Snow Leopard Issues

[Verity]

So I upgraded to Snow Leopard... but now all my Storyist manuscripts have been replaced with gibberish. (See here.) When I type new stuff into the manuscript area, it becomes more gibberish. The rest of the areas (notes, characters, section sheets, etc) seem to be unaffected, and I was able to salvage the text by extracting the XML file from the document, but naturally this is putting a cramp in my noveling style.

 

I've had a really great experience with Storyist and would love to continue to be able to use it in the future, so I'm hoping there's a fix for this of some sort. Ideas?

 

Running:

- Storyist 1.5.2 (also tried 2.0 trial, had same problem)

- Mac OS 10.6.1

- 2007 MacBook, Intel

[Steve E]

Hi Verity (Cute picture. "Verity" from the Latin "veritas", a true belief.)

 

I have a suggestion. Download version 2.0.2 (click here), then start 'er up and then open your story from Storyist 2.0.2. I'm assuming, of course, that you didn't attempt to encrypt it (but I do speak fluent Gibberish).

 

It's worth a shot.

- Thoth.

[Verity]

Yes, it's unencrpyted, and I'm still having the same problem with 2.0.2, I'm afraid. It was worth a shot, though.

[Steve E]

Yes, it's unencrpyted, and I'm still having the same problem with 2.0.2, I'm afraid. It was worth a shot, though.

Perhaps Steve will weigh-in on Monday.

Or perhaps someone else had this problem and would like to say something?

Fingers crossed for you.

- Thoth.

[Steve]

Perhaps Steve will weigh-in on Monday.

Or perhaps someone else had this problem and would like to say something?

Fingers crossed for you.

- Thoth.

 

Hi Verity,

 

That is quite a strange result. A couple of questions:

 

1) Do you see any Storyist-related messages in the console log? To view the console log, open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and select "Console Messages" in the list on the right.

 

2) You mention that this happens with all your manuscripts. What happens if you create a new project, say from the Novel template?

 

3) Do you have any 3rd party tools installed that claim to enhance other applications? If so, do you get the same result when you disable them for Storyist?

 

If this is a Snow Leopard/Storyist issue, obviously it needs to be addressed right away. Any additional information you can provide would be a great help.

 

-Steve

[Verity]

I checked the console, and the only things that looked like they might be relevant are these:

9/13/09 7:46:57 PM	Storyist[9462]	.scriptSuite warning for superclass of class 'NSApplication' in suite 'BlocksPreferencesSuite': 'BlocksConfigurationSuite.NSApplication' is not a valid class name.

9/13/09 7:50:39 PM	[0x0-0x1fa1fa].com.storyist.storyist[9462]	Sun Sep 13 19:50:39 Verity.local Storyist[9462] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: cglsInitialize: Failed 0x271f

9/13/09 7:50:39 PM	[0x0-0x1fa1fa].com.storyist.storyist[9462]	Sun Sep 13 19:50:39 Verity.local Storyist[9462] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

 

My suspicion that it's a Snow Leopard-related issue is that before I upgraded to XCode 3.0, the 2.5 version under Snow Leopard would spit out something similar-looking when I tried to run C++ command line programs.

[Steve]

I checked the console, and the only things that looked like they might be relevant are these:

9/13/09 7:46:57 PM	Storyist[9462]	.scriptSuite warning for superclass of class 'NSApplication' in suite 'BlocksPreferencesSuite': 'BlocksConfigurationSuite.NSApplication' is not a valid class name.

9/13/09 7:50:39 PM	[0x0-0x1fa1fa].com.storyist.storyist[9462]	Sun Sep 13 19:50:39 Verity.local Storyist[9462] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: cglsInitialize: Failed 0x271f

9/13/09 7:50:39 PM	[0x0-0x1fa1fa].com.storyist.storyist[9462]	Sun Sep 13 19:50:39 Verity.local Storyist[9462] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

 

My suspicion that it's a Snow Leopard-related issue is that before I upgraded to XCode 3.0, the 2.5 version under Snow Leopard would spit out something similar-looking when I tried to run C++ command line programs.

 

Hi Verity,

 

It could very well be a Snow Leopard-related issue, either a bug in Snow Leopard or a bug in Storyist that is triggered only on Snow Leopard.

 

I would be surprised if the messages you published from the console log were the cause. Since the the corruption appears only in the text area, I would instead suspect some interaction with the new text replacement features in the Text tab in the System preferences.

 

I would still be interested in knowing if this happens with new projects too, or just your existing projects. If it is the latter, could you send me a short excerpt that demonstrates the problem?

 

-Steve

[Verity]

Hang on, I figured it out! Turns out I had a corrupted copy of Courier installed that was screwing up everything printed in that font across several different programs (to answer your question that I forgot to answer before, the text appeared scrambled in a new document as well). Now the text reads fine. I think the OS upgrade may have installed additional copies of system fonts or something which caused the problem, and I just had to disable the extras to get the text to display properly.

[Steve]

Hang on, I figured it out! Turns out I had a corrupted copy of Courier installed that was screwing up everything printed in that font. Now the text reads fine. I think the OS upgrade may have installed additional copies of system fonts or something which caused the problem, and I just had to disable the extras to get the text to display properly.

 

Good work, detective! (And whew!)

 

If you have a few minutes, could you post the details?

 

Was the corrupted Courier font from the Apple installation or from a 3rd party? If so, what, specifically, did you need to disable?

 

-Steve

[Verity]

The problem appears to be a font called Courier TU. I can't tell exactly when it was installed, but I looked around and it seems from a couple Apple support forum posts that I found where people had the exact same problem (wish I'd found those a few hours ago) that a few other people had a similar problem either that font or Courier CE. No one seems to be able to tell why it happens, since it isn't universal, although it seems like more or less everyone having the problem is using Snow Leopard. (Relevant threads: 1, 2)

 

Anyway, once I realized that everything using Courier was displaying weirdly, I went into the Font Book application, where I noticed some fonts had a little yellow triangle next to them. When I clicked those fonts, it gave me a warning that said multiple copies of the font were installed and to solve the problem I could disable the extras. When I scrolled down to Courier, it had one of those, and one of the multiples was the aforementioned problem font. To solve the problem, you can either disable the font or delete it altogether.

[Steve]

The problem appears to be a font called Courier TU. I can't tell exactly when it was installed, but I looked around and it seems from a couple Apple support forum posts that I found where people had the exact same problem (wish I'd found those a few hours ago) that a few other people had a similar problem either that font or Courier CE. No one seems to be able to tell why it happens, since it isn't universal, although it seems like more or less everyone having the problem is using Snow Leopard. (Relevant threads: 1, 2)

 

Anyway, once I realized that everything using Courier was displaying weirdly, I went into the Font Book application, where I noticed some fonts had a little yellow triangle next to them. When I clicked those fonts, it gave me a warning that said multiple copies of the font were installed and to solve the problem I could disable the extras. When I scrolled down to Courier, it had one of those, and one of the multiples was the aforementioned problem font. To solve the problem, you can either disable the font or delete it altogether.

 

Thanks Verity!