Last Word in Font Management

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The Last Word in Font Management

© 2000-3 by Foster D. Coburn III, All Rights Reserved.

Part of my seminars covers the topic of font management. A small number of attendees have their fonts under control while most attendees have a complete font mess on their computers. A lot of people ask questions on this subject and more contact me afterwards with follow-up questions. So I'll cover this topic once again and hopefully we can get all of your computers in good font shape.

Out With the Old

I know that you are busy and you just don't have time to do this right now. I know you have projects that just have to get done today. But if you ignore this and decide to come back to it later, you'll forget. Or worse yet, you'll get bitten by a bad font problem. The worst possible scenario is that too many fonts can render your computer useless. So try and find an hour to take care of this problem now.

We've got to start by cleaning out the fonts on your computer now. Open up Control Panel | Fonts and you should see something similar to image at right. I've labeled four different icons to show you the kinds of fonts you might find. First is a TrueType font. It is signified by the TT icon in blue and gray. This will probably make up the majority of fonts on your computer. If you look at the lower left of the TrueType icon I've pointed out, there is a small arrow. The arrow indicates that the font is not located in the Fonts folder but rather linked to a location elsewhere. Our second icon is an OpenType icon. This is a fairly new font format and it is only available in Windows 2000 (or Windows XP). If you find any OpenType fonts, they were most likely supplied as part of Windows 2000 and should be left alone. The third icon indicates a PostScript font. You'll recognize these by the lowercase "a" in red. Again this is a shortcut as indicated by the arrow in the lower left corner of the icon. The last type of icon is for a screen font and has the big 4 next to it. Under no circumstances should you delete screen fonts. They all have a red capital "A" on their icon.

Now that we've identified the four major types of fonts, we have to start deleting. Do not delete the screen fonts. These are required by Windows. There are a small number of TrueType fonts that are also very important and should not be deleted. They include Arial, Courier New, Symbol, Times New Roman and Wingdings. There are a few others that can include Comic Sans, Marlett and Tahoma that are used by a number of programs. If you want, you can move these fonts to another folder later and get them added back with Font Navigator. This can be somewhat difficult as Windows won't allow you to move an active font. And I've already mentioned to leave the OpenType fonts alone if you have any. The rest can be either moved or deleted. If you aren't sure if you can find where the font came from, move it. Otherwise, delete it. A helpful Web page from Microsoft can tell you which fonts are supplied with various Microsoft products. You'll find it at http://www.Microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.aspx.

In With the New

Now that you have a sparkling clean Fonts folder, we need to start putting fonts on your hard drive. Please note that we are not installing fonts. We are simply copying them from the CD to the hard drive so that they can be installed when needed. This will take somewhere between 50-70 MB of space. The process I describe will work for most versions of CorelDRAW and should also be used for any other software that provides fonts. Try not to let them automatically install fonts when you install the software. If they do install fonts, immediately go into Control Panel and move them somewhere else so that they can be easily managed.

Create a folder entitled TT, PS or both in the root of the drive to which you will copy the files. It is very important that the names be as short as possible.
On the CorelDRAW CD, locate the Fonts folder. In this folder you will find several other folders entitled Symbols, Ttf, Type1 and Windows95. Go into either the Ttf or Type1 folder depending on which type of font you wish to use. Ttf contains the TrueType fonts and Type1 contains the PostScript Type 1 fonts. You don't need both as they are the same fonts in two different formats.
Copy all of the folders from within the Ttf to your newly created TT folder or from the Type1 folder to your PS folder. This may take a few minutes.
Now change to the Symbols folder on the CorelDRAW CD-ROM. In it you will find both Ttf and Type1 folders. Copy the contents of your desired font type to a Symbols folder within your TT or PS folder.
Lastly, copy the Windows95 folder to your hard drive. All of these fonts are TrueType and so for clarity's sake should go into a TT folder.

You've now copied all of the fonts to your hard drive. Unfortunately, there are a couple of steps remaining. All of the files you copied from the CD-ROM are still marked as Read Only. So the first thing we need to remove the Read-Only attribute. This will take a few minutes, but you only have to do it once.

Go into one of the folders that you copied. For example, the first folder inside of TT or PS should be "A". Select all of the files inside of that folder by clicking on the first one, scrolling to the end of the list and SHIFT-clicking on the last one.

