Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual
| Some extremely sophisticated programming has gone into the typefaces that are listed in the Fonts dialog boxes of your word processor and other programs. They use OpenType and TrueType technology, meaning that no matter what point size you select for these fonts, they look smooth and professional ”both on the screen and when you print. 13.6.1 Managing Your Fonts
Windows XP comes with several dozen great-looking OpenType and TrueType fonts: Arial, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, and so on. But the world is filled with additional fonts. You may find them on the CD-ROMs that come with PC magazines, on Windows software Web sites, or in the catalogs of commercial typeface companies. Sometimes you'll find new fonts on your system after installing a new program, courtesy of its installer. To review the files that represent your typefaces, open the Fonts icon in the Control Panel.
NOTE The Fonts icon in your Control Panel window is only a shortcut to the real folder, which is in your Local Disk (C:) When you open the Fonts folder, you'll see that for every font that appears in the Font menus of your various programs, there's an icon on your hard drive ”or several. As Figure 13-11 illustrates, it's easy and enlightening to explore this folder. Figure 13-11. All of your fonts sit in the Fonts folder (top); you'll frequently find an independent font file for each style of a font: bold, italic, bold italic, and so on. You can tell a TrueType font by its TT icon, or an OpenType font by its O icon. Those marked by an A may be PostScript fonts, which come with a phalanx of the printer font files that they require; others may look fine on the screen, but may not print out smoothly. Double-click a font's icon to see what the font looks like (bottom). To remove a font from your system, simply drag its file icon out of this window, right-click it and then choose Delete from the shortcut menu, or highlight it and then choose File Either way, you'll see the changes immediately reflected in your programs' Font dialog boxes.
NOTE Some fonts appear in your menus, but not in your Fonts menu. These are the fonts that Windows uses in its menus, windows, and dialog boxes (Courier, MS Sans Serif, Small Fonts, Symbol, and so on). If you accidentally remove or move any of these fonts, Windows will substitute something that doesn't look right, and you'll wonder what the heck is going on with the typography of your programs. That's why, unless you've turned on the "Show hidden files" option (Section 3.2.4), these files are invisible in the Fonts folder. |