Getting rid of foreign language fonts

[Taliesin]

I can't figure out how to stop all the foreign language fonts from showing up at the bottom of my Office font menus. I've tried to delete them from everywhere: System > Library > Fonts, User > Library > Fonts, etc., but they persist. I don't want these files using any of my system resources, but I can't get rid of them.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

T.

 

[John McGhie]

I can't answer that until you tell me the version of your software and
operating system. They're all different.

To save you a lot of time, I would suggest that you simply put up with them:
if you delete them, you will get some strange problems with missing
characters in your documents, because some characters you could conceivably
want to use are only in those fonts.

I would suggest that you won't be using the Font menu at all in future, once
you have set up your styles with the fonts you actually want to use.

Cheers

I can't figure out how to stop all the foreign language fonts from showing up
at the bottom of my Office font menus. I've tried to delete them from
everywhere: System > Library > Fonts, User > Library > Fonts, etc., but they
persist. I don't want these files using any of my system resources, but I
can't get rid of them.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

T.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Taliesin]

Word 12.0.0

Leopard 10.5.1

Thanks.

T.

 

[CyberTaz]

Additional to John's reply, many of those fonts *are* used by the OS & your
software even though *you* don't specifically use them. Echoing his
sentiment: the amount of resources they consume is miniscule relative to the
havoc to be caused by removing them.

 

[Taliesin]

Great...well, that makes a lot of sense. My English fonts are somehow functionally linked to foreign fonts I'll never use. Brilliant. There should at least be a preference to hide foreign language fonts if the user can't delete them.

Thanks.

T.

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, well, welcome to Unicode That's how it works

In Unicode, you can call for "Any" character in "any" font. The system will
look in the current font. If the character ("Glyph") that is needed is not
there, the system will switch it in from the font next closest in appearance
to the one in use.

The rarer the character, the further the system digs to get it.

However: I come back to my point that I do not think you have yet
discovered "styles". Once you do, I don't think you will use the font menu.
I suspect it's probably one or two years since I last opened the font menu:
I simply have no need for it.

All the fonts I use are defined into my styles. If I apply the correct
style, I know the font is correct, I don't even have to look. That's the
way Word is designed to work.

Hope this helps

Great...well, that makes a lot of sense. My English fonts are somehow
functionally linked to foreign fonts I'll never use. Brilliant. There should
at least be a preference to hide foreign language fonts if the user can't
delete them.

Thanks.

T.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[mlewanfr]

If you have Leopard, have you tried deactivating the fonts in the
FontBook? That may be possible, even though you cannot delete them.

Cheers
Magnus

 

[Taliesin]

Yes, I've already deactivated all the foreign language fonts in FontBook, (thank you). I went a step further and physically deleted them in my System > Library > Fonts folder and User > Library Fonts folder. I later learned that that my give me headaches later, but, so far so good. I can always reinstall them if need be. Anyhoo, can't locate the foreign fonts that still persist. But it sounds now like a lost cause... ridiculous.

I know all about styles and have been using them for years. However, this doesn't change the fact that I should be able to hide or delete fonts that I don't want to see. Interfaces should be as streamlined as possible, and I like to run lean. Too, a basic tenant of good usability is giving users a choice on how they want info displayed...

Thanks to all,

T.

 

[mlewanfr]

A pity that did not work.

I agree that this is a problem, but it is not an easy problem to
solve. Apple tried to solve it with their font palette and font
collections, and people keep complaining about that as well. To me as
a user, the only solution is to stick to very few fonts and associate
them to collections/lists and stay away from any complete lists.
Whenever I am in a full list, I use try to type the name of the font I
am after rather than scroll.

However, I do disagree with the blanket statement "a basic tenant of
good usability is giving users a choice on how they want info
displayed." Giving the user a choice is paradoxically often bad, as it
opens up for more possible mistakes. The most customizable system in
the market is arguably Linux, and it would not win any usability
contests.

Cheers
Magnus