MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks: Any issues?

Jason Pagura

I've not made the upgrade, but since the new Mac OS version 10.9 is a free upgrade to users with access to Apple's App Store (basically 10.6 Snow Leopard and newer, as far as I can tell) I expect to make the plunge once I nail down some backup issues.

Have any of you made the upgrade? How are the type handling features compared to earlier versions? How is the FontBook? Are your font design or other graphics software experiencing new problems since the system upgrade?

George Thomas

The only font app I'm sure is 10.9 compatible is Glyphs. I haven't upgraded yet and intend to wait because others, such as FontLab and Adobe (CS6), haven't said anything yet.

Marcos Ojeda

i just upgraded to 10.9 this morning. robofont runs just fine as does the afdko. most everything works the same as in mountain lion. post install, i think i got a few free gigs of disk space. that was nice. i had an old version of vmware fusion that osx notified me would be inoperable during the upgrade.

i upgraded a late 2008 macbook running snow leopard and an early 2011 macbook pro. only real 'issue' you'll notice is spotlight will want to index your machine for the next few hours after the install finishes. if you're not rocking an ssd, your laptop will be mostly unusable while this happens.

only real snag: i was having some issues getting cs4 applications to work so i uninstalled them in the interim. i read this adobe mavericks faq and it implied that the apps should work, maybe i just need to reinstall them? an adobe cc trial works just fine on mavericks, fwiw, at least until i decide if i'll try to reinstall or just upgrade outright. i get the impression cs6 works just fine, but not surprised at all that cs4 gave up the ghost. this is not a very big source of concern for me in any case.

Jan Schmoeger

Perhaps check out
http://roaringapps.com
for compatibility issues?

[Deleted User]

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Mark Simonson

I upgraded last week and have not had any problems with FontLab, Robofont, Glyphs, etc. There is an update needed for Superpolator, however. Lastly, if you have Python things (e.g., Fonttools) installed, see this tweet by Ben Kiel:

https://twitter.com/hithro/status/394842278529097728

. (The upgrade wipes out any site-packages folders you've installed, so you have to restore them.)

Marcos Ojeda

i did not notice my /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages being cleaned out after running an upgrade.

i wouldn't have thought to check... did this happen to other folks? did a different site-packages folder get cleaned out?

[Deleted User]

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Marcos Ojeda

i thought i would follow up and clarify about the cs4 issue i had

it turns out that cs4 expects java to be installed (i believe in order to run the the little Did You Know widget in the New Document panel that opens) but i dismissed the java installer when i first saw it since i couldn't remember the last time i'd used java anyway.

anyhow, after installing that java runtime, cs4 works just as before under mavericks in case that was a source of concern for you.

--cs4eva

Mark Record

Sorry I'm late to the party.
No problems with FontLab or RoboFont.
Thank you to Ben for the tip about the site-packages (bonus Thank You to Time Machine).


I'm noticing some weird issues with Type 1 fonts.
Installing a font via FontBook will only import the suitcase, not the printer file.
The font does display in FontBook if you copy the printer file to the Fonts folder.
Once installed, the fonts aren't available in InDesign (5.5 or 6) or Word. They do show up in TextEdit.
Is anyone else experiencing this?

Mark Simonson

I am not seeing this problem. I don't use Font Book, though. I manage fonts by manually moving fonts in an out of ~/Library/Fonts/. Perhaps there was a cache issue from when only the suitcase file was installed?

Mark Record

Update: FontBook cannot install Type 1 fonts

I ran FontNuke and Type 1 fonts display in Adobe apps & Word.
Font Book only installs the suitcase file, but not the printer file.
The font still does not work if you copy the printer file to the Fonts folder.
However, manually installing a Type 1 font works just fine.

Stuart Sandler

I echo Marcos in that all my Python site-packages went poof! In fact, I've been unable to re-install them properly since no matter what installer method I use, it's only installing in the frameworks subdirectory.

Thinking it's time to start a Python one-click magic button installer Kickstarter for Glyphs and FLAB and be done with all this Python install BS which seems to be a constant time suck . . .

Paul van der Laan

Ben Kiel’s video guide for installing RoboFab is pretty handy.

Stuart Sandler

Thank you Paul, already performed it as well as MekkaBlue's line by line terminal instructions. Neither has found its remedy . . .

If indeed one or both of these should work 99% of the time, I'm willing to assume user error but given the time already invested, I'm at a point where I'd happily commission a tool to simply fix my Python/Glyphs/Robofab install issues once and for all.

Georg Seifert

Thinking it's time to start a Python one-click magic button installer Kickstarter for Glyphs and FLAB and be done with all this Python install BS which seems to be a constant time suck . . .

how much would you pay for it

Chris Lozos

"how much would you pay for it "
If you build it, they will come.

Stuart Sandler

I'd pay $50 to never have to deal with it and I'd pay an additional $50 toward its development for the good of the community.

[Deleted User]

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Georg Seifert

I put together a script that installs robofab, vanilla and fonttools into python 2.6 (for Glyphs) and 2.7 for everything else.
Please have a look:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3563666/InstallLibraries.py.zip
I will put in my github soon.
It is almost the one click solution. The usage is explained in the top of the file:

copy the script into an empty folder, e.g. a new folder on the desktop. Then open the Terminal, write "python" and drag the script from the Finder into the Terminal window.
It should look like this:
python /Path/to/the/Script/InstallLibraries.py

Then hit enter. Please enter your password when asked.

I tested it only on 10.9 so fare but it should run in 10.7–8, too.

Stuart Sandler

I want this to work more than you can know . . . I'm getting the same error on both my 10.6.8 and 10.9 machines . . . See attached image:

Georg Seifert

Can you re-download the script? I think I fixed it.

Stuart Sandler

That fixed it!

Stuart Sandler

I believe everything installed properly however when I run the very basic single test from Ben Kiel's video, I get a pile of errors which doesn't explain what may be happening or why. Thoughts?

Georg Seifert

Fixed it again. Now it should work properly.

Stuart Sandler

Sorry, new error . . . The installer won't run now . . .

[Deleted User]

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Stuart Sandler

Dunno if Georg wants to officially announce it but it is now fully working for me!

Marcos Ojeda

Georg, instead of using sudo everywhere, since this script is already osx specific, you could run this

sudo chmod +a "user:$USER allow add_subdirectory,add_file,delete_child,directory_inherit" /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages

which makes all of the user site-packages user-writable so you don't always have use sudo all the time when pip installing things globally and you don't need to sudo in order to throw stuff away. you can learn more on hombrew's wiki. as far as i know, osx doesn't mess with this folder during system upgrades.

you could put the whole thing up in a gist so that it can be easily forked but without the overhead of a whole repo. thanks!

Georg Seifert

as far as i know, osx doesn't mess with this folder during system upgrades.

As far as I know OSX is replacing this folder on every major update.

Will put this in git soon. Just wanted it to be working first.

Thanks for the sudo info. Will try it.