You may know that she’s been working from 5 am literally until 11pm for the last week to make fonts behave in the e-books, and to be legal and proper with the copyrights of the font designers and marketers and not pirate them, by their definitions: ie, you can’t use them in a way that ‘distributes’ them. I mean, we try to walk the walk as well as talk it.
So one of these delightful sites offered, as a side bennie, a font viewer that promised some advantages—stay tuned—it didn’t work. It not only didn’t work, it kiboshed the Windows 7 Font Viewer, and convinced her machine that its OS can’t read the .ttf format. (TrueType, which fonts tend to be.)
And it apparently screwed the situation so badly that System Restore doesn’t restore.
Jane is holding it together remarkably well. But if anybody can offer tea, sympathy, something stronger, or advice that might get that problem patched, it would be welcome over on The Captain & Lime.
I’d be screaming and throwing moveables by now.
Control panel
Default programs
Associate a file type or program ( I think – I’m on a mac at moment)
Then scroll down the list to find the .tff and select change program
She’s tried that. It’s not working.
She’s got the computer –finally!—to do a system restore. But now it wants to restart directly after.
And it’s misplaced her new fonts.
Hmmm. Next option would be to use regedit then and delete the .tff entry.
It’s under hkey_current_user/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer/fileexts/.ttf and there should be two sub-entries one of whch is OpenWithList and OpenWithProgids then if M$ is sane today, then next time Jane clicks on any .tff it should prompt to associate with a program.
However I would suspect that the other program might have been a little naughty – has it been fully uninstalled?
How comfortable are you with editing Registry files? If you are not very comfortable, and do not know how to make a backup, stop now.
But I suspect the Evil application has redirected things via entries in the Registry. You can remove all of its entries in the Registry, save, and reboot, and see what happens.
RE: Ebooks and fonts–use the sacred six that are distributed by most applications; these are the standard fonts on Windows and Mac and Linux.
Do the minimum of font selection though; use em for sizing rather than px or pt for fonts. Let users have the final determination, via the Preferences of the reader app.
Aside from the legal issues of embedding and distributing fonts, it’s a bad idea in terms of long term use of the book file.
On the other hand, if for some reason you really must embed a font, they’re easy and surprisingly cheap to license.
Or can create a file called tff.reg in notepade and save the following lines in
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFileExts.ttf]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFileExts.ttfOpenWithList]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFileExts.ttfOpenWithProgids]
“ttffile”=hex(0):
The above is a from a clean install of win7 pro 64bit but I don’t expect it to vary from version to version. The true type viewer doesn’t seem to operate with the normal file associations in quite the way I had expected. Double click and answer yes should then reset the key to the correct default – which is nothing!
I’ve finally managed to do a system restore that’s sorted out the file association, but …this is soooooooo freaky! Data files are gone! I’d downloaded and installed 7zip. I did a restore to a point before I installed it and unzipped a bunch of font files…and now even the downloaded program, not to mention the unzipped font files are gone…at least as far as explorer is concerned. I’m sure they’re actually there, but restore shouldn’t do anything to data files! I’m seriously freaked out.
At least my display and font association is back (whew.) More to the point…uninstalling Norton finally let me do a restore. Just turning it off wasn’t enough.
for future reference, I have no problem messing with the registry. That’s why Gawd invented backups. 😀
Oh…I meant to add…the txt files that come with the font in the zip files…those are still there right where the fonts s/b!
Freakout…
Glad to hear it is fixed. Hopefully there will not be a need for a second time – though the existence of Norton on a machine makes me think the next adventure will not be far away.
It wasn’t…far away, that is.
An attempt to remove Norton failed because it wasn’t ‘properly installed’ —because the system restore put it back in after it had been removed to enable the System Restore in the first place.
An attempt to restore the thing back to the original point so we can get Norton off the disk has now stalled in the midst of System Restore and is churning and churning and churning.
Jane is not happy, no. Not happy.
Once we do get Norton off that disk we are replacing it with Avast! and will Never Ever Ever permit Norton-Anything to reside on a disk of ours.
You don’t need a system-screwing virus if you have Norton…
Norton really is shoddy programming but brilliant sales and channel marketing. It’s not even that good as a AV engine – last comparatives put it about 9th or 10th. I’ve always thought of it as the face-hugger from Alien. Just when you think it has been removed it bursts out through your stomach.
You got it. We finally got Norton Removal Tool (what other program supplies you with a crowbar and a can of Raid?) and after 2 tries, it is finally running.
Jane is applying a Captain & Lime to the situation in mid-afternoon. I’m settling down to trace some mediaeval people and relax.
I think at least the basic mischief is managed.
Yes, indeedy! Slurp.
Digital_M…I’m trying to figure out the whole font thing so that when we need it (like for more Fortress books? :D) we can use it. The base font is left strictly alone with a 1em for default font size. The specialty fonts for the ‘NetWalkers books are in different types of communication and just for a pretty title page.
Mostly…once it became a problem to be solved, it’s realllllllyyyyyy hard to let go of it! 😀
Just for info.. Win7 seems to hang on system restore with ANY antivirus program in place. The trend micro that Dell insists on installing on their stuff causes the same problem, or at least it has for Me.
The only “restore” that would Work was a return to the original system image, which of course includes the “OEM” bundled installation of the trend Micro. Arrrgh..
*peeks out from under the covers*
Is it safe to come out now? Coward that I am, I was hiding.
I think the application of Captain & Lime helped.
*supplies a whiffle bat, Bad Call Brick(tm) and Foam Rubber Beer Bottle for cathartic computer beatings*