Why does Font Book font count vary from accoount to account? [follow-up]

A few days ago I posted the following (Apologies for the repost, but due to a
communication glitch I'm not sure this is posting is going into the same
thread.)

--------------------

Here's the situation.....

I'm running OS X 10.4.1 on the most recent model of an 17" AlBook.

I have six accounts, one administrator and five user.

The entirety of my font collection is contained within two folders and should
be accessible from all accounts.

System/Library/Fonts

Library/Fonts

There are no fonts installed that are visible only to a single account.

What I don't understand is that if I open Font Book when signed on to the
different accounts the displayed font count, the one shown at the bottom of
the Font Book window, varies, the count being either 201, 212, or 213.
According to my own calculations that number should be 213 for each and every
account. The 213 is what I see in the administrative account and in one of
the user accounts. The 201 is for one of the user accounts, and the 212 for
the remaining three user accounts. About 90 percent of my connection time is
in just one of the user accounts, and that one reports 212 as the font count.
These counts remain consistent from session to session and through shutdowns.

Any ideas/answers/suggestions?

Many thanks in advance.

--------------------

Since making that posting I've determined the identities of those fonts that
for reasons still not known fail to sometimes be included by Font Book when
accessed from the different user accounts. What is interesting is that all of
the identified fonts have one common characteristic -- they were part of the
fonts included with Microsoft Office! I've checked the permissions of these
fonts and they are the same as the permissions on all of the other fonts in

/Library/Fonts

which is the folder where all of the non-system fonts reside.

Any thoughts or such anyone? I'm gerfluxed!

 

Aha. Now we're on firm ground - in the sense that there has been a good
deal of discussion of this phenomenen (i.e. why don't certain fonts
installed by Microsoft Office show up in Font Book sometimes). Check out
this thread:

<http://tinyurl.com/ch4k3>

m.

 

[responding to my query as to why some of the fonts included with Microsoft
fail to be listed by Font Book, which fonts are missing varying from account
to account]

Matt,

Many thanks for the reference. I've checked and there are no occurrences of a
com.apple.ATS file in the preferences of any of my accounts. As I've stated
in prior postings, the entirety of my fonts are global and are either in

System/Library/Fonts

or

Library/Fonts

and that none of the individual accounts have any fonts installed locally.

So, there is still the remaining mystery as to why those verschluggener
Microsoft fonts vary as to which accounts they will display in.

Jim

 

Yes, there are. You're looking in the wrong place. They are in the
Caches folder. - If you don't understand how to clear your font caches,
an easy solution is to use Font Finagler. m.

 

James & Matt:

Thanks for this enlightening thread. Very useful!

Vito

 

[responding to my stating that I had no ATS files]

Matt,

Yoicks! I sure did have a bunch of ATS files once I looked in the right
place. I took the full plunge and emptied out all of my caches. Now I get
the same font count for each of the accounts!

Many thanks for the patience.

Jim