IBM Plex doesn't show up in Apple Pages, Keynote and Numbers on macOS Monterey with German locale

[arnogramatke]

I am running macOS Monterey 12.1 set to German with the IBM Plex Fonts v6.0.0 installed as TTF.

When running Apple Pages, Keynote or Numbers the only Plex font that shows up in the font list is "IBM Plex Sans JP". The other fonts dont' show up, but can be selected from the font popup (Cmd+T). In this font popup, the font collection "Deutsch" (German) is preselected. In this selection, the only IBM Plex font is "IBM Plex Sans JP". The others don't show up there.

They show up in the "All fonts" selection, though.

When I check the IBM Plex fonts in Apple's Font Book app, only the IBM Plex Sans JP font contains "Deutsch" (German) in the "Sprache" (Language) section. For the others fonts, the "Sprache" section is either empty or doesn't contain German.

It looks like the Apple apps only present the font collection that corresponds to the system's locale.

I am not sure, if this is only an issue on macOS systems which are set to German, but it would be great, if German could be added to the language section in the font definition.

[BoldMonday]

Thanks for reporting the issue.

This is puzzling since fonts technically cannot identify themselves to support a particular language. All information about supported languages in Apple’s Font Book is based on Apple’s own heuristics. Therefore this appears to be a bug in macOS Monterey.

Out of curiosity: can you post some Font Book screenshots to illustrate the issue?

[arnogramatke]

The field "Sprache" (Language) is empty for IBM Plex Sans:

The field "Sprache" (Language) contains many languages for IBM Plex Sans JP:

This is the smart collection "Deutsch" (German) which seems to the one used by Apple's Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps. IBM Plex Sans JP is the only from the IBM Plex font family.

This is how this collection is shown in Pages:

[BoldMonday]

Thank you for creating the screenshots. Absolutely baffling why the field with Sprache remains completely empty...

We will try to reach the appropriate people at Apple to submit the bug to. Hopefully they can fix this soon.

[alohawolf]

This also impacts users with the English Locale too.

[BoldMonday]

We discovered that one way to circumvent this problem is to use macOS own font panel that can be invoked from the top menu under: Format > Font > Show Fonts.

From the macOS font panel choose All Fonts in the list on the left. IBM Plex will appear as an option again.

[lukipedia]

Also having this issue in macOS 12.3.1 with English as the system language. Have the .otf versions of the files installed.

Plex shows up in the macOS font browser (cmd+T) and in the font book, but will not show up in Keynote, Pages, Preview, or any of the other Apple productivity apps unless first selected via the workaround above; the fonts will then appear in the font list but will disappear again when the application is restarted. The fonts show up in Microsoft Word on startup, but the selection is bizarre (all of the styles are blank):

[hbuschme]

Same problem here (macOS 12.2.1, locale English). A Keynote presentation template I regularly use now tells me "This presentation has missing fonts." When replacing the fonts in the build-in dialogue box, the fonts show up with completely different font-names (e.g., "IBM Plex Mono Medm" instead of "IBMPlexMono-Medium").

[kenmcd]

Same problem here (macOS 12.2.1, locale English). A Keynote presentation template I regularly use now tells me "This presentation has missing fonts." When replacing the fonts in the build-in dialogue box, the fonts show up with completely different font-names (e.g., "IBM Plex Mono Medm" instead of "IBMPlexMono-Medium").

It appears the font names were changed internally between v5.2.1 and v6.0.0. And your template was created with v5.2.1.

Examples for IBM Plex Sans - Medium Font v3.2 from package v5.2.1 Font v.3.3 from package v6.0.0

Those name differences are causing a mis-match on the fonts.

[rorynl]

I'm using a Mac Studio with Monterey 12.4 and the font manager Typeface 3. I'm working in English. I installed the IBM Plex fonts (6.0.2, OTF) today to the directory that I use for fonts with Typeface 3. I've only checked Apple Pages and Apple Terminal, but neither shows any of the IBM Plex fonts as available. IBM Plex is the only series of fonts that I'm experiencing this with.

The workaround that @BoldMonday proposed in its February 16 comment above works for both Pages and Terminal. If I choose "All Fonts" rather than "English", all of the IBM Plex fonts appear on the standalone font panel list.

Note that I used IBM Plex Mono with Pages, Numbers and Terminal in February, also with Monterey as the Operating System, without any difficulty. At the time, I used Plex Mono via Apple Font Book rather than Typeface 3, but that doesn't appear to be the issue.

It would be a good idea to fix this. I'm OK with the workaround, but I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what the problem is before doing a search and finding this thread.

[BoldMonday]

It would be a good idea to fix this. I'm OK with the workaround, but I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what the problem is before doing a search and finding this thread.

@rorynl I agree and the fix should come from Apple. Because it worked on a previous version of Monterey and the fonts are 100% built according to specs. The problem is not unique to IBM Plex -- there are other fonts out there affected by this bug as well.

[rorynl]

@rorynl I agree and the fix should come from Apple. Because it worked on a previous version of Monterey and the fonts are 100% built according to specs. The problem is not unique to IBM Plex -- there are other fonts out there affected by this bug as well.

