On 2/23/17 12:05 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
I want to end up with the same fonts installed on all my computers.
"All" is inclusive of various Windows systems, a Mac, and a couple Linux
systems.
Each system has some fonts I have no use for, Asian fonts for example.
So I'm looking to come up with the most efficient method for
accomplishing this.
This is my current idea.
1. On the first system, delete the fonts I don't want.
2. Copy the fonts to a folder on an external drive
3. On the second system, attach the external drive and repeat Step 1.
4. Copy the fonts to same folder on the external drive. But do I
overwrite the existing fonts when there are duplicates, skip, or add a
copy. I don't want to get too picky. LOL
5. Repeat Steps 3 & 4 until I've gathered all the fonts into a "master"
folder.
6. Take the external drive, and one by one, copy the fonts in the
"master" folder into all the font folders in the computers, overwriting
everything.
Anyone have a quicker way to do this? No scripts, please, that's
something I don't want to deal with since I'll be using different
operating systems.
Normally, you would do things like this with a "Font Manager",
which is a third-party program that handles fonts in "sets".
I didn't think about a font manager. For the small thing I want to do,
I guess it just didn't occur to me. I had one installed on my Windows 7
computer for a long time. But something mangled it, and since I never
used it, I removed it and never installed another one.
The solutions sounds a bit of an overkill if I do it that way for 7
computers.
The end game is to just simply have the same fonts on 5 different OSes,
but 7 different computers.
This allows the system folder for the fonts, to remain unmodified.
You pile your fonts into sets, place the sets in a file tree, then
use the Font Manager to "turn the sets ON or OFF".
This allows a person who owns 10,000 fonts, to continue
to have a responsive computer, while turning on the fonts
in sets of a thousand perhaps.
I probably own more than that, but have come to realize, I probably
don't even need 500 installed! LOL
I often use the same programs on all the computers, and depending on
what I'm doing, I'll use different systems. So I just want all the
installed fonts to be identical on each computer so I don't have to deal
with anything that doesn't match.
And when possible, I embed the font in the resulting file.
I think there was some limit, in the Font Manager I tested,
as to the size of the group of fonts. I don't think you
can actually turn on 10,000 fonts at once. The limit
might have been closer to a thousand, and I actually
had to take some of them out of the test folder, before
the Font Manager would work.
I'm not a font expert, but I don't recommend handling
them like ****ing into a bucket. There could be surprises
later, if some document doesn't look right, and you can't
figure out why. While some of the Truetype files
might look the same to you (approx same file size), there
can be big differences inside.
This is something I've considered. I do know that old Arial files from
Windows, say Windows for Workgroups, don't necessarily match the Arial
font from newer files, and this is the basic characters.
What I was thinking of doing, is starting with the oldest OS, adding
those files to the "master" folder. Then the next oldest, and simply
overwriting the files if there are duplicates. At the end, I should
have the newer files installed everywhere.
And just leave the Asian fonts alone - they will be put
back in short order, by some update.
In my collection, I can see
fontnav.msi
fontnav.cab
( https://s11.postimg.org/ijuot4y6b/fontmainwin2.gif )
fontforge (an editor)
https://fontforge.github.io/fontforge-tutorial.pdf
Some of the software I have here, is just for testing
or short-term usage for a project. For example, a trial
version of CorelDraw had a font manager bundled with it,
and the font manager can remain behind after you remove
Corel Draw. (But that's the most basic font manager
and not really all that wonderful.)
Fontforge is the one that can show you pane after pane
of character sets, inside the same font. While two font
files might look the same, one can have a lot more useful
entries in it than the other. This one is a subset font
extracted from a PDF (you can see it is missing the letter Z).
I think, that at some point in the past, I had Fontforge installed.
Since I don't have it now, it means I removed it for some reason.
https://s11.postimg.org/jenzczpcz/fontforge.gif
I used fontforge, as part of a project to "unmunge" a
PDF document where the font tables were screwed up
(on purpose) by a desktop publishing tool, to prevent
copy and paste. After you remove the copy/paste protection
on a PDF, there can be a second level of protection implemented
by the two-stage character lookup involved. They can make
it so the screen appearance is correct, and the Copy buffer
is full of crap. It took me two weeks, with some scripts
and Fontforge, but I actually managed to fix it.
Did you post about this, as it seems familiar?
There aren't really all that many Font Managers, and
perhaps only one good one per platform. Some will be
commercial (Fontographer???). The so-called "free" ones
are usually invented to sell fonts - as the tool will have
an "easy URL link" in the menu, for visiting a font sales
website. The one in Coreldraw was like that, except the
business may have shut down or got sold off or something.
It might have involved BitStream (just going from memory).
I used to have TypeFont installed, years ago. Create and modify fonts.
Fonts really fascinated me more then than now, so I don't miss it.
Windows 98 now that I think about it.
Years ago, when I still used Atari computers, I had a font creation
program. For a project, I needed to have moose prints running in a
circle. I didn't have any good graphics program to do it with, so I
created a font with just one character, which was a moose print. Then,
ran the single letter in a circle to get what the customer wanted.
These are not five minute projects, so take your time.
And *don't* pour 10,000 fonts into some System folder.
That's wrong on every platform. The fonts should have
unique identifiers, but you never know. There is more to
it than just the file name.
Aware of this. I used to be into desktop publishing, like 20 years ago,
and have a couple books on typography, and using type as part of the
design process.
--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 45.7.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"