Strange fonts (characters) in preference folder

There are Strange fonts (characters) in user/home/library/ preference folder.
Here are some examples: #¿ê◊8øˇ”0†~a|, #0ê◊8øˇ”0†~a|, ê◊8øˇ”0†~a|. Can you tell me what they are and if they can be deleted? Rob

Hi, Rob.
As noted in this Adobe Photoshop Discussions topic, the cause appears to be the TWAIN plug-in included with Adobe Photoshop CS or CS2.
The answer appears to be to either:
(a) move to another folder; or
(b) insert ~ at the start of name of
the TWAIN plug-in in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 > Plug-Ins > Import/Export folder.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

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Not all files not showing within Preferences folder

Hi,
I encountered a strange problem with my Preferences folder in the User Library. As I am moving from one machine to another I need to copy some preferences files. The files exist when you search for them in the Finder. As it seems though only preferences files from A to C are displayed when looking into the folder (option - Go Folder). Any ideas?

Hi,
Thank you very much, but this dows not solve the problem I have. I am able to open the Preferences folder, so I do see .plist files, but not all of them! Only files beginning with letters from A to C are displayed, then the list simply ends. The files however do exist. When searching via Finder/Spotlight for a specific file, it is listed in the results and the path displayed shows Users/.../Library/Preferences.

Strange font substitution

Hi there,
I am using a MacBook Pro with OSX 10.5.2. It has suddenly started to have problems with the fonts in fontbook and also doing some very strange font substitutions.
Instead of showing text normally it is replacing it with random characters. You can kind of read it but it's not real letters. I have a screenshot of it but don't know how to post the image on here.
This substitution is happening in Mail, Preview and Safari, so seems to be with native OS X software.
Any ideas?

Hi Simon,
Have you gone to FontBook and resolved duplicates?
Create a new account, name it "test" and see how your fonts work in that User acct? (That will tell where your font issue is coming from - whether it's in your Home fonts folder or a system fonts folder) This account is just for test, do nothing further with it.
Open System Preferences >> Accounts >> "+" make it an admin account. Check your fonts in that account and let us know the result.
Also, have you disabled Helvetica Fractions, Helvetica Neue and Times Phonetic, if you have them? They are known troublemakers.
Here is a user tip by Kurt Lang that lists all necessary system fonts and their locations. Also installed fonts and their font folders and loacation from Apple.
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack

Strange fonts after updating os-x

after updating to os 10.4.9. safari shows strange fonts (looks like outtaspace) on some websites. not on all websites. also apples mail is displaying these strange things in the adress lines. choosing different fonts (f.e.helvetica) in safaris preferences doesnt helped. any tips to resolve this spacy letters ???
firefox is workin fine.
thnx,
matthias
powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.9) also G5 dual 2,5

Hi
Welcome to Apple Discussions
The two fonts that seem to adversely affect Safari are Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic.
Open Font Book in your Applications folder. Enter either of these names in the spotlight panel. If either appears, disable it via the Edit menu. If neither is in your system, please provide a screenshot of the font type.
If the above referenced fonts applies to your situation, download a copy of Font Finagler. This will allow you to clean the Font cache.
When done, restart the computer/Safari.

Illustrator has not been responding for over a week, I can't open or force quit it. I've already uninstalled, reinstalled, and deleted the preferences folder, but the icon in my dock seems corrupt and is causing the program to not respond and I can't dele

Illustrator has not been responding for over a week, I can't open or force quit it. I've already uninstalled, reinstalled, and deleted the preferences folder, but the icon in my dock seems corrupt and is causing the program to not respond and I can't delete it.

Tamara,
Did you reinstall using the full three step way (otherwise strange things may linger)?
Uninstall (ticking the box to delete the preferences), run the Cleaner Tool, and reinstall.
http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

How do you find out what application is generating a plist file in your preference folder?

