Invisible text in Pages, Numbers, ...

[c4016]

Hi!

 

During the last two days I have set up Snow Leopard 10.6 in VMware Workstation 7 - thanks to the many helpful ressources I found on this site!

 

After the system setup I installed iWork 09 and iLife 09 and all available updates (system and applications) and nearly everything works fine.

 

But I have one problem: when I use e.g. Pages or Numbers or Keynote, I see the application, but I don't see the contents of the document. For example, in Pages I see the menu, the scrollbars, the icons for bold/italic and so on but the document itself displays as a white area. I can type words (the word counter increases), but I do not see anything than a white area. When I switch to the full screen preview, I see the document (text, images) for about one second and then the screen turns black. When I switch back to normal view, I also see the document for a second and then again I see nothing but the white area. (I could provide a screenshot if it is not clear what I mean.)

 

It seems not to be a problem with the font - I changed the fonts - and with the text color. Other applications like iTunes, iMail, the text editor, ... work fine and I see everything that I expect to see.

 

I tried a search on the forum and with google but I did not find any helpful hints.

 

Has someone an idea what might cause this strange behaviour?

 

Thanks in advance, Christian

 

 

 

 

System Information:

 

VMware Workstation 7.0.0-203739 on Windows 7 Ultimate

"darwin.iso" from here (from "darwin-wks7.zip")

Snow Leopard 10.6.2 (including all updates)

Sound Driver "EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar.gz" (dated 2009-11-06)

iWork 09 (all updates)

 

Changes made to the freebsd-vmx file:

 

guestOS = "darwin10"

ich7m.present = "TRUE"

smc.present = "FALSE"

keyboard.vusb.enable = "TRUE"

mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"

monitor.virtual_exec="hardware" (I see no difference whether this line is present or not)

monitor.virtual_mmu="software" (I see no difference whether this line is present or not)

 

Hardware Information:

 

Dell Precision T3500 (Intel Quad Core 2,93 GHz)

NVIDIA Quadro FX 580

[Z0ID]

hey Christian,

 

I think u have no 3D (QE/CI) support with your Card in SL, the 5**** Series from Nvidia are not longer supported by Apple. There are several people on the board with the same prob, maybe they have found a sollution, but I doubt it, moreover it is possible that u have an AGP bus, this is also not longer supported (official). :-( Ohh I see its completely virtual so there is always no QE/CI support.

 

Why virtually get SL working on a real PC thats the fun, but get a new (nonAGP) Card before

 

:-)

[c4016]

{...} Ohh I see its completely virtual so there is always no QE/CI support. {...}

 

 

 

Hi betzo!

 

Thank you for your answer! I thought too, that it might be some 3d acceleration problem. Is there any chance to get this to work? Is there a chance to turn off Quartz and Snow Leopard falls back to some sort of slower but compatible rendering?

 

Greetings, Christian

[mcansky]

hi

 

had the same problem last update of iWork fixed it.

[c4016]

hi

 

had the same problem last update of iWork fixed it.

 

Oh, great!  Right now, I'm on vacation and so I have to wait until monday to install the last update. It must be a brand new update, because I installed all available updates until end of january without success ...

 

 

I'll give feedback here next week!

 

 

 

 

Greetings, Christian

[c4016]

hi

 

had the same problem last update of iWork fixed it.

 

Hi mcansky!

 

Back from my vacation, I run the software update on my installation of Snow Leopard and it did not find any updates for any iWork component. Below are the versions I have installed and that have the problems mentioned in my first post.

 

Pages '09 4.0.3 (766)

Number '09 2.0.3 (332)

Keynote '09 5.0.3 (791)

 

mcansky, which versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote do you have installed that work fine?

 

Thanks, Christian

[bluntknife]

Hi�mcansky!

 

Back from my vacation, I run the software update on my installation of Snow Leopard and it did not find any updates for any iWork component. Below are the versions I have installed and that have the problems mentioned in my first post.

 

Pages '09 4.0.3 (766)

Number '09 2.0.3 (332)

Keynote '09 5.0.3 (791)

 

mcansky, which versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote do you have installed that work fine?

 

Thanks, Christian

 

 

Did you ever fix this problem because I have the problem too?

Thanks.

[c4016]

Did you ever fix this problem because I have the problem too?

Thanks.

Hi!

 

Unfortunately I could not fix this problem. 

 

I did some research but I think, VMware's graphic card is not supported by OSX and fot that reason, QE-effects are not available and the rendering in e.g. Pages, Numbers depends on this.

 

I switched to VMware 7.1 a few days ago but this did not help.

 

I installed all available OSX updates - no changes.

 

I would really like to know how mcansky solved this problem ...

 

Greetings, Chris

[bluntknife]

I find it hard to believe a word processing package, such as Pages'09, has a dependency on 3D gfx support of the video hardware!!!

So now I guess I'll use Star Office or MS Office as usual.

The idea behind me setting up my laptop as a hackintosh was so I could try Apple's offerings on a 'try before you buy' test. I cannot try the trial iWork package so I'm none the wiser.

I wonder if iWork'10 resolves the issue..?

[c4016]

I find it hard to believe a word processing package, such as Pages'09, has a dependency on 3D gfx support of the video hardware!!!

So now I guess I'll use Star Office or MS Office as usual.

The idea behind me setting up my laptop as a hackintosh was so I could try Apple's offerings on a 'try before you buy' test. I cannot try the trial iWork package so I'm none the wiser.

I wonder if iWork'10 resolves the issue..?

 

Hmm, TeutonPE (post #2) also thought it might be due to missing QE support.

 

 

Is QE only for 3D acceleration? I always thought, it is a high performance graphics interface, used for both 2D and 3D ...

 

Did you test iWork'10?

 

BTW: Aero Glass (Windows 7) needs DirectX for Eplorer's transparency effects ...

[bluntknife]

Is iWork'10 released? I'll check it out and report back my findings.

 

I installed Win7 Ultimate on my laptop and the aero theme works properly. The GMA4500MHD is fully functional in windows.

[c4016]

I installed Win7 Ultimate on my laptop and the aero theme works properly. The GMA4500MHD is fully functional in windows.

I just wanted to point out that nowadays more software (not only games) make use of advanced graphic features and a layer like QE or DirectX. Therefore I think it's possible that the rendering of Pages and Numbers relies on QE.

 

Under VMware the guest system does not see the real (host's) graphic card but only a virtual graphic card that is little more than a standard vga card.