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TMO Quick Tip - Fixing Garbled Type in Mail and Safari

by , 7:30 AM EST, December 22nd, 2006

If English is your first language, but Safari and Mail display text in some language that looks like it came from a planet on the other side of the galaxy, odds are it's time to do a little font house cleaning on your Mac. Luckily, fixing the problem usually involves just clearing your font cache.

This very problem came up just a few days ago when I was trouble shooting some font issues with The Graphic Reporter's Lesa Snider. In this case, we were looking at an email that read like R2-D2 speaks.


This text is supposed to be in English.

FontNuke, a free font cache cleaner for Mac OS X 10.4, followed by a reboot, cleared the problem up and returned Mail to a human-speaking application.


FontNuke clears your font cache without any hassleEnglish.

You can download FontNuke from Jake Pietrykowski's Web site, but it is hosted on a .Mac page, so go easy on him.

Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.

if you have tips or tricks to share, or Mac-related questions you want answered.

Digg!

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
View Name:Guest
Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:24 am Subject: Another fix
View Name:Guest
Fri Dec 22, 2006 7:58 pm Subject: Re: Another fix
Close Name:Gweilo Posts: 1 Joined: 08 May 2007
Tue May 08, 2007 6:25 am Subject:

All of the above fixed my issues in Entourage and Safari but I still get garbled up text on Dashboard Widgets ........ Does anyone have some ideas?


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