Sorting it all Out Michael Kaplan's random stuff of dubious value Be sure to read the disclaimer here first!
When I first mentioned yesterday that I was going to be blathering about the Fonts folder for a bit, regular reader Rosyna commented:
It'll be interesting. I know virtually nothing about the Windows fonts folder. Many people hate the Mac OS X's multiple fonts folders (System, "Local", Network, User, and Classic). It becomes hard to deal with everything has having multiple duplicate fonts is very possible and almost the case on every single Mac OS X box. The good thing though is that any font dragged into a Mac OS X font folder is available to all applications immediately.
I suddenly realized I wanted to start things a bit differently than what I was originally going to do.
(For those of you who hate the "Add Font..." dialog, wait for the next post -- I'll be getting to that shortly!)
So, we'll start with simple question: What the hell is the Fonts folder?
The simple answer? It is a Shell namespace extension that causes any display of %WINDIR%\Fonts in the Windows Explorer to have a special view where typical filesystems actions in Explorer such as copy, move, and delete have special handlers.
It is by no means the only way to get fonts ontop Windows, though.
If you look at the Platfrom SDK documentation for the AddFontResource function:
The AddFontResource function adds the font resource from the specified file to the system font table. The font can subsequently be used for text output by any application.
So all you have to do to get a font available to everyone is call this function!
Of course there are things to keep in mind in the remarks section:
Any application that adds or removes fonts from the system font table should notify other windows of the change by sending a WM_FONTCHANGE message to all top-level windows in the operating system. The application should send this message by calling the SendMessage function and setting the hwnd parameter to HWND_BROADCAST. When an application no longer needs a font resource that it loaded by calling the AddFontResource function, it must remove that resource by calling the RemoveFontResource function. This function installs the font only for the current session. When the system restarts, the font will not be present. To have the font installed even after restarting the system, the font must be listed in the registry.
Wow, those three paragraphs are like three strong drinks, aren't they? They tell you:
That work in the third bullet point is to add the font's name and filename to the registry in the following subkey:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
And although most of the files listed there will have no path (in which case %WINDIR%\Fonts is assumed), this is not a requirement.
All that our Shell Extension Fonts folder does (well, it does more than this, but bear with me for a bit) is wrap all this up. In fact, it is GDI that makes an AddFontResource call on every font in that registry key when it does its own initialization, and it is the folder's handling code that adds and removes fonts from the list in the registry.
But all of the hints are here -- anyone who hates the Shell Fonts folder interface to these things can build their own code. They can even make it a Shell Extension wherever they like, and put in all the same kind of handling code, or better.
Now the Shell code does a bit more here -- for example you can install a font programatically by opening the Fonts folder in Explorer and simply copying the font file to the folder (more on why this is not the best way to do it later!). It also gives some unique views of fonts that are in the folder (more on these later, too), and it completely hides hidden files even if you have the "Hide protected operating system files" setting unchecked (which you would do as well if you saw what was in there!). And lots of other little things like that.
But clearly the widespread belief that fonts need to be in the Fonts folder (which requires admin privileges to write to) is a myth. The only action that truly requires admin-style privileges is writing to that registry key (since it is under HKLM), but just about everything else is a bit more open to people.
The myth is a tribute to What it means to be in the default install, and how hard it is to get noticed as a feature if the feature is not available in some default, built-in fashion.
Imagine for example if the Fonts folder was actually further virtualized into supporting both the current folder in %WINDIR%\Fonts and some kind of per-user folder like under %USERPROFILE%\Fonts or something -- so that anyone could install fonts and you would either have the "just me" or "all users" choice, or if you lacked permissions it would be a "just me" install automatically.
For now one will have to keep imagining (there is no such feature in Vista, for example).
But I will be talking more about the Fonts folder in future posts, specifically to cover:
So stay tuned, there will be much more for font users, typographers, people who find my posts witty, Microsoft bashers, basically just about everyone....
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