Font Chaos

[Hawkmoon]

I sent something in Word to a friend to get his and his wife's opinion on the layout. The comments I received didn't make any sense to me. Something about a "heavy, blocky font." But the font I used was anything BUT heavy and blocky.

After some back and forth, we realized that we had a communication problem -- between our computers. Both are on Windows 10, but mine has gone though Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10, as well as having both Microsoft Office Pro 2003 and Microsoft Office Pro 2016 installed. Each version of Windows and each version of Office includes different fonts, so I now have all of those fonts on my computer ... plus various fonts I have downloaded, plus some I have installed out of a professional collection of 3,200 fonts.

My friend, on the other hand, is on a fairly new computer that he built from scratch, so it has only seen Windows 10. And he runs Libre Office rather than Microsoft Office, and Libre Office doesn't include any fonts. So his system didn't have the font that I used, and it substituted whatever it decided was the best replacement for my font -- and it did not choose well.

That made me realize that with three desktop computers, two notebook computers, and two tablets running Windows 10, I really need to synchronize my fonts across all my computers. The one with the most fonts installed is probably the primary desktop computer I'm on right now, so I found a freeware utility that lets me print out a list pf all the fonts I have installed, with a sample sentence (I used "The quick brown fox ...") formatted in the respective fonts for comparison and selection. It came out to 40 pages in a Word document!

After going through my Fonts directory, deleting those I was pretty sure I'll never use and hiding some others, I reprinted the list and found that I had reduced it to ... 38 pages.

For those of you who do anything more than just use the bare bones font selection that comes with Windows -- how do you manage your fonts and, if you have multiple computers, how do you keep the fonts synchronized among them? I know there are so-called "font management" programs -- my 3,200 font collection came with one, which I have been a bit (okay, a lot) nervous about trying. Does anyone use a font manager? Got any recommendations?

[Nick1911]

Next time, send it as a PDF.  It's called Portable Document Format for a reason...

[Hawkmoon]

Once we realized what had happened, I did send it as a PDF. I exchange so many files with this friend that it didn't occur to me at first.

But I still need to do something about the proliferation of fonts.

[WLJ]

After some back and forth, we realized that we had a communication problem -- between our computers. Both are on Windows 10, but mine has gone though Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10, as well as having both Microsoft Office Pro 2003 and Microsoft Office Pro 2016 installed. Each version of Windows and each version of Office includes different fonts, so I now have all of those fonts on my computer ... plus various fonts I have downloaded, plus some I have installed out of a professional collection of 3,200 fonts.

No clean installs in all that time? Probably a lot of dead weight baggage in your system as a result.

[Ben]

No clean installs in all that time? Probably a lot of dead weight baggage in your system as a result.

Yup. That computer is crying for a nuke and clean reinstall.

[Brad Johnson]

For those of you who do anything more than just use the bare bones font selection that comes with Windows -- how do you manage your fonts and, if you have multiple computers, how do you keep the fonts synchronized among them? I know there are so-called "font management" programs -- my 3,200 font collection came with one, which I have been a bit (okay, a lot) nervous about trying. Does anyone use a font manager? Got any recommendations?

You're falling into the font trap... just because you have a font doesn't mean you should use it.

Always use common fonts for general authoring. Third-party fonts can be very attractive. However, if your recipient doesn't have the font available, their instance of the document will not appear to them as it does to you. Their word processing program will try and substitute a similar available font but, as you've discovered, the results are usually less than satisfactory.

Stick with Calibri, Arial, or (gasp) Times New Roman for everything. Never, ever, use uncommon fonts until you're setting up final formatting for publication. Staying with common fonts pretty much guarantees universal compatibility across multiple productivity suites and word processing platforms. If you set up a particular document's formatting for a specific appearance, do as Nick suggested and convert to PDF before sending.

Some will notice that I didn't mention Helvetica. The omission is intentional. Even though it's probably the single most commonly used font, Word doesn't have it loaded natively. Anything not in the base loadout for Office is no-go land due to the problem encountered in your OP.

Brad

[Hawkmoon]

You're falling into the font trap... just because you have a font doesn't mean you should use it.

Always use common fonts for general authoring. ...

But I wasn't doing general authoring. I know all about system fonts and font substitutions, I just forgot that in this case I had used a font that he might not (and doesn't) have. This involved designing a book cover, and that's the whole reason for having a bunch of fonts -- to use them when a situation calls for it.

Likewise, nobody should typeset a book in Arial or Calibri. You can set a book in Times New Roman (and many people have done so), but it's not a good choice.

[Hawkmoon]

So nobody uses a font manager?

[zxcvbob]

[Hawkmoon]

Good grief!

A thread about computer fonts has been godwinned.