Press Alt-Enter to bring up the Properties dialog box. You'll probably notice a checkmark in the Read-only checkbox as shown at right. If it isn't there, great. But if so, click on it and remove it.

You'll have to repeat these last two steps for each folder that was copied. It isn't really fun, but it should only take 5-10 minutes. The last step is only necessary if you chose to copy the PostScript fonts and only if you wish to save some hard drive space. Along with the fonts, an AFM file was copied for each font. This is not necessary for use with CorelDRAW or most any other Windows application. So go into each of the folders one last time and delete all of the AFM files. Again, this is a bit of a hassle, but should only take a few minutes.

You've now got all of the fonts on your hard drive and available for use. Note that they are not installed and will not drain your system resources other than the small amount of hard drive space that they occupy. And if you ever need to find the font files, you'll know exactly where to find them.

Tip: If other programs provide fonts, just follow these same steps so that you can keep all of your fonts under control.

Managing Your Fonts With Font Navigator

Now I've shown you how to get fonts onto your system. If you followed the instructions closely, the fonts are on your hard drive but they are not "installed". Now we'll go over the process of managing the fonts with the Font Navigator utility supplied with CorelDRAW 8, 9 and 10.

Is Font Navigator Installed?

One of the big mistakes many users make is to use the "Default" installation when they install software. You'll likely miss out on some good stuff and end up with other things you don't need. With CorelDRAW 8 and 9, Font Navigator was not part of the default install. You must do a custom install and specifically select to have Font Navigator installed. The good news is that you can simply redo the install and turn everything except Font Navigator off. This way you don't have to worry about reapplying the CorelDRAW service packs. Users of CorelDRAW 10 will be happy to know that Font Navigator is part of the default install. The figure at right shows the Start menu with Font Navigator in its normal position in the Productivity Tools group.

Running Font Navigator the First Time

When you run Font Navigator the first time, you'll get the dialog box shown at right. It lets you know that a wizard will help you find your fonts and configure Font Navigator.

Next up is the dialog shown at right. You'll want to select any hard drive in your system that contains fonts. It is not a good idea to select drives which can be removed. So don't choose floppies, CD-ROMs, Zip disks and the like. Make sure that Include subfolders is checked so that the whole drive will get searched for font files.

After this dialog, you'll have to wait a minute or two as Font Navigator searches the drives you selected for font files. This is a one time process so it is worth the slight delay. When it is finished, the main Font Navigator window shown below will be displayed.

You install fonts by selecting them from the list at upper left and dragging them to the list at upper right. Uninstalling them is just the opposite. It really is that simple. For some of you, that's all you'll ever need to do in Font Navigator. Others will push it much harder.

Suppose you are looking for a particular look and want to know what a font looks like, no problem. Click on the font's name in either the catalog or installed section and a preview will be shown in the lower right window. Even better, you can edit the text used for the display so that it has the exact characters you need to compare. If you know that the font you desire is of the Sans Serif variety, select View | Fonts by Style | Sans Serif and only those fonts are shown in the catalog window.

Even with all the great stuff you've already seen, probably the best feature is the ability to create font groups. You can create groups by project, by client or just groups of your favorites. To do this, simply right-click in the Font Groups window in the lower left and a new group is created. Name it however you like. Now drag fonts from the upper left window and drop them on the group you've created. Go ahead and create a few groups right now.

Now that you've got a few groups created, you can install them by simply dragging the group to the upper right hand window. Uninstall groups by right-clicking on them and select Uninstall. So if you use a group of fonts for a project, install it. Then when you finish the project just uninstall the group. It really is that simple.

I know a lot of you need to show available fonts to clients so that they can select the one they want. Select all the fonts you want from the upper left window and choose File | Print Samples. You can choose exactly what type of report you want to print and you can even customize it with the dialog at right.

If none of that has caught your fancy yet, there is still one more trick up Font Navigator's sleeve. It is completely integrated with CorelDRAW. So if you've seen one of those pesky messages when you open a CorelDRAW file saying that you are missing fonts, it will "fix" the problem for you. The only stipulation is that the fonts must be in your Font Navigator catalog. If so, the missing fonts will be installed automatically for you.

In Closing

Not having your fonts under control can cause your system a number of problems. And not having the font you need can drive you crazy. By following the instructions I've provided in this article, you can take complete control of your fonts.

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_{Last Updated Wednesday January 16 2013.}

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