How To Use Fonts Without Installing Them

[Glendora Spink]

Iknow you can put custom fonts in say C:\Windows\Fonts and applications will be able to find and use them. However this is only possible when you have administrator access to the machine, which is rarely the case in shared environments.

Adding and removing system fonts is an Administrator task, and will be denied to users who don't have the admin permissions (Power User is actually probably enough), as they could really mess up Windows by deleting or replacing standard system fonts. :)

If you double click on any font file, wherever it's saved, you'll get a preview window. Until you close this window, the font will be available for use in other apps, although a few may need restarting.

I believe this works because the preview automatically and temporarily installs the font in order to render it, and this temporary installation doesn't involve adding the font to the Fonts folder, therefore doesn't require admin rights.

NexusFont is a freeware font manager which can be used to manage installed fonts (with admin priviliges), or make certain fonts available at runtime (without admin privs). For this latter feature just run NexusFont and add font group(s) you like. The font files can reside in any folder. As long as NF is running, applications can use the fonts. NF can be used portably.

On windows 7 there are some quirks which take a bit of experimenting to get the hang of. The biggest one being that if you install using symbolic links don't disable by deleting the files as it deletes the files and not just the symlinks. In this case disable (uninstall) the fonts but use the "leave the files where they are" option.

Copy the fonts to /usr/local/share/fonts or a subfolder (such as /usr/local/share/fonts/TTF) and then run sudo fc-cache -fv. There are some graphical programs you can install to make this easier, but I've never felt the need to try any of them. The Ubuntu wiki page on Fonts here may be of help too.

Fontmatrix is a real Linux font manager, available on any platform and as well for KDE (which already had Kfontinstaller) as for Gnome. It's purpose is to recursively query the fonts (ttf, ps & otf) in the directories you give it to search, sort them quickly, (avoiding bugged or broken ones) and show them. Then, you can tag them, sub-tag, re-sort according various tags, preview... Even create a pdf Font Book...

Fontmatrix has been available to install from the Ubuntu universe repository since jaunty, and version 0.6.0+svn20100107-2ubuntu2 is currently in maverick and natty. A brief explanation about using fontmatrix is available on their website.

Also, there are lots of fonts available as software packages. Font packages are named in the form ttf-* or otf-*. It is better to install fonts as packages instead of manually if possible. You can use tools such as Synaptic, apt-get or the Ubuntu Software Centre. The Software Centre has a dedicated fonts section.

A better answer than the one provided there (i.e. to go to Google Fonts and look up the font and go through their weird downloading system) is to get it directly from Github, e.g.:Roboto Mono font files

PS: There's another duplicate question at "Downloading Google Fonts". It details some other methods, like using an installer script from googlecode.com and (for more than the Google Fonts) using tasksel.

I think the best way is to use gfinstall script, install it and you just say gfinstall whicheverFont and it will install it, you can also specify it to install locally (for the current user) or globally for all users

Hi

Thanks the problem is fixed but the font problem is still exist.

I use a new font that I download from internet and it works fine in v7.9.10 but in v8 ignition cant detect it and it replace it with other fonts.

fonts.rar (31.5 KB)

I tested this issue with the font you supplied and was able to sort of reproduce this. It looks like the font is actually there, however is not rendered correctly. To confirm my suspicions i added a different OpenType font to the system font dir and it rendered correctly. It appears the issue is with this specific font and may be related to the fonts metrics or glyphs. I have attached a screenshot that shows what Prime is actually appearing as in the font selection dropdown. These glyph errors appear on the components as well.

This may have to do with a change in the JDK since 8/9 though im not seeing any other reported bugs related to this after a quick glance but i suspect this issue is appearing only on this font because the problem originates with this font and I would recommend switching to a different one.

Thanks.

By the way if I use a custom font which is install on gateway computer. Is it possible for perspective module to embed it so client see the font without installing it on the client computer?(like other web site)

For vision I have to install the font on every client computer.

