Steam Forum

When I install Steam I get the Courier font to show up just fine, but when I arrive at the log in screen and the subsequent screen Steam does not display Tahoma. I've installed this font and the other Tahoma needed.

I can log in... I just cannot see what I am typing.

Any ideas?

CrossOver should install all the fonts for you when you choose the Steam profile from the app install list...

There are more fonts than just Tahoma - we install the whole Microsoft Core fonts patches because some games require more fonts.

Well the core fonts downloaded just fine. I had read online that you needed Tahoma for steam, however, and downloaded this one myself.

Hmm. Tahoma should be installed by CrossOver. Maybe you copied a broken font file in?

Double checked, the font's fine. Steam also crashes once it logs on and gets to the next menu (where you would see your games, etc). I don't know if this is related.

This is also my first time using the program. It's the trial version, if this makes any difference.

You are using CrossOver Games, right?

Can you try to delete the bottle and start again with a fresh bottle? Just go to the application install wizard and select Steam from the list and let go through the setup wizard. You shouldn't have to do anything with font files manually, CrossOver should do all that automatically.

If the text does not show up properly on a fresh installation there's some bug in CrossOver.

Important: Don't use the "install other game" button for Steam, use the Steam profile from the supported apps list.

Same thing. The fonts that were automatically downloaded did not include Tahoma, which from what I have read, is Steam's GUI font.

Here's what I see:

Then this for the log in:

I also manually put Tahoma and Tahomabd in the font folder Crossover created with the same results. And yes, this is Crossover Games. I can even log in, provided I spell everything out very carefully.

OK, that certainly looks broken.

There's something more broken than just tamoha. In the top right corner you should see minimizing and closing icons, which are from marlett.ttf. It seems like our truetype font loader is broken entirely on your system, not just one font.

Can you go to programs->run command and enter "notepad" into the text box and run it? Do you see the fonts there properly?

If notepad is broken too, it is possible that one of your Mac system fonts makes our font loader fail. We usually try to offer all Mac fonts to Windows apps(helpful for web browsers and Microsoft Office), but some third party apps install .ttf files that are either broken, or they trigger a bug in CrossOver. Ken knows this better than I do, maybe he'll see this thread next week.

I can't even open notepad. This is what happens:

I appreciate the prompt replies, by the way.

Ok, CrossOver uses the system freetype instead of its own. That could explain all the issues.

I'm sending a mail to Ken to make him aware of this thread. He's the guy who knows this code best.

CrossOver is actually supposed to use the system FreeType library rather than our own. However, there's not supposed to be a FreeType library in /usr/lib. (It would normally be in /usr/X11/lib.)

Furthermore, the FreeType library that's being found in /usr/lib seems not to match the rest of the libraries on your system. It appears you're running Tiger, right? Well, for some reason, you have a FreeType that was built for Leopard in /usr/lib. It wasn't put there by Mac OS X, so I assume you installed some ill-configured third-party software that put it there. Third-party software isn't supposed to put stuff into /usr/lib; that should be reserved to the system.

Your best bet would be to remove, or at least rename, the file libfreetype.dylib from /usr/lib. Note that the Finder normally hides the /usr folder from you. You can use the Go > Go to Folder menu item to bring up a dialog, then type "/usr/lib" (without the quotes) to open that folder. You'll need administrative privileges to remove or rename the file.

I've removed libfreetype.dylib, however Steam has the same results (no text). Is there anyway to manually direct it towards /usr/X11/lib?

If you try to run notepad again, do you get the same results?

You can change the FreeType library being used by a given bottle by editing its registry. Normally, you'd use "regedit" to do that, but since you're having trouble getting basic stuff to run, you can directly edit the registry file. The file to edit for a given bottle is:

(your home folder)/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/(bottle name)/user.reg

You need to be sure you're editing it as plain text, not styled or rich text. If you're using TextEdit, you can change the mode using the Format > Make Plain Text.

Within the file, search for the string "freetype". You should find a line like: [Software\\Wine\\Fonts] <a number> and, below that: "FreeTypeLib"="libfreetype.dylib"
You can change "libfreetype.dylib" to "/usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.dylib" and save the file.

See if that gets stuff running any better. If we don't solve the underlying problem, though, you'll have to do this for every bottle you create.