I have had two similar warnings come up in Drive Genius 3, a program that I use to manage my drives. The warnings occur during a daily verification of preferences on my main drive, a 256GB SSD.
They state:
"The preference file at '/Users/me/Library/Preferences/com.analogsolutions.Football.plist' may be corrupted."
"The preference file at '/Users/me/Library/Preferences/org.machinedevelop.National.plist' may be corrupted."
Per Drive Genius' advisement, "Corrupted files can cause appplication crashes and should be moved to the Trash." I delete the files, however they are regenerated each day.
Q: How do you figure out what application is generating a preference file? And is there a way to tell if this is a OS generated preference file?
I have searched online and cannot find any information about either Analog Solutions or Machine Develop nor am I able to discern what these particular .plist files are for...
Q: Are these two .plist files truly potentially harmful?
Thanks for the Help!
iMac
model iMac12,2
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Hi Everyone, sorry for the late response. I have been monitoring my Preferences Folder; every moment I am on my computer trying to catch what application/process generates these files. I was hoping to try your suggestions, but oddly enough the offensive .plist files have not returned since the last time I deleted them about a week ago.... strange...
In any case, I have responded to some of your suggestions and questions that I have information on:
X423424X wrote: Ok, can you double click the .plist file? If so it should attempt to launch the Property List Editor (in your Utilities folder). That way you can look at stuff in the plist. Maybe (hopefully) there's something in there that can shed some light on who is creating it. If Property List Editor cannot open the file (some apps create files that have the .plist extension but don't actually create the proper XML format -- probably what ProSoft was alluding to) then try opening it with a text editor.
The .plist file when opened in text editor contains a string of (what to me seems to be) an arbitrary list of numbers.
Linc Davis wrote: Those files have been given obfuscated names so you won't know what created them. They must contain encrypted registration data for some third-party commercial software that you use.
Yes, seems likely...
Linc Davis wrote: It should be fairly easy to find out what application is creating them, if you really care. Move the files to the Desktop, then log out. Log back in while holding the shift key as you click the "Log In" button. That will prevent your login items from loading, among other things. Open your account preferences and launch the login items one at a time by double-clicking them in the list. After each one, check to see whether the files have been recreated.
Ran through login, one by one, no luck in identifying the application(s).
X423424X wrote: Another thought, lock the plists on the hope that whatever is using them will "choke" and complain about it (no guarantee that will work but worth a try).
Thanks, the lock idea is the one I will try next if they ever reappear...
X423424X wrote: Also, I don't recall if I asked this but if those plists are deleted while logged in will they be recreated during that same login session. Or do they only appear after you deleted them and then and then logged out and back in? Or do you have to reboot to recreate them?
Unfortunately I do not know for certain. Though from all my login/startup/reboot tests I believe that they are not directly linked to starting up the machine or loging in either.
I'm not really certain why the .plist have not returned. I haven't uninstalled any programs, though I did run a couple updates for some widgets within the last week; however that was about 3 days after I deleted the last set of .plist files and usually they reappered everyday. In any case, given that they have not been regenerated I guess my problem is solved per se, at least I am no longer getting that annoying warning everyday. Still, it's a bit of a mystery
Thanks again for all the help!

Strange Fonts in labview graph's plot legend.

Hello All,
I am running labview 7.1 on a Windows XP machine and
the default and only language is English (US). Verified this under
Control Panel > Regional Settings.
When I run a VI, I get strange fonts in the plot
legend. They keep updating as the VI runs. Here is a screen shot of the
plot legend:
I change the font to something I can read, save the VI and run it again
and it automatically changes to this unreadable font again. Any ideas
on what I can do? Thanks.
KB

Is it just the font that is off, or are these actually non-printable characters?
Are you graphing e.g. dynamic data types? Do you possibly have weird names for your signals?
LabVIEW Champion . Do more with less code and in less time .

Wierd foldernames in preferences folder - what are they ?

in my user/libery/preferences/ folder i have some wierd folder i cant figure out what are
They all appers to be empty..
And the are all from the 14 august and up to today
I have not install anny new programs in agust (Only opdates of Adobe programes)
but what are they and can i delet them ??? ... hope somebody can teel me
The folders are:
˛]@ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
˛dPê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
˛íPê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
˛iê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
˛M
˛s¿ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ˇ>ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
æd0ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁ\†ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁ†∞ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁã ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬂ'Äê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁy¿ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁyPê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁw`ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁSê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁr0ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁl
ﬁi`ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁmê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§
ﬁå@ê÷òøˇﬁ¿†~a|êÿÃè¿ö(øˇﬂ ß≠§

