Foreign System Fonts

Topic

New Reply

Windows 7 installed a large number of foreign fonts (including Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, etc.), with no opportunity to elect whether or not to install them. I was able to delete a few but, with most of them, W7 will not permit deleting, saying that they are system fonts.

I normally use a fair number of fonts as I do design work, and I hate to have my OS cluttered with fonts I will never use since I do not speak those languages. Is there some way of getting rid of them?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Here’s one suggestion. I’m not sure I believe it, though…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

Reply | Quote

Here’s one suggestion. I’m not sure I believe it, though…

The described technique works just fine with fonts NOT designated as system fonts. It does not allow removal of system fonts.

Reply | Quote

The described technique works just fine with fonts NOT designated as system fonts. It does not allow removal of system fonts.

Hence my previous scepticism!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

Reply | Quote

I do NOT think that any of these fonts will be displayed in in program, unless the language is also installed. When viewing these fonts from Windows Explorer, they are greyed out on my system.

Are you sure that came with Windows 7?
Have you installed any of program that adds fonts such as Office or and other word processor?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

I do NOT think that any of these fonts will be displayed in in program, unless the language is also installed. When viewing these fonts from Windows Explorer, they are greyed out on my system.

Are you sure that came with Windows 7?
Have you installed any of program that adds fonts such as Office or and other word processor?

Yes, the undeletable foreign fonts came with Windows 7 Professional. I did a clean install and tried to delete the foreign fonts before installing anything else. I was able to delete a few, but most were nondeleteable as system fonts. (Adobe Creative Suite added some more foreign fonts, but those all deleted normally.)

Reply | Quote

Go to c:WindowsFonts (or whatever your correct path is), maximize it, and you will see all of your windows fonts, some greyed out but displayed, and others not in grey. On the left-hand side of the overall display you will find a set of commands that are new to this version of Windows (I think), as well as a set of operations, or descriptions thereof, above the displays. Check it out and report back to headquarters to let us know if you can figure it out, as it may be non-intuitive for some of us, including me.

Reply | Quote

[*]Most (if not all) of these fonts are capable of rendering standard Anglophone characters
[*]There is an option to “grey out” (or not) these Fonts in the top left-hand corner – as suggested by peterg
[*]IIRC M$ has “recently” altered its approach to multi-language issues. AFAICS this has resulted in “foreign” fonts being installed as “system” fonts on a worldwide basis. Some of these Fonts are recognisable from a standard Vista install

HTH

Reply | Quote

The same screen that I suggested is available more conveniently in Control Panel. One thing you might note is that there is an excellent link to http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontinfo/en/ which will tell you quite a lot about what is new. It appears that Gabriola and three additional instances of Segoe are the only new fonts for anglophones, but you are able to install and uninstall fonts based on your language choices.

You can add Type 1 fonts and *.otf Opentype fonts to this folder, but that is not really convenient for font management, and if anyone has any recommendation for font managers we might be interested to hear of it. (I have long used Bitstream Font Manager.)

Reply | Quote

The same screen that I suggested is available more conveniently in Control Panel. One thing you might note is that there is an excellent link to http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontinfo/en/ which will tell you quite a lot about what is new. It appears that Gabriola and three additional instances of Segoe are the only new fonts for anglophones, but you are able to install and uninstall fonts based on your language choices.

You can add Type 1 fonts and *.otf Opentype fonts to this folder, but that is not really convenient for font management, and if anyone has any recommendation for font managers we might be interested to hear of it. (I have long used Bitstream Font Manager.)

Thanks, Peter.

For some reason, W7 initially installed all the fonts as visible. Shortly after I posted my initial inquiry, I found the settings you mention and was able to choose and hide the foreign ones. Unfortunately, the grayed out foreign fonts still take up space on the hard disk, even if they do not load into applications. I guess taking up space for unwanted fonts makes little difference on new computers given the low cost of new 1 terabyte and larger hard disks. On the other hand, for those still trying to make do with older computers, it seems pointless to waste limited space onforeign fonts one will never use, particularly since the files sizes of Chinese fonts can dwarf even the largest western Open Type fonts because of the thousands of Chinese glyphs that must be included.

MS must have had some reason for installing so many foreign fonts as non-electable system fonts, but I cannot figure out why they would they would do so when most users worldwide speak and write in only a few languages and will never need fonts in languages they do not speak. No doubt someone from MS will eventually explain their rationale.

