(no subject)

[pensnest]

Any font experts out there?

I've been having an odd problem with looking at websites. I've noticed it this morning on Freethoughtblogs and on the MTYG website: bold text doesn't appear as bold text, it shows up as a somewhat dishevelled font instead. Not Comic Sans, but this one has something of the same 'feel' about it.

Here's a screencap:



I am at a loss to discover

(a) what this font may be (I have looked through my extensive list of fonts and it doesn't seem to be one of them; I have also resorted to 'WhatTheFont', which didn't work either...) It has a distinctive p, k and t in particular, but so far I'm having no luck. Can you identify the font?

(b) why the heck my browsers are doing this. It doesn't happen everywhere - the bolding on my own website is fine, for instance, but the FTB and MTYG sites have the same display in both Safari and Firefox. I was hoping there'd be a place in Preferences where it said, inexplicably, Use Daft Font For Bold, but if there is, I can't find it and nor can my Resident Expert.

It is, of course, possible that for some reason these sites are using this odd font... except, it doesn't show up in Chrome on Beast's computer.

WTF, anyone?


ETA: Problem solved. The font is Serrif Grunge, and has been ejected from my computer. And all is well.

Comments

[eponymous.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you could have a corrupted font cache.

This page tells you how to clear your font cache for various versions of OS X (scroll down). There's also programmes you can download to do it, some of which are free, but I've never tried them so I can't make any recs.

[pensnest]

Ah-HAH! Thanks for that link - it was particularly handy in telling us where to look for fonts. We eventually had a Text Edit moment which revealed that a font called Serrif Grunge was leaping in where Georgia Bold had been whistled for. So we've dumped the interloper and all is well again.

Weird.

[eponymous.livejournal.com]

Glad you got it fixed. (:

[nopseud]

MtYG definitely doesn't set any strange fonts -- the css specifies georgia/times/serif everywhere.

This page has a sample for Georgia Bold and Times Bold:
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

How does that look for you?

[pensnest]

It is very strange. The Georgia bold looks like the font in my screencap above, whereas the regular looks as I expect Georgia to look, ie a nice serifed font.

I've tried looking at Georgia in InDesign and Photoshop, and it is fine in both. But as you see from my screencap, somehow it gets mangled on the MTYG web pages. All the red and orange links and headlines on the MTYG main page are funky—presumably the body text on the pages is either Times or Georgia regular. It looks as though Georgia Bold is being displayed as something else. I wonder if the browsers call it from somewhere on the computer that has got borked somehow.

[nopseud]

Yep, it definitely sounds like the font has been corrupted on the computer, or in a cache that your browsers use (although that seems less likely if it's in tow different browsers). I guess InDesign and Photoshop might have their own copies of the fonts, rather than using the system copies. I'd try the suggestion above of clearing the font cache. If that doesn't work, you should be able to redownload and reinstall the font.

Does the Mac have any kind of simple text editor as part of the OS? What does Georgia Bold look like in there?

[pensnest]

It turns out that the Georgia(s) inhabiting my computer are fine, but there was an interloper by the name of Serrif Grunge which for some reason appeared when Georgia Bold was called by the web applications and by TextEdit. Happily, TextEdit revealed this to us, we've trashed Serrif Grunge, and all is right with the world.

So my instinct to identify the font was a good one. Phew. How happy I am to have a Beast about the place who is able to poke around in the system folder without fear.

[nopseud]

Ah, excellent! I thought you might be able to get more info from the text editor than from the browsers.