Font icons explanation and fonts that won't uninstall

maxslomoff · Post by **maxslomoff** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:23 am

hello,
i have a huge collection of fonts on my windows xp machine, 10,000.

i am trying out main type to take control of them and get better speed out of my programs.

i looked up xp system fonts and made a system font group. then i uninstalled all the fonts and re-installed only the system fonts of which there are 185.

it turns out that i have 1200 fonts still installed most of which are not system fonts and i can't seem to uninstall them. a lot of them have a icon of a red exclamation point icon and are unknown font types.

some of them have a true type icon with a small red "L" box in the bottom right or a red A icon with the same small "L" box. - true type and raster fonts.

how can i uninstall these fonts?

also, i seem to have uninstalled fonts that are used by office and i'm assuming some other programs. is there any way to automatically install the fonts that programs need? i do have smart install/uninstall checked.

thanks for all your time and help!

max

maxslomoff · Post by **maxslomoff** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:25 am

also,

i thought i would still be able to browse my 10,000 fonts and load the ones i want to use - but they do not show up in the browse tab. do i have to reinstall them to look at them?

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:10 am

There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to view your fonts through the Brose fonts pane. There is no need to install them, just make sure you have not set a filter that hides them from the list.

About loaded fonts
A loaded font is added to the system font table, but not to the font related part of the registry. Because all fonts in the system font table are available to all applications, loaded fonts (just like installed fonts) are available to all applications. However loaded fonts are no longer available after the system is rebooted. You can always unload a font that is loaded through MainType, but it is impossible to determine the source of fonts that are loaded through another application. After a reboot those fonts are no longer loaded, unless another application reloads them again.

Right now there is no auto activation functionality that install fonts that a document or application wants to use. Do you have a particular application in mind?

Do let us know your results.

maxslomoff · Post by **maxslomoff** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:14 am

i was refering specifically to office at the time.

what about these fonts that are of unknown type which i cant seem to uninstall? r they bad?

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:25 am

I'm not sure if those fonts are corrupt, can you send some to me and I'll look into this?

Erwin Denissen · Post by **Erwin Denissen** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:19 am

Thanks for sending the font files. They are all part of PostScript Type 1 fonts. A PostScript Type 1 font consist of two files with the same name but with a different extension (.PFM and .PFB). The font files are all missing one of these. Unless MainType has a bug, they should never be available in the Active fonts tab. Do let me know if they are actually shown there as that would prove MainType is missing something.