February 29

Fixing the QuarkXPress Stall in OS 9
Quark to release update, but in the meantime....

By David Nagel
Senior producer

Since the release of Mac OS 9, folk have been perturbed by the stall they've experienced in QuarkXPress when editing in a text box (not to mention the rarely discussed stall when closing a window in Internet Explorer). Well, blame has been passed back and forth between Quark and Adobe (ATM 4.5.2 being a suspected culprit), but now both are turning to Apple for support and help. Quark now says it will release a maintainence version of XPress (4.1.1) in the coming weeks, but what's a person to do until then? And what about Explorer?

Adobe has posted an apparent workaround to the problem on its site. Apparently the fix involves removing older fonts and replacing them with newer ones. Specifically, older fonts in the FONT format should be replaced with newer ones in NFNT format. Some font utilities will be able to tell you the format of your fonts. You may also have a problem with some of the original LaserWriter fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, Zapf Chancery, Zapf Dingbats, Palatino, New Century Schoolbook, Bookman and New Helvetica Narrow), which may be in the FONT format. Additionally, you should open the Get Info box on any fonts you suspect of being old. If the version number is listed as older than 2.x, the font could be in the older format and should be replaced.

Adobe also advises running the ATM Deluxe Verify procedure to identify any damaged fonts, which should be replaced, and says a clean system install would also be wise. For more information, visit this Adobe forum.

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