Switching to your inquiry aboutfont managers: I’ve tried a few and have not found them to be particularly useful. W7’s ability to link to fonts not included in the font folder, which I have not yet tried, would seem to be a good substitute for a font manager installing and uninstalling fonts. Microsoft also has a free font extension that works on XP, Vista and W7. Installing the extension extends the Properties information for the font to include several more tabs and includes information such as the number of glyphs and number of kerning pairs. The extension is available at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeProperty21.mspx. As you no doubt already know, double clicking on a font brings up a window that lets you see generally what the font looks like, but displays only capital letters, small letters and default number set. For viewing and selecting available glyphs in OpenType fonts, as well as in TT and Type 1 fonts, InDesign has capabilities that exceed any of the font managers I have tried–and I’m told Quark does as well.

The Technical Preview of Word 2010 is not in the same class as the page layout programs but it has a lot more typographical features than do older versions. The new features are available from the new Advanced tab on the Fonts panel, which lets you adjust tracking and kerning, choose among any of the following that might be avaiable in the font: old style figures, lining figures, proportional figures, fixed width figures, the defaults for any of those, small caps and ligatures — though the ligatures feature does not seem to work properly in the Technical Preview.

Although a bit clumsy, W2010 will display all available glyphs in OpenType fonts as well as in TT and Type 1.(Insert, Symbol, More Symbols.) The Special Characters tab on the Symbols panel will also let you insert m and n spaces, m and n dashes, required hyphens and breaks, and a few other things.

Hopefully, the new typographical features in Word 2010, and better ones in future versions, will lead to better typography in business documents, where the layout styles are for the most part still mired in practices learned with typewriters which had very limited glyph sets and only fixed width characters.

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Peter.

For some reason, W7 initially installed all the fonts as visible. Shortly after I posted my initial inquiry, I found the settings you mention and was able to choose and hide the foreign ones. Unfortunately, the grayed out foreign fonts still take up space on the hard disk, even if they do not load into applications. I guess taking up space for unwanted fonts makes little difference on new computers given the low cost of new 1 terabyte and larger hard disks. On the other hand, for those still trying to make do with older computers, it seems pointless to waste limited space onforeign fonts one will never use, particularly since the files sizes of Chinese fonts can dwarf even the largest western Open Type fonts because of the thousands of Chinese glyphs that must be included.

MS must have had some reason for installing so many foreign fonts as non-electable system fonts, but I cannot figure out why they would they would do so when most users worldwide speak and write in only a few languages and will never need fonts in languages they do not speak. No doubt someone from MS will eventually explain their rationale.

Switching to your inquiry aboutfont managers: I’ve tried a few and have not found them to be particularly useful. W7’s ability to link to fonts not included in the font folder, which I have not yet tried, would seem to be a good substitute for a font manager installing and uninstalling fonts. Microsoft also has a free font extension that works on XP, Vista and W7. Installing the extension extends the Properties information for the font to include several more tabs and includes information such as the number of glyphs and number of kerning pairs. The extension is available at http://www.microsoft…roperty21.mspx. As you no doubt already know, double clicking on a font brings up a window that lets you see generally what the font looks like, but displays only capital letters, small letters and default number set. For viewing and selecting available glyphs in OpenType fonts, as well as in TT and Type 1 fonts, InDesign has capabilities that exceed any of the font managers I have tried–and I’m told Quark does as well.

The Technical Preview of Word 2010 is not in the same class as the page layout programs but it has a lot more typographical features than do older versions. The new features are available from the new Advanced tab on the Fonts panel, which lets you adjust tracking and kerning, choose among any of the following that might be avaiable in the font: old style figures, lining figures, proportional figures, fixed width figures, the defaults for any of those, small caps and ligatures — though the ligatures feature does not seem to work properly in the Technical Preview.

Although a bit clumsy, W2010 will display all available glyphs in OpenType fonts as well as in TT and Type 1.(Insert, Symbol, More Symbols.) The Special Characters tab on the Symbols panel will also let you insert m and n spaces, m and n dashes, required hyphens and breaks, and a few other things.

Hopefully, the new typographical features in Word 2010, and better ones in future versions, will lead to better typography in business documents, where the layout styles are for the most part still mired in practices learned with typewriters which had very limited glyph sets and only fixed width characters.

You might like to try the 30-day trial of FONT EXPERT.

Reply | Quote

You might like to try the 30-day trial of FONT EXPERT.

There is also Font Suitcase from Extensis. It is expensive, about $100, but I understand it has long been the leading font manager for Macs and they just released a new version for Windows that includes all the features in the Mac version. If you are perchance a student, I’ve seen it selling for about $50 for the academic edition. I haven’t tried it out yet though. They also have a 30 day free trial.

Reply | Quote

There is also Font Suitcase from Extensis. It is expensive, about $100, but I understand it has long been the leading font manager for Macs and they just released a new version for Windows that includes all the features in the Mac version. If you are perchance a student, I’ve seen it selling for about $50 for the academic edition. I haven’t tried it out yet though. They also have a 30 day free trial.

