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Keynote, iWeb, Pages crashes in Leopard -- fonts to blame
A number of users have reported an issue where Keynote repeatedly crashes when showing certain presentations. It appears that some text transitions in slides using specific fonts (especially Helvetica, and especially italic and or bold apparently) makes corresponding individual slides crash Keynote. The problem only occurs with Keynote 4.0.1 running under Mac OS X 10.5.x (including 10.5.1).
In some cases, the error message displayed below appears
MacFixIt reader Alastair writes:
"I had to do 2 presentations today - a large one to 70 children this morning - mainly photos - and it was fine; then a very small presentation to 3 people in the afternoon, which would not go past slide 5, and Keynote/the Mac just embarrassingly failed."
One potential workaround may be to create a new replacement slides, then simply copy the old material in, i.e. the problem seems to affect existing slides created in the earlier version of Keynote.
One poster to this Apple Discussions thread writes:
"It seems to be text transitions using oblique versions of old PostScript family fonts which are affected. Switching to use the TrueType equivalent font (Courier New, in my case) often seems to make the problem go away."
A similar problem appears to affect Pages and iWeb. Some users have reported the aforementioned error message when exporting a Pages document to a PDF or selecting a photo page in iWeb.
Similar workarounds may be applicable for these applications.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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Though the program is to blamd for crashing, there is no substitute for careful testing of the presentation BEFORE going live with it.
I completely agree - in fact the second presentation I did that day was one I had presented flawlessly 9 times in the previous three weeks - and it worked fine on Keynote 08 and Tiger: the only difference here was I had upgraded to Leopard, and it never occurred to me that I might need to retry a previously working Keynote presentation. It was Leopard that 'broke' it.
Alastair
Have you tried using Fontnuke or the like to purge your font cache files? The problem could be as simple as a corrupt font cache file, the fonts themselves could be fine.
Have you also installed any new software lately that may have installed a font that conflicts with ones in your Keynote document?
Well, as the thread is all about, the only significant new installation was MacOS 10.5 Leopard. I did not expect, having done a clean install, that font caches were likely to be a problem, but I (cautiously) took your advice and FontNuked.
Keynote08 in Leopard still crashes, with some text builds (on a Keynote presentation that previously worked fine with Tiger). It still will not gat past the problem slides.
It re-affirmed my understanding from the above mentioned Apple Discussion thread, that it is solely a Leopard/iWork issue with some primary fonts.
I hope a system or iWork upgrade comes soon...
Alastair
Brought them into my 4-processor Xeon Mac tower running 10.5.1 -- everything worked, could move slide to slide using Mac Office 2004.
Sent PPT file to our talented art department for a significant upgrade to look and feel -- their rendition gave the PPT product proper professional fit and finish that it was previously sorely lacking. Art department used a 4-processor Xeon Mac tower running 10.5.1, and had Adobe CS3 suite installed, to include the Adobe fonts that are part of the CS3 install. Final product was finished in Mac Office/PPT 2004.
Tried to open the new-improved presentation on my 4-Xeon Mac (which has no CS3 Adobe fonts installed) and the entire presentation was rendered in/presented itself with some sort of Chinese or Japanese font -- total gibberish to these English-speaking eyes. At some point, about a third of the way through, my Xeon Mac locked up -- not just PPT -- the WHOLE Mac was locked solid.
At the same time, another colleague opened a second, but identical copy of the new-improved PPT presentation on his Macbook, running 10.5.1 and also running CS3 WITH the Adobe fonts installed. The presentation looked normal, as intended, with no Chinese/Japanese font or system crashing issues when viewed under Mac Office 2004 PPT.
Tried copying the Macbook version of the file to the crashing Xeon Mac tower -- still crashed Xeon Mac machine with Chinese/Japanese characters-gibberish.
Tried reinstalling 10.5 on Xeon Mac tower -- archive and install -- to no avail.
Same offending PPT file would open perfectly on Tiger-equipped Macs -- with or without Adobe CS3 installed.
Problem is unacceptable in a professional environment -- this was a high-dollar effort for a high-dollar customer, and the amount of sheer nonsense that our team endured in trying to trouble-shoot this issue was wholly unacceptable -- to an extreme -- we were on a deadline, with final product to be FTPd to several end-customer sites -- needless to say, we did not meet our deadline, nor was the paying customer impressed with our tardiness -- whatever the reasons.
I can reliably achieve the same level of weirdness and trouble by employing the Windows OS on my production machines -- why do I need to experience this same nonsense on our Macs?
There is obviously something hinky with regards to Mac/Microsoft/Adobe fonts and Windows XP Office/Mac Office 2004/Adobe CS3 running under Leopard. Apple MUST get to the bottom of this problem ASAP -- professional users CANNOT tolerate this unreliability.
What say you, Apple? Are you paying attention?
Niffy
I, too had this exact same problem. A Keynote presentation that worked flawlessly in Tiger, being shown every week for a year, after upgrading to Leopard, would get to a slide and crash. Reinstalling Keynote, reinstalling Leopard, nothing worked. I fiddled with it for hours to try and get it to work, all to no avail, and was looking at recreating the entire thing from scratch in order for it to work. I went back to Tiger, the presentation again works flawlessly. I have been using Tiger since. I am frustrated and deeply disappointed in the amazing amounts of troubles Leopard has caused. What happened, Apple?
- by fotograft December 12, 2007 3:46 AM PST
- The revenge of Helvetica!
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