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From: Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: What is 'fontworker' doing?
Date: 1 Mar 2014 22:09:55 GMT
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On 2014-02-25, Brian Gordon <briang@panix.com> wrote:
> Running the latest of everything on a MacBook Pro.  System has been real
> sluggish all day, and 'top' shows that around half the CPU time is being taken
> up by "fontworker".  From the man description, I can't see why it would be
> running at all, let alone the dominant process.

Here's the manual page about it:

fontworker(8)             BSD System Manager's Manual

NAME
     fontworker -- Mac OS X system font registration and validation
daemon

SYNOPSIS
     fontworker

DESCRIPTION
     fontworker is a system daemon that registers and validates font for
the system.

     There are no configuration options to fontworker.  Users should not
run fontworker manually.

SEE ALSO
     fontd(8)

HISTORY
     The fontworker daemon first appeared in MacOS X 10.6.

> If I 'kill' it, another instance appears immediately.  Rebooting doesn't seem
> to help, either.  Any suggestions?

I would run /Applications/Font Book, select all of your fonts, and
choose File > Validate Fonts from the menu bar to see if there are any
bad fonts installed that may be causing this behavior.

-- 
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JR