Searching the forum i have found the folowing
It seems frome all post that the folders can be deleted without worys
but they will come back
A fix cud be:
Barbara Brundage >> Oh, oh, now I remember. It's caused by the Adobe TWAIN driver. Go to the PE folder>Plug-ins>Import/export and trash that. It's nothing but trouble.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4515029
Or:
Allan Seidel >> One can stop the folder creation by fooling Adobe CS to not load its TWAIN plug-in. Search for the TWAIN file at Plug-Ins:Import/Export. Rename the file to ~TWAIN. CS will no longer create the strange folder.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3222754&#3222754
Wonder what is safe to do ??
I have now tryde allan's solution ... hope it works
Discussions link on the topic (for other reading this with the same problem)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4975621
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3222754
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4386699
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4515029
Message was edited by: Jesper Møller

Weird files in the User/Library/Preferences folder

Yesterday I noticed that my Preferences folder contains some very weird files. Actually, they're empty folders. I'd like to know if they are supposed to be there. If not, how did they get there and what should I do with them?
All in all there are about 20 folders and they are all empty.
Here are a few examples of the names of the folders:
˝Äê}]Løˇ€††{·|ê}_|è¿úL
0 0ê)i®øˇ€††'Ò|ê)kÿè¿úLø
Õvpê}]Løˇ€††{·|ê}_|è¿úL
Ωyê}]Løˇ€††{·|ê}_|è¿úL
Thanks for looking!
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2 GHz

Some versions of Photoshop have been known to create such things. Don't remember under what conditions, I think I saw someone say their strange folders appeared when using Photoshop with a either an Epson scanner or printer. At any rate you can toss them without doing any harm.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Repeated corruptions of preferences folder on Mac IL CS4?

Hello everyone
a quick question; despite me removing old versions of the corrupt preferences folder, I get non-regular, but periodic corruptions of the preferences folder. They result in me having to reinput all my serials and generally waste my time.
Now I'd rather not reinstall my Illustrator so I am wondering what other solutions there could be for this problem?
I cannot trace an exact event to when it started doing this, but it could have been when I got very, very low on hard drive space on my Macbook pro [which isnt a problem anymore, I have a few gig to spare]
Thanks

Clean out your system caches using a tool like OnyX. Some of them are persistent and don't respond to disk space allocation changes which in turn may make them interfere by being in the wrong place or too small to hold more data, resulting in corruption of plists or things that acces the font cache. Just wipe them clean. Takes a little longer on next system startup, but you will pleasently notice that your system will generally regain some of its snappiness. Regardless of what most Mac people think, OSX pollutes itself over time just like Windows does... If the issue persists after that, you may wish to check your spotlight settings and Time Machine and exclude your user pref directory from their indexing and backup.
Mylenium

Fireworks CS5 wont start up in lion (error in preferences folder)

Ok, after 10 days with out FW CS5 on my new Lion installment. I finally cracked some kind of bug where FW would freeze just after loading and the last text in the CS5 logo was tabs and then the processor would go up to around 81% and just freeze.
Apple and Adobe, both blame each other and none could give an answer, but to re-install everything, which i just had done. (Man the big dudes are lost sometimes!)
"My" problem turned, that I seemlessly had a corrupt file in my ~/Library/Preferences/
But i couldnt figure out which one it was.
I ran a Terminal plutil -s *.plist and no errors showed up.
The solution turned out to be:
Deleted the entire macromedia folder in the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder and now its working.
macromedia is the name of the old FW creators before Adobe took over.
So i am guessing there is some kind of error, but who can tell. I cant, adobe cant and apple cant.
Well hope this helps somebody!

Hi Folks!
Its because the macromedia folder is recreated each time flash is used somehow.
I made an Automator App that
1) Locates the ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia
2) Moves the Macromedia Folder to the Trash
3) Runs Adobe Fireworks CS 4
So all I need to do is click this Automator App instead of the Fireworks App in my Dock, and then I am sure it will start.
(I Know that this is not a 100% cool in the end fix, but seems like Adobe are ignoring this error after several of attempts of direct action to tell them.)
Here is how to build your own automator app that does these three steps for you.
My finder is in danish, but I translated it in red text for you. Guess its easy to figure out:
Remember!!! If you are running Adobe Fireworks CS5 then choose that in step 3 instead :-)

Hello, I have a strange file in my Users folder, named PortDetect.log I have no idea which app created it and it reappears when I delete it. Has anyone got the same file? Or know where it may originate from? Thanks in advance!

