.ttc there. If not, then follow my earlier instructions to reinstall the MacOS. Here's a screen shot of the Default system fonts for USA English—I can't capture them all—but at the moment in the current OS, not one of these shows up in Font Book.
On my Mojave drive, all of these show up in Font Book.
End of tutorial. I hope you've learned something.
Thanks for the tutorial, Mike. I am glad that Apple has gotten rid of the user library fonts, a category that has always bewildered me.
In any case, I don't see how I am misreading the document from Apple. Various styles of Times are listed in the second group called:
But Times is not listed in the first group called:
Nor do I find Times.ttc in my System/Library Fonts; I don't see Times New Roman either. I do see the Times font I just installed, however, timr45w.tff:
There are no fonts in my user library font file, which you said was correct.
I wouldn't be up for reinstalling the operating system, since this is a brand new computer in which nothing else seems to be amiss.
Times.ttc is a default System Font. You can neither install nor uninstall those. That folder is locked and you can’t even drag fonts into or out of it. Reread the Apple doc with that knowledge and it will make more sense. If you open your System drive (MacintoshHD unless you’ve renamed it), and follow the path to System, then Fonts, it should be there.
I have a brand new MacBook Air that came with Monterey pre-installed. It’s there, too.
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