About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Ben Cooke — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:54:54 GMT

Hmm. That answers my question quite nicely.

However, it is a bit vague on one point: the documentation you've quoted refers to "The current session" but then goes on to say "when the system restarts". My idea of "the current session" is the period between someone logging on and someone logging off, but from the mention of restarting I guess this really means that this setting lasts until the machine is shut down.

This then leads me to wonder whether a non-admin user is able to write/run an app that calls AddFontResource and have that font available to all users until the system is rebooted. In particular, can I register a font called Tahoma which has stupid/offensive glyphs and have apps use that instead? Or does Windows protect existing named fonts from being masked by new registrations?

(I notice that AddFontResourceEx can do what I would have expected AddFontResource to do -- it can register a font privately for use only by that application. Strangely, it also seems to have an option to bar all apps from "enumerating" the font, which I guess means it won't show up in the font list? I'm not seeing anywhere an option to register a font only for the current login session.

Of course, I could try this stuff for myself. When I get a moment, I may write a little utility which can just add/remove arbitrary font files from disk, and which can be added to the list of actions on *.ttf files for quick, temporary installation of fonts.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:16:41 GMT

Hi Ben --

Actually, that "restart" text is from an older time when a restart was how the session was reset.

In Vista, it is always the logon/logoff; in prior versions, it is just a new WindowStation, which means for example a TS logon will get the latest list rather than the one already there.

AddFontResource cannot be used for provate fonts -- you have to use AddFontResourceEx.... :-)

Other questions you raised including consequences of that last point!) will be covered in future posts.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Rosyna — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:22:07 GMT

Very informative.

It's interesting that AddFontResoure/AddFontResourceEx doesn't automatically notify clients that the font list has changed. After all, by default, people are extremely lazy and when it comes to doing something, most people take the easiest way out. If you look at ATSActivateFontFromFileSpecification (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/ATS/Reference/reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/c_ref/ATSFontActivateFromFileSpecification) it has the option for a flag, kATSOptionFlagsDoNotNotify, which will supress the notification. I use this when I just need to get a string rendered in an image since I immediately deactivate the font after rendering. It is kind of weird that I have to use the same flags and everything when using RemoveFontResourceEx.

What's really odd is this comment: "To add a font whose information comes from several resource files, point lpszFileName to a string with the file names separated by a | --for example, abcxxxxx.pfm | abcxxxxx.pfb."
I'm not sure how I feel about shell folders personally. I think they can be useful but also make the operation significantly less "consistent" with the rest of the file browser UI.

Hmm, I wonder which group I'm under.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 01:19:01 GMT

"for example you can install a font programatically by opening the Fonts folder in Explorer and simply copying the font file to the folder"

That 'programatically' (sic) should be 'manually', right? :)

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:49:03 GMT

I actually meant programatically -- manually copying would be just like drag&drop in Explorer, but I was talking about how the folder, when opened, would have knowledge of things you did outisde of the Shell, such as programmatic copies....

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Centaur — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:24:39 GMT

> 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!)

No I wouldn’t. The user has requested that hidden files be visible to him, and his/her orders are not to be questioned. After all, none of these files are too special — there are the files representing bitmap fonts Fixedsys, Terminal, System, Courier, MS Serif, MS Sans Serif, Small Fonts, and Symbol; the Marlett truetype font; and the desktop.ini file which is responsible for all this “magic”. An experienced user deserves to see them.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:24:35 GMT

Cenatur,

The list there is a conceptual list of fonts -- thus even if there are separate files for the various code page and size varieties of the bitmap fonts or marlett, showing them in the Fonts folder would not actually help anyone (since the other versions are not USED in any way.

What precisely is the functionalitgy you believe is missing?

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Mike — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:42:22 GMT

"session" has a specific meaning in Windowsese. Nevertheless it's a bit hard to pin down. Its mostly refers to a logged-in user. So if both Alice and Bob are logged in they are in different sessions. If Alice calls AddFontResource she will see the new font but Bob won't. The whole concept gets a bit hazy because logging out and back in again does not necessarily create a new session on XP. For Vista you always get a fresh session though.

To be overly pedantic and start moving into the realm of irrelevent implementation details GDI does not read the info in the Fonts key in the registry. USER does that and (essentially) calls AddFontResource on your behalf at session startup. So to return to Alice & Bob, if Alice registers the font in the registry Bob still won't see it, but once he relogs it'll appear (assuming his session got recreated). Interestingly, this happens even if Alice does *not* call AddFontResource. This seperation between registering font and actually telling GDI to start using it can be confusing at times...

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Adam — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:55:13 GMT

I don't know about "deserves", but as an experienced user who's checked the "Show all hidden files" box, if I browse to a directory in my file manager, I want to see the files in that directory.

A file manager that does not do that one simple thing - the only thing it is meant to do - is broken.

Look, if I really want to, I can just go to a command prompt, 'cd' to the correct directory and 'dir' it. But it's a pain in the behind, and the point of a GUI is to make things like browsing your filesystem *simpler*. Now you're just making it harder.

Why do I want to look there? Maybe I'm just curious. Maybe it's because I want to figure out how Windows does things. Maybe I want to see the last-modified timestamp on a font file because some hypothetical virus can exploit a hypothetical recently-found buffer overrun in the font-rendering hinting parser (?) and hides itself in a .ttf file.

It doesn't matter *why*. On my PC, that's *my* concern. But if I've checked the "show me all hidden files" box, then that's because *I want it to show me all the hidden files*.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:46:05 GMT

Hi Adam,

Well, that's just it -- a Shell extension is not just a file list. It is a virtualized view of the folder -- note how you do not get file names or extensions, either?