Hello,
I have a strange file in my Users folder, named PortDetect.log
I have no idea which app created it and it reappears when I delete it.
Has anyone got the same file? Or know where it may originate from?
Thanks in advance!

know where it may originate from?
The Huawei wireless modem driver.

When creating PDF from web page why does text appears as strange font not readable?

I am using Acrobat Standard, ver. 9.5.5. Frequently if I save a web page on either Firefox or Internet Explorer by printing to my Adobe PDF driver, much of the text is rendered in a strange font rather than in the font that appears on the web page. The only work-around I have found is to print the document to a printer and then scan the printed page to create a PDF. Is there a solution to this problem?

The OS may be an issue so what are you using Win7, Win8, XP, MAC, or other? In printing, what job settings are you using? When you open the PDF, check the properties (ctrl-D) to see if the fonts are embedded or not. The problem is likely related to the font not being embedded. The embedding may be a license issue for the font. Acrobat will only embed fonts that are properly licensed. You might try the Print or Press job settings that are a bit better to embedding all fonts.

Livecycle Designer ES 8.2 and Preferences Folder

Hello all,
the question I'm asking here is actually related to a different issue, so I'll give the whole context.
I have issues with image fields in Livecycle Designer, no matter if I use the one that comes with Acrobat Pro 8.0 or 9.0. Image fields have at least one bug: The anchor position in the layout is ignored, the image is *always* anchored top middle. In version 8.0, the picture was always scaled to fill the rectangle, causing a skewed aspect ratio, no matter what scaling option was selected.
After talking for more than 1 hour to the Adobe customer support, I was told to see if the Preferences folder was there (not sure what this has to do with the image field issue, but whatever). It's supposed to reside in C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0 and is supposed to contain 2 folders and 1 file. Oh yeah, I'm driving Windoze XP ... For my user, I do not see the preferences folder at all, other users that log in to my coputer, the preferences folder exists, but is empty. I tried uninstalling Acrobat Pro and re-installing as local admin as suggested by customer service, but still no preference folder.
My question is: What could be the reason for not having the preferences folder?
Thanks and Cheers
Markus

Please post this question in the Designer forum here:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/livecycle/livecycle_es/livecycle_designer_es?view=all

Strange font behaviour when printing from PDF

Hi - hoping someone can shed some light as I've been going slightly crazy trying to figure out what's happening.
I'm working on a Mac. I'm using the .ttf fonts of the Oswald family - obtained from Google fonts (and various other sources to rule out corrupt files).
When exporting the PDF from InDesign and printing it myself, there are no issues. When I send the PDF to others on a Windows machine, it prints fine.
When sending the PDF to my client (always the way) some of the font characters are, well, nudged down half way almost, out of alignment. It only happens on some characters, not all.
We only discovered this before submitting an ad to the printers, and for safety's sake, I converted all the text to outlines. Ok for now, however not a long term solution as we need to be able to use this font for live situations.
Has anyone experienced this before? Or perhaps can anyone suggest a workaround? I have to use TTF fonts as a 3rd party company who are working on some dynamic brochures have requested it.
I'm literally at a loss.
Thanks in advance.

Well I can give you what I did to get around the problem. I am running Adobe X pro on windows 7.
1. The print job in queue, cancel it so that it is deleted. You now should have no jobs pending.
2. Go to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Devices and Printers(Win7) or just the printer and devices for your OS. Yes this must be done with Admin privilages.
3. Go to Printer Properties for the Adobe PDF printer.
4. Select the ports tab. Mine was on Com3.
5. Select Add a Port and call it Adobe Printer or something.
6. Select the check box and select apply.
You should now print with no errors.
-G
Yes I am aware this has been a year, but this has happened over several versions.

Strange fonts (characters) in preference folder

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