Font Suitcase (note link) does look interesting, but at that price I wonder if the EULA lets you use it on more than one computer, e.g. a desktop and a laptop. (Font Expert is $60, single machine only, I think.) It is Win 7 compatible, but it is a 32-bit application and I saw from an unanswered question in the forums that someone ran into trouble with 64-bit Photoshop (which I have) after installing it, although the source of the trouble may easily have been something else.

Please keep us up-to-date on any knowledge you have of how well it performs under Win 7, including 64-bit.

Reply | Quote

…MS must have had some reason for installing so many foreign fonts as non-electable system fonts, but I cannot figure out why they would they would do so when most users worldwide speak and write in only a few languages and will never need fonts in languages they do not speak. No doubt someone from MS will eventually explain their rationale….

Think for a moment about something completely different: cars….

In some countries, they (still) drive on the left side of the road. That means that businesses that want to sell cars in those countries have to produce a whole different kind of car body….

Scale that to character sets, & perhaps you will get a flavour of how many tailored versions of Windows (& all the supporting Apps) M$ started out having to ship.

As I mentioned earlier, by installing a worldwide basic fontSet with each new version of Windows, M$ gets a clearer grip (or so it hopes) on what really cuts it for that OS.

IIRC loading extra Fonts takes a chunk out of RAM.

For me, language issues are more a matter of 3-4 different keyboard layouts, but (hopefully) you get the idea…

Reply | Quote

Translations, that’s why.

If I want my message to be understood by someone, let us say, who speaks one of the Khosian languages (Ju, Khoe, !Kwi, or Taa) then I may write something in English, with what we call the Roman alphabet, and have it translated into one of those languages on the fly by a computer or computer service and, if they have a different alphabet, it will be converted into their language and in their alphabet, if it is supported. (There is also an extinct Khosian language, but since I know nothing of any of them and simply came up with the group by throwing a metaphorical dart at my Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has a tentative map of the distribution of the Khosian languages, I will treat it as unprintable.)

Knowledge knows no barriers, but language can certainly be a barrier to understanding, and if we are working toward real-time translation, however primitive it may be to begin with, then those alphabets, with at least one ‘standard’ for every language – are important. You may profit by having access to timely knowledge that is in another language. What if you want to build a horseless carriage for what to you is the wrong side of the road? Sometimes things can go horribly wrong. See how Windows Media Player catalogues my Nocturne album (EMI Classics, recorded in Holland, with full English-language playlist):

Reply | Quote

Translations, that’s why.

If I want my message to be understood by someone, let us say, who speaks one of the Khosian languages (Ju, Khoe, !Kwi, or Taa) then I may write something in English, with what we call the Roman alphabet, and have it translated into one of those languages on the fly by a computer or computer service and, if they have a different alphabet, it will be converted into their language and in their alphabet, if it is supported. (There is also an extinct Khosian language, but since I know nothing of any of them and simply came up with the group by throwing a metaphorical dart at my Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has a tentative map of the distribution of the Khosian languages, I will treat it as unprintable.)

Knowledge knows no barriers, but language can certainly be a barrier to understanding, and if we are working toward real-time translation, however primitive it may be to begin with, then those alphabets, with at least one ‘standard’ for every language – are important. You may profit by having access to timely knowledge that is in another language. What if you want to build a horseless carriage for what to you is the wrong side of the road? Sometimes things can go horribly wrong. See how Windows Media Player catalogues my Nocturne album (EMI Classics, recorded in Holland, with full English-language playlist):

You’ve got to be joking! I’m 62 and I’ve never sent a computer-translated message, let alone one in a language with a different alphabet. As a lawyer, I have had some documents professionally translated from English into foreign languages and from the foreign languages into English. I have no way of knowing how good the translations from English were, but the ones to English were so bad that I had to take the translations, convert them to understandable English and send them back to the translators to make sure that I had correctly translated their incomprehensible English into comprehensible English.

The only foreign language into which I have ever tried to send an email message is French, and that is only because I grew up in Montreal.

Even if one might want access to the foreign fonts for occasional use, MS could simply provide them without making them non-removable system fonts. Then one could install them only if and when actually needed.

John

Reply | Quote

There is a thread that I’ve participated in on the Microsoft forums on this very topic – please see:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7desktop/thread/60f5ac05-182e-438f-88e4-2a7432d8e161

No satisfactory resolution was ever achieved during the thread.

Reply | Quote

In Win 7 Control Panel > Fonts > Font Settings, there is an option to allow fonts to be installed using a shortcut which installs a shortcut to the font rather than the font. This option should speed startup (I guess) but I also guess it might slow some applications.

Reply | Quote