Who Knew That About Fonts?

[Donald Darden]

There are thousands of Fonts out there in the wild, and a number of font types.  lly there were only bit-fonts, then Adobe created its TrueType fonts which became a Microsoft standard, which I knew about, then about ten years ago, Microsoft and Adobe overcame their differences and adopted a new standard generally called OpenType fonts, which I only recently learned about.  Somewhere in there you also had PostScript fonts type 1 (PS1) that were used with printers, and others.

I never really questioned the subject of fonts much, just used the ones that I had on my PC.  But I've been doing a church newsletter and the bulletins for some time now, and my audience gets jaded with the same look and feel, so I decided to broaden my horizons.  The programs I use for my efforts are MS Word and MS Picture It! Publishing 2002.

First I went looking for free TrueType fonts, and believe me, there are thousands available.  But when I downloaded them and copied them to my \WINNT\Fonts directory, they were not immediately picked up by my programs.  I tried to find some OpenType fonts as well, and found a couple that were free, but most sites want big bucks ($24 - $70) for each set, but these did get picked up by my Picture It! program, so I sought more.  I wasn't paying that type of money for font sets though.  So I was also looking for something to generate or convert fonts from one type to another.

That's where I found out that the Mac has its own type of fonts as well, and even Linux uses fonts, though it appears that it supports the TTF (TrueType Fonts) found in windows.  I even found that TTF-named font files might be OpenType Fonts in reality, or that these might be called OTF.  And I mentioned the PS1 fonts, and there are also FON font files.  As to converters, there were a couple, one called CrossFonts and another called TransFonts (or TransFonts Pro), which mostly convert between Mac and Window fonts.  TransFonts Pro. for about $180, also converts several font types to OpenType, but only in the Mac version of the program.  But I can't afford to pay for something like that.

I did find FontForge, a free program available with Linux, that either comes installed or can be installed with the command apt-get install fontforge.
It is well documented and detailed about the different font families, and I tried to convert a couple of TrueType fonts to OpenType fonts, but windows reported errors, so I gave up on that.  It would be great for making your own fonts, though, if you had the interest.

I finally asked the question online with Google search:  How to add fonts to Windows.  And I found an answer, from Microsoft:  Use Start/Run and enter %windir%\Fonts, then under File, select Install New Font.  Now the command only directs you to the \Windows\Fonts or \WINNT\Fonts system folder as pertaining to your installed version of Windows, but I never realized that you had a new button called Install New Font just sitting there.  In fact, I bet a lot of people never realized this.  And the reason I say this, is because everywhere I went on the Internet, I was told to just copy new fonts to this folder and they would be automatically installed.  Apparently, that is not always true.

And the reason I say that, is because I copied all the contents of \winnt\fonts to a temporary folder, then used Install New Fonts as my means of putting them back, and this time both Word and Picture It! picked up on them.  Only trouble was, I could not copy them back until I first deleted the originals. and that took some doing because Windows would not let me delete any that were currently in use.

Something else I discovered earlier, is that recognized fonts become identified in the Registry.  Merely copying fonts into \winnt\fonts did not cause them to get added automatically to the Registry.  Using Install New Font takes care of this for you.  Now I have a total of 451 fonts on my machine that I can use for my publications, and available to me in both Word and Picture It!.  I can add more, but many of the fonts I explored online were very much like other fonts I already have, or not quite what I would want to use.  I am not sure if there is any limit to the number of fonts that Word can access, but I learned that Picture It! chokes out at 700 or more.     

[Kent Sarikaya]

Thanks Donald. Lots of interesting info. I always just dragged my fonts and they seem to work, but it is very nice to know that there is an install utility that solves problems if they should occur.

Thanks again for another fine post.

[Donald Darden]

I should have added that I am still using Windows 2000 Pro, and that some features common to this version and later ones just work better in XP and up.  The method of just dropping new fonts onto %windir%\Fonts may work fine in later versions, but my experience is that it often fails with 2000.

I never found anything specifically mentioned about having fonts added to the registry, but when something doesn't seem to add up in Windows, that is sometimes the place to go looking to find a cause.  I took one font type, named Windsor, and searched for it in \winnt\fonts, and could not find it.  I also checked my whole drive, and could not find it.  That made no sense.  So I searched the registry and found a couple of entries, and one related Windsor to a file named WN____.ttf.  That I had.  But where I found Windsor, I also found a range of other fonts in the registry, and that clued me to the fact that Picture It! was only giving me access to the fonts that somehow ended up in the Registry, not just in \winnt\fonts. 

Even if you feel timid about making changes in the Registry, you can use either Regedit or Regedit32 to examin the contents.  But you need to have some idea of what you are looking for, because the registry is a big place.  Windows 2000 Pro does not have Regedit32, and for you to be able to change permissions as you can under that program, you have to boot it into Safe Mode first.  Regedit32 lets you change permissions without the Safe Mode, but you still need Regedit in order to make certain changes.

What makes the Registry a minefield is that any changes take place without warning of possible consequences, there is no provided Undo capability, and a hosed up Registry cazn seriously impact your ability to boot up Windows or run certain applications.  To protect against this, you are advised to export the Registry first.  But that is no defense against a screw up that keeps your PC from booting up.  You really need to make a backup image that can be restored if that happens.

Assuming that you experience a meltdown of your Windows OS and have no backup, you still have one hope, which is to repair (not recover) your OS and keep your applications and data intact.  If you effect a Recovery, that wipes the content of your hard drive and puts everything back to its original state.  And if you do a fresh install of Windows, you only end up with Windows - no apps or data.

The trick is that you need a set of install disk for Windows (if you don't have these, you can find ways to make this from your PC's backup partition described on the Internet, and you really need to do that for just such an emergency).  When you use the install disk, you indicate that you want to do a fresh install, and wait until the install process checks for existing partitions and existing copies of Windows.  Then you indicate which partition you want to use, and press R to effect a repair rather than a fresh install.  This will preserve your applications and data (for the most part), but give you a new copy of Windows.

Now the problem with this is, that just as with installing Windows in general, you are going to have to repatch and update Windows like mad, using the Microsoft Windows update process.  You can steal a march on this by using Bart PE's method of building install processes that include some of the Microsoft roundup updates for Windows.  For instance, with Windows 2000 Pro, you can create a CD that includes SP1 up to SP3,  I tried it with SP4, but it did not correctly mesh.  The problem is that SP3 is applied after the install is complete, and SP4 tries to initiallize before SP3, and the process fails.  Note that Bart PE is only claimed to work with Windows XP, but I had no problem with getting it to work for Windows 2000 Pro as well.