Explorer is a file manager that supports virtualized views, and in many cases uses virtualized folders. Have you looked at "Temporary Internet Files" lately? :-)

In any case, this particular folder has been around with the very functionality you are against for the last 10+ years and the last 10 versions of Windows. Has it truly made you want to uninstall the OS? I hope not!

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Adam — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:26:26 GMT

Michael: Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a Debian user these days :-0

And when I use Windows, I generally turn off all the shell extensions that I can. I hate them.

Look, if I go to the Control Panel and select "fonts", then, sure, I expect to see a list of logical fonts installed on the system. Probably some toolbar/menu items for "install fonts", "remove fonts", etc... (if I have authorisation to do those actions). I don't care about the files used, or even if Explorer is used to display the list of fonts. But if navigate to a particular directory in a file manager, that's because I want to know what files are in it!

(Sorry, this is starting to get really OT now, but I can't stop.... :)

Same with temp internet files. If there's an IE button "show cache" then fine - show me whatever you think is appropriate. If I browse to the relevant directory in the filesystem with a file manager, show me what's on the filesystem.

Ditto Recycle Bin. If I hit the "recycle bin" button on my desktop, launch whatever application is appropriate (including Explorer with some extenstion to give me "undelete" options or whatever). If I browse the filesystem to get there, *I want to know what's on the filesystem.*

I just want Windows to stop thinking it knows better than me what I actually want to do, because it keeps getting it wrong! If it can't "Do What I Mean" (DWIM) there should just be a button to make it "Do What I Tell You, No Matter How Crazy It Sounds" (priveliges permitting).

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:25:58 GMT

Michael: Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a Debian user these days :-0

Ah, then the command line should be something familiar....

(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Adam — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:23:54 GMT

:-)

About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 2 (aka Adding Fonts)

Sorting It All Out — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 10:07:06 GMT

You may have read the first post I wrote about this, titled About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1...

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

John Elliott — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:57:36 GMT

@Adam: In the good old days, if you suspected Explorer was lying to you then you could look at the same directory with Winfile. But for some reason Winfile doesn't get distributed with Windows these days.

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Centaur — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:43:41 GMT

> What precisely is the functionalitgy you believe is missing?

I believe there should be separate views for Control Panel | Fonts and C:\WINDOWS\Fonts (and the same goes for Temporary Internet Files, Recycle Bin and other magical places). Alternatively, there could be a “Show files” link, like in the views for Windows and Program Files directories.

I believe that a file manager must show the file system “as is”, with clear indications when something is not what it seems to be — like ftp servers and archive files. I believe that the decision to hide file extensions by default in Windows 95 was a grave mistake which brought about millions of users who don’t know when it’s safe to open a file that came from an untrusted source. I believe users should strive to understand their computers better, and introducing magic makes it harder.

This is one of the reasons I use an alternative file manager and only turn to Explorer for very specific needs.

Tech Link Listing - August 17, 2006

Dan's Archive — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:58:20 GMT

About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 3 (aka What changes in Vista?)

Sorting It All Out — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 11:11:16 GMT

Previous posts in this series:

About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking...

There is no spoon^H^H^H^H^HGDI Font Cache

Sorting It All Out — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:25:25 GMT

People often talk about the "GDI Font Cache" as if it were a real entity. And those same people may explain

On installing fonts

Sorting It All Out — Sun, 27 May 2007 08:36:10 GMT

Mihai Suba asked over in the Suggestion Box: Is there a way to make Windows aware of a font copied in

Like a mattress tag, the rule is DO NOT REMOVE

Sorting It All Out — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:37:53 GMT

Allan provided me with my daily scare back in the end of September with a note to me via the Contact

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Ricardo Cancho (Spain) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:24:24 GMT

Hi.

My experience: RemoveFontResource() works only for font files instaled by the same program that performed AddFontResource(), and in the same session. If you'll try to use RemoveFontResource to go away an arbitrary font manually installed in C:\Windows\Fonts or installed with your own program, but after a rebooot, RemoveFontResource fails (the .ttf file is locked). So you can't write a full "Font Manager", as I tried myself.

The only way I found was: a) open C:\Windows\Font through with the explorer, b) use SendKeys to locate the font face plus style in the list c) use SendKeys {DEL} to delete (& unregister) the file, and d) use SendKeys %{F4} to close the explorer's window.

Believe me, the result isn't a commercial piece of software at all.

Yours.

Ricardo Cancho.

Did UnC "My name is URL" on TV the other day? Fontastic!

Sorting it all Out — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:06:23 GMT

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Posts like this

About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 5 (Nothing personal!)

Sorting it all Out — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:01:44 GMT

A series is never so dead that it can't be revived for another run! Previous blogs in the series: Part

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

kiers — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:51:35 GMT

hmm...interesting. I understand what u said about "shell namespace extension" and how for THIS particular folder there are special handlers for copy cut paste etc.

My problem: can I "move" via a junction poiint (parse point under NTFS) the c:\windows\fonts folder to D:\fonts for space saving reasons?

I copied all fonts under teh c: folder and pasted them to D: folder. however I noted the C; folder had 231 fonts inside, however right clicking on the c: fonts folder itself showed "363 files" !! at 436MB.

whereas the pasted fonts folder in D: drive ONLY shows 231 "files" at 312MB!!!

question: what's missing in the d: folder that the c: fonts folder has??? i don't want to empty the c: folder and apply the parsepoint till I am reconciled between c: and d: !!!

any suggestions? am I kosher?

re: About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 1 (aka What are we talking about?)

Michael S. Kaplan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:56:06 GMT

Many of the font files are marked system and hidden, it looks like you did not move those?