Fonts Won't Load

[JOHN HOWARD]

Lately I am having a recurring problem: I go to a font group and 'load' it. Some of the fonts don't load. When I try to load them individually, I get a message: "A similar font is already installed but not loaded." and "The task is processed. 1 tasks failed." I then say aloud, "So what do I do now?", but nobody answers.

I also note a tiny little pink mark on the font icon and have searched the manual trying to find out what these secret markings mean. They remain secret.

Thanks for any clues.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Have you tried the obvious? Uninstalling the group of fonts, then loading it?

[JOHN HOWARD]

Yes, I had tried that. The group has 28 fonts in it. I uninstalled, then loaded. The message says 6 failed to load. Six fonts in the group have the little pink tag on their icons. These fonts are good. They are not missing or corrupted. I can open the font files and view them outside of Main Type and the show up and preview fine in Main Type.

If I try to individually load one of these tagged fonts, the message is that a similar font is already installed. It is frustrating that the program offers no explanation and no procedure for dealing with this.

[Erwin Denissen]

A lot can go wrong, or can be misunderstood, so let me first make sure my assumption that you are running MainType version 5.1 is correct.

Are you running version 5.1?

If so, what is the state of the fonts?

fontstate.png (31.87 KiB) Viewed 6027 times

[JOHN HOWARD]

I'm running 2.1 on Windows 7.

[Erwin Denissen]

You must be kidding!

We developed it in 2007, over 6 years ago. At that time we were all running Windows 95, 98, Me, XP, and Vista (which was released in that year), but we sure didn't make it compatible with Windows 7.

So in the mean time you upgraded Windows, but why did you forget to upgrade MainType?

Anyway to fix the issue, go to the Active tab, locate the font(s) and uninstall them. Alternatively enable smart install/uninstall (through the Options dialog) and try again.

[JOHN HOWARD]

I never kid about running old versions. Nine times out of ten, they work as well (or better) than the new version.

Your cure (uninstall the group, then load the group) worked well. Thank you. The problem only showed up in recent days, though I have been running Windows 7 for over a year. Probably Bill Gates fooled around with his (sic) OS again. If you have it handy, could you give me Bill's home phone #? There are several issues I'd like to raise with him.

Thanks again.

[Erwin Denissen]

I'm glad the problem is solved.

Has he got a phone?