I installed MainType from High-Logic, a font manager that has most of its useful features for free. A lot of windows programs can see the temp loaded/installed fonts. not sure what mechanism they use but Inkscape and ginp do not see them, a small hassle but not bad.

Corel has also a very helpful dialog during opening a file with missing fonts.

There you can decide if the newly saved file will change the fonts permanently or just temporarily.

I design stuff in LB on one PC and there I have a much stronger system configuration so that I can have many fonts installed simultanousely. I then do a copy of the text and change it to paths and save it.

Then I go to the PC connected to the laser, a very old computer with just a few fonts installed. I open the file and the fonts of the text which is not converted to path will be changed. If I forget that and save the file I have then problems on the designing machine, all fonts definitions are gone.

The more fonts you have installed on your system the longer it will take the system to start up. That's one of the reasons why some PC users like to keep the installed font count at the bare minimum on their system. That's easier said than done considering that you may need to use some fonts, for instance for design jobs, documentations or that funny PowerPoint presentation with that Alien theme that you want to send around in office.

Font Load Unload is a free portable software for the Windows operating system that can load fonts without installing them on the system. Fonts loaded this way become accessible as if they were installed on the system until the Windows session is ended, for instance by logging off, shutting down or restarting the PC.

Once a font has been loaded it becomes selectable just like any other font on the system. This includes programs such as Microsoft Office, image editors like Paint.Net or Photoshop, or web browsers and email clients.

The core benefit of Font Load Unload is that it adds fonts to a system temporarily. While it is possible to install and uninstall fonts as well, it would require that the user would remember to uninstall all temporarily loaded fonts before changing the system's power state.

With Font Load Unload that is not necessary. Another benefit is the portable nature of the program. You may not have permission to install fonts on a computer system. Loading fonts however may work so that you can use fonts that are not installed on the system.

Previously when I activated a font in Font Explorer it would immediately appear in Illustrator. Now it requires that I restart Illustrator to make the new font appear in the font menu. This has never been a requirement and seems like a step backwards. It worked in El Capitan, Mavericks and every version of osx as far as I can remember. I could add anywhere from 1-60 fonts at a time and they were instantly available for use.

I am using an old version of Linotype Font Explorer v1.2.3. Is that the culprint? I dont' want to spend the money to upgrade Font Explorer if that does not solve the issue. Or perhaps another Font organizing program will work better? Currently all newly added fonts get added into my documents folder as a default.

Thank you to everyone that has provided some solutions. I guess that I have hung on to this old software too long. I will see how well Fontbook works for my needs and will try the latest Explorer if that does not work out

Thank you. I tried that but the results did not change after a system restart. Perhaps it is because the software is so old. I have reverted to using OSX built in font manager FontBook and when I activate fonts they appear immediately in Illustrator CC. It may be time to get rid of that old software and either stick with Fontbook or upgrade Explorer

Additionally, these font management apps require the use of plugins for auto-activation for various versions of their software in combination with the Illustrator version. The way they often get people to upgrade is to stop updating their plugins, so people need to buy the new version of their apps. I have to imagine that FontXplorer (which has change quite a bit since your version) also requires new auto-activation plugins...

I do not like that when you add fonts to font book it copies them and opens them. Let us know you experience, as I have not used Font Book except in fixing there peoples computers as my employer always has a font manager.

A particular font in a report can be a corporate requirement or a design element. Many report generator users would like to be able to use custom fonts. FastReport.NET allows you to do it! We are talking about TrueTypeFonts.

Thus, if you have a report template with fonts that are not installed in the system, you cannot edit it without losing the font settings, but you can build it and export it if these fonts are added to the FastReport.NET configuration.

Thus, if you do not need to develop reports with non-standard fonts, but only display or export them, then you do not need to install these fonts in the system. This can be convenient if you distribute your reports with custom fonts.

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