Mavericks Dictionary making every word selectable

I tried with the info.plist and when it was removed, Dictionary wouldn't open (gives me a "Dictionary quit unexpectedly" error message). So I tried putting the info.plist back into the app, which I did, but it still won't open.

So I tried restoring it from Time Machine, but that also won't let me because it says something like "Dictionary can't be modified because it is required by the system". So....

Ok, just rebooted and it's working again, but still with black text.

Well my friend, I'm about out of ideas on this one. I'll try to do some experimenting on my own to see if I can duplicate what you're experiencing and get back to you in this same thread if I can come up with a positive answer. I'm sure that it's something very simple that we're overlooking.

One other thing I was going to suggest but it will involve some work... is to download and install the combined Mavericks update. The combined update includes 10.9.1 and 10.9.2 together. It's quite large though and may take some time to download and install. It may or may not solve the problem so it's up to you whether or not to give it a try.

Here's the download link.

I'm already up to date with 10.9.2 but will try downloading the update nonetheless to see if it fixes anything, or if I can replace my existing Dictionary with the update's copy.

Thanks for all your help!

Is it possible that a font has somehow gotten corrupted? Maybe you checked that and I missed it.

Slydude said:

Is it possible that a font has somehow gotten corrupted? Maybe you checked that and I missed it.

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I hadn't tried that. But what font would it be that I should try re-installing?

Old Rogue said:

Nonsense. Except for the all-bold sample, the screen grabs look exactly as do mine. Dictionary was never Helvetica.

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So any thoughts on what would be causing this all bold issue?

Kudos for that info. Never occurred to me to do that.

Old Rogue said:

Happy to help, but I sure would like to hear from ebsseattle, to see if it works.

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I just got back home, tried what you suggested, and was disappointed when the HTML section of the CSS file was identical to what you posted. Then, when I realized it was the Baskerville font that Dictionary was using I checked in Font Book and found that, for some reason, Baskerville regular was turned off. Turning it on got Dictionary back to normal.

Thanks for your help though. It led me in the right direction.