F o n t S
Why have different fonts?
For many documents, the same old 2 or 3 fonts that most people use can be boring. There are about 54 fonts that come automatically with
Windows 98se
You may have noticed as you browse the Internet, or even on documents you have seen... there are many more fonts that will work for Windows for making your documents
.
Once you start using different fonts, you may decide to add more to your computer. Many are free for download like these at FontGarden.com
simply right mouse-click on the font of choice and save it to your hard drive. Often they are zipped - ie focaccia.zip. If you don't already have a version of pkunzip or winzip on your computer, you could download that, too from many places like download.com or tucows.com
For those of you who may already be fontaholics then there are a few tips you may need to keep in mind.
Font Management:
beware of how many fonts are actually installed in windows.
Read below from a confessed fontaholic Jeff from a desktop publishing newsgroup
You should keep the number of fonts actually installed into C:\Windows\Fonts quite low. There's simply no good reason to have hundreds and hundreds of them in there. Doing so slows down reboots, slows down Windows, slows the opening of programmes that use fonts, and slows down their operation.
The Windows Registry has an absolute limit on how much space it allows for the filenames of the installed fonts. If they all have short 8.3 filenames, then the theoretical limit is 1024 fonts, but your computer will have major problems before you reach that number. Windows will become slower to boot and programmes that use fonts will become slower
to open. I believe that Windows XP handles fonts differently in the Registry, but a large number of installed fonts will still cause programmes to open slowly and can affect overall performance of your computer.
Also, if any of your fonts use long filenames as they can since Windows 95, then that drastically reduces the number you can install before that space in the Registry fills up.
Even having, say, 400 or 500 fonts installed will affect performance.
There's no "way around this". It's like the law of gravity. :-)
*No one* needs hundreds of fonts installed at one time, not even a fontaholic. Remove the ones you don't use often and save them in a folder on your hard drive. Install them when you need them and then uninstall them until you need them again.
That folder of uninstalled fonts can be used to sort them by category, which makes finding the font(s) you need even easier. Set up sub-folders for categories like Sans Serif, Serif, Decorative, Dingbats, etc. You can subdivide them further as your collection grows, or add or delete
categories. Just make a system that works for you and can grow as it needs to.
It's extremely easy to install fonts when you need them, so there's no excuse for leaving hundreds of them installed all the time.
I set up a folder called "Fonts (Uninstalled)" and divided it into sub-folders into which I classify and save my fonts. Some categories are standard, some are my own definition, but the important thing is for you to know what you mean for each one you have so you know where to store a
font and, just as important, where to find it again. You can start with fewer categories and then reclassify fonts into narrower definitions as your collection grows.
Some people file by foundry, but I don't really know why. For example, if you put all your Letraset fonts in one folder, then you have everything from very plain sans serif to ultra-decorative fonts mixed together. If you need to find one or all of your Letraset fonts, just use Find and do a search for LET (which appears in all of their file
names).
I have the following categories:
Art Deco
Art Nouveau
Arts & Crafts
Barcodes
Blackletter ("Old English", etc)
Dingbats & Symbols
Display & Decorative
Bands & Music
Books & Magazines (Titles & Logos)
Cars
College Sports
Corporate Logos & Fonts
Fire & Flames
Games (Titles & Logos)
Groovy, Man (60s & 70s)
Hallowe'en & Horror
Inverted & Sideways
Latino & "Spicy"
Middle East, Russia, & India ("Looks Like")
Objects & Things (Scrapbooking)
Oriental Flavours ("Looks Like")
Patriotic (Stars & Stripes)
Ransom Notes
Sexy & Risqué
Trees, Logs, & Planks
TV Shows, Plays, & Movies (Titles & Logos)
Wild, Wild West & Circus
Xmas & Winter
< all the rest >
Drop Caps (Fonts)
Drop Caps (Graphics & Clip Art)
Fractions
Grunge & Distressed (except Typewriters)
Hand-Lettering (Printing and Scribbling)
Handwriting (Cursive)
Modern
Sans Serif
Script & Cursive
Semi-Serif [e.g. Optima and Flareserif]
Serif
Typewriters, Printers, etc
Uncial [note: some people call these Celtic, but Uncial is more accurate]
These are the ones I use. How many categories within Display & Decorative, for example, that you use depends on how many fonts you have and how you classify them. I need to set up sub-categories within Serif for different kinds like Old Style, Transitional, etc. (Next rainy day.
<g>)
If a certified fontaholic like me with tens of thousands of fonts in my collection can get by with about 150 installed fonts, so can anyone.
:-)
Jeff
List Owner/Moderator
Only_Fonts
Font managing software is also helpful. One I like is called AMP FontViewer and is free from tucows.com
This one is called Dauphin.
This is Comic Sans MS and this is, of course, Arial – which next to Courier is one the standard BORING fonts that windows gives you.
Michael Shalkey
CIPCUG
April 23, 2004 (Wendy Medium)