Right after downloading a font, you can see it has a lot of metadata. For example, if you download the Sansation font and run mdls Sansation_Regular.ttf
you will get this output:
com_apple_ats_name_family = (
Sansation
)
com_apple_ats_name_fond = (
"Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_full = (
"Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_postscript = (
"Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_style = (
Regular
)
com_apple_ats_names = (
"Bernd Montag",
Regular,
Sansation,
"Sansation Regular",
"Version 1.31",
"\U00a9 2011 Bernd Montag"
)
kMDItemAuthors = (
"Bernd Montag"
)
kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemContentType = "public.truetype-ttf-font"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"public.truetype-ttf-font",
"public.truetype-font",
"public.font",
"public.data",
"public.item"
)
kMDItemCopyright = "© 2011 Bernd Montag"
kMDItemDateAdded = 2013-11-21 16:21:51 +0000
kMDItemDisplayName = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFonts = (
Regular,
Sansation,
"Sansation Regular"
)
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery = 0
kMDItemFSLabel = 0
kMDItemFSName = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount = 78464
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 501
kMDItemFSSize = 78464
kMDItemFSTypeCode = ""
kMDItemKind = "TrueType font"
kMDItemLogicalSize = 78464
kMDItemPhysicalSize = 81920
kMDItemVersion = "Version 1.31"
Now, if you check this file in a git repository, push it to a remote server and clone that repository, a lot of metadata is lost in the process. After being cloned, running mdls Sansation_Regular.ttf
gives the following output:
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2013-11-21 16:31:26 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2013-11-21 16:31:26 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery = 0
kMDItemFSLabel = 0
kMDItemFSName = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount = 78464
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 501
kMDItemFSSize = (null)
kMDItemFSTypeCode = ""
I tried to run mdimport Sansation_Regular.ttf
but the lost attributes did not come back.
What happened? Is there a way to ask the system to recreate all the missing metadata attributes?
I’m running OS X 10.8.5.
kMDItemContentType
). You should have a look to debugging information:mdimport -d 4 Sansation_Regular.ttf
.mdimport -d 4 Sansation_Regular.ttf
does not print anything and exits with status code 0. @Karsten According to How to programmatically access file resource forks on Snow Leopard? you can access the resource fork withSansation_Regular.ttf/..namedfork/rsrc
but it is empty. @Brian I’m using OS X 10.8.5 so maybe this issue is resolved in Mavericks?