The first post in this thread was made 4½ months ago. I'm not having this problem with any other fonts, including fonts made by some of the world's top type foundries. Instead of laying this off on Apple, which you've now done twice in the last 4½ months, it might be more useful if IBM asked the makers of fonts that don't have this problem (apparently the vast majority) what they're doing that's different from what it's doing. Then maybe IBM could take their advice and fix this.

To the extent that Apple might be part of the solution, I also don't quite get the idea that IBM, not exactly a Mom and Pop operation, can't figure out in 4½ months how to deal with Apple on this. I would have thought that Mike Abbink, one of the lead IBM Plex designers and Executive Creative Director at IBM, or his superiors, could talk to the right person at Apple just by picking up the phone :)

[BoldMonday]

Yes, we’re laying this off on Apple because we know exactly what the cause is.

The Plex fonts contain a meta table for specifiying meta information what scripts and languages are supported. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/meta

This meta table is specially added because the Plex fonts are supporting many different languages and many different scripts over lots of different files. This table can help in accessibility. Windows is using information from it for showing sample strings for example.

Monterey introduced a bug in Apple’s own heuristics for determining language support in fonts. These heuristics do not work anymore on all fonts containing a meta table. When we discovered this we filed a bug report at Apple explaining in detail the cause.

[rorynl]

@BlueMonday:

we know exactly what the cause is.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but the complete lack of communication about this is hard to comprehend. On the upside, it's great to find out after 4½ months of this thread, which one has to search for to find, what the actual problem is.

Here's a question. Do you think it might be a good idea to tell people who are downloading IBM Plex about this problem and what the workaround is? You know, so they don't waste their time trying to figure out why Plex doesn't show up on their font lists, which is kinda basic to using a font, and whether it's a problem with the font itself or with their font manager? Yeah, before I found this thread one of the things that I was considering was opening a ticket with Typeface Pro 3, the people who make my font manager.

When I went to IBM's Plex site yesterday and selected "Get Plex", the screen capture below shows what I was taken to. Plex was just recently updated, well after this issue emerged, to 6.0.2. I downloaded and installed Plex. There is not a single word about this problem anywhere on the page. Not one. Not even a link.

The way that this is being handled defies common sense. What's IBM's attitude about this? The font is "free", so communicating on an issue basic to the usability of the Plex typefaces ain't our problem? Let me tell you, this doesn't make IBM look good. The phrase "completely unprofessional" comes to mind, which I suspect is not the image that IBM likes to project, certainly not in the marketing of its new typography for IBM's identity.

[BoldMonday]

The phrase "completely unprofessional" comes to mind

@rorynl This is completely uncalled for and I strongly suggest to take a deep breath here. As developers and maintainers of Plex we are not responsible for Apple’s slow response to bug reports.

Since Plex was introduced to the world in 2018 it has been in use by well over one hundred thousand users who have been able to use these fonts on a daily basis on a multitude of platforms and environments. There are very few other typefaces out there that match the scope of Plex in terms of amount of styles and coverage of global languages. On top of that, Plex has also received numerous design awards.

[twardoch]

I second @BoldMonday — the fonts follow the OpenType specification, and the meta table was in fact first proposed by Apple. If one operating system or app maker breaks handling of valid fonts in some release, it should be up to that vendor to »unbreak« this.

This is not the first and not the last time that some software maker breaks the way certain OpenType fonts work in their OS or app. This happens quite often. Introducing hacks and workarounds to shipping fonts every time this happens would mean that font vendors wouldn’t be able to do the actual font development.

If a font vendor manages to isolate the problem and reports it via the appropriate channels (this rarely involves the phone these days) — that’s the professional thing to do, and quite often that’s pretty much the best they can do.

[rorynl]

@BoldMonday As developers and maintainers of Plex we are not responsible for Apple’s slow response to bug reports.

Please don't be defensive. One of the reasons that I'm referring to IBM in my posts, and not to your company as its contractor, is to try to keep this from bring personal. In the post to which you're responding, I wasn't even talking about Apple's processing of the bug report. Indeed, the underlying assumption of my post is that IBM can't control the timing of that; although I must say, I would have thought that IBM and Mike Abbink have more pull that you seem to suggest :)

I've said what I've got to say, and I stand by every word of it. The way that this is being handled flies in the face of common sense. It has caused me, and I'm sure many others, a completely unnecessary waste of time. In your posts, I've yet to see any awareness of that. Either IBM will take up my suggestion about informing people of this problem, and the fix, at the time of download, or it won't. I think that whether it does depends on whether IBM cares, even minimally, about the people who it is encouraging to download and use this typeface.

At the moment, I'm left with the impression that IBM's view is that those of us who don't hang out at GitHub and spend our lives reading its "Issues" threads simply don't count.

I don't see what any of this has to do with whether Plex is a good typeface (I think that it is) or how many awards it's won.

[BoldMonday]

Apple has fixed the issue in macOS Ventura, and correctly determines language support again in IBM Plex fonts containing a meta table.

[unikitty37]

Thanks, @BoldMonday — I don't suppose Apple has given any clue as to whether they're going to backport that to Monterey, for the benefit of users who can't upgrade yet?

(My bet is no, because Apple, but I live in hope 😁)

[BoldMonday]

@unikitty37 Knowing Apple I would not hold my breath...