---
title: "Why is my Monaco Borken?"
date: 2003-06-25T17:30:10-04:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2003/06/25/font-borken/
author: Les Orchard
---

# Why is my Monaco Borken?

Okay, what's wrong with this picture?
<br /><br />
<div align="center"><img src="http://www.decafbad.com/blog-images/font-issues.gif" /></div>
<br /><br />
Each of those lines is from a terminal I have open, trying to find
one of my monospace fonts that works correctly and I don't hate.  My
past favorite has been Monaco for the longest time, but recently (when,
I can't quite remember) it seems that it likes to combine "l" and "/"
into one symbol.  So does Courier.  
<br /><br />
On the other hand, I have this font
called Monaco CY which looks close enough to my favorite Monaco, until I 
discover that it mashes double dashes together.
<br /><br />
This leaves me with only two monospace fonts on my <span style='background : #FFFFCE;'><a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/edit/Main/PowerBook?topicparent=Main.FilterData"><b>?</b></a><font color="#0000FF">PowerBook</font></span> that don't
mangle things (however minor) in the terminal. They are Courier New and
Andale Mono, both of which I very much dislike.
<br /><br />
So, though I've found <a href="http://www.dsandler.org/entry.php?1004" target="_top">one other person</a> 
complain a bit about this, I can't seem to find any explanations why.  Best
I can figure is that I had to dump a slew of fonts onto my system recently
in order to be able to do some client work, so maybe I clobbered an out-of-box
version of my previously favored Monaco.  But that doesn't make much sense, since
I tried snagging a copy of Monaco from my girlfriend's iBook to no avail.
<br /><br />
Anyone out there have a clue as to what this is?
<!--more-->
shortname=font_borken

<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087705">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=a07258943ae7f08d7b1e955f0292d0e2&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/">Russ</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087705" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-06-25T17:49:58">2003-06-25T17:49:58</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I'm nut ixectly soore-a vhet zee prublem is, boot I fuoond zee teetle-a su foonny thet I hed tu leefe-a a cumment leeke-a thees unyveys... :-)</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087706">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://crazybob.org/"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=76cd01c99d2adbcd28f46d770c746cf4&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://crazybob.org/">Bob Lee</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087706" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-06-25T18:19:30">2003-06-25T18:19:30</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Everyone has this problem. I personally use Monaco size 15 and have been reasonably happy with it. Go to the "Additional Resources" page on http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ for more information and other font suggestions.</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087709">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=7543e2265693244d89322a6d069a1c9c&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">Bob Schmorbin</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087709" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-06-25T18:39:22">2003-06-25T18:39:22</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Check out ProFont
http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/
I wasted several days looking for the perfect monospace replacement for Monaco until I found ProFont, and I've never looked back.  Thankfully there's a Windoze version too.</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087712">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://dsandler.org"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=4f27b9468d9006563f6bdc4739d5243f&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://dsandler.org">dsandler</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087712" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-06-26T23:01:09">2003-06-26T23:01:09</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I'll put in my vote for ProFont.  I used it for all my code in classic Mac OS; I now use it in Terminal.app (neatly side-stepping the Monaco issues) and on the Windows machines I'm forced to use during the day.</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087716">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=d37692d723db3a9e10f31a6da271e3f7&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">Tim</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087716" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-06-27T23:38:35">2003-06-27T23:38:35</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I'd suggest grabbing Bitstream Vera, the free font Bitstream released to the Linux community.  I use Vera Mono exclusively now and love it.</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221087717">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=8dc43e5dccaddc88e5180b66b76a91f1&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">John Saxton</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221087717" class="permalink"><time datetime="2003-07-07T22:09:43">2003-07-07T22:09:43</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">This exact thing happened to me, and I tracked it down to a particular version/copy of Monaco that was behaving badly.

I don't remember if I had done this myself or if some errant installer had foisted this upon me, but I had Monaco 3.5 from Mac OS 9.2.2 installed in my account's font folder (~/Library/Fonts), and it was overriding all other copies of Monaco on the system, even Monaco 4.0d3, which was in /System/Library/Fonts/Monaco.dfont.

I removed that "bad" copy of Monaco 3.5 from my account's Fonts folder, and then quit and re-launched the apps that had been using it, and that cleared everything up.

BTW, in the process of figuring this out, I went and got Apple's free OS X font tools from here:
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/OSXTools.html (here's hoping that URL doesn't get stripped by the comments system)

...and then used "ftxinstalledfonts -rlf" to see what all fonts and versions I had installed on my system, and what their precendence was.

Hope this helps,
-John</div>
            
        </li>
    
        </ul>
    
        </div>