Where do the [Windows] fonts go?

[Michael Rowley]

I recently attempted to clear out surplus fonts from the Windows\Fonts folder—surplus fonts being all fonts that are not 'protected system fonts' in Windows. But to my surprise, there were many fonts that were reported as 'in use by another program', including many Adobe OTF fonts (often incomplete families) and several odd fonts that were not supplied with any Microsoft or Adobe program. No other program was open.

I've also had fun with Windows\Fonts itself: yesterday it was displaying all 155 of the fonts present, but today I see only the few raster fonts, whatever settings I choose. Could this be because I have installed a font manager (Suitcase for Windows v.11)? I am using Windows 7.

[terrie]

michael: But to my surprise, there were many fonts that were reported as 'in use by another program', including many Adobe OTF fonts (often incomplete families) and several odd fonts that were not supplied with any Microsoft or Adobe program. No other program was open.

But were any of them opened since the last time you had rebooted--either cold or warm boot?

If you'd not rebooted before trying to clear things out, even though no software was active, I've found that some software tends to linger ghostlike with ectoplasmic fingers entwined in the system...'-}}


>>but today I see only the few raster fonts, whatever settings I choose. Could this be because I have installed a font manager (Suitcase for Windows v.11)? I am using Windows 7.

Again...had you rebooted your system?

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Terrie:
My normal pocedure is to shut down the computer every night, and I do quite a lot of restarts for various reasons. The only Adobe application that wasn't installed less than a week ago is Acrobat; InDesign 4 and Framemaker 9 were installed a few days ago, and ID was opened only to get updates for both (there were updates). I was not surprised to find Adobe fonts supplied with Adobe programs, but I find it amazing that, for instance, the only fonts from the Adobe Caslon Pro family that were 'in use' (Windows description) were Caslon Pro bold and italic; there are examples of other partial families being retained by Windows\Fonts too.

[terrie]

michael: My normal pocedure is to shut down the computer every night, and I do quite a lot of restarts for various reasons.

But had you recently rebooted (and not then, opened any Adobe products) before going into the Windows font area?


>>but I find it amazing that, for instance, the only fonts from the Adobe Caslon Pro family that were 'in use' (Windows description) were Caslon Pro bold and italic; there are examples of other partial families being retained by Windows\Fonts too.

I'd find it surprising if I'd not used those fonts during a session. Had you used them? If not, I wonder if the Adobe apps use them somehow when the app initializes itself on opening?

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Terrie:
Windows 7 has been installed three times on this computer: the first time when I simply upgraded, the second time when I did a clean instal (to obviate certain problems—not with fonts), and a third time when my mother board failed. So I have various versions of Windows\Fonts that I can look at (I had a second hard disk installed as well as a new mother board, and the OS was put on the new disk, leaving all the old files on the original disk). InDesign and Framemaker were already installed on my original Vista system (and had to be reinstalled—twice!).

I have now looked at previous versions of Windows\Fonts and no OTF font was present then. I've also looked at the present Windows\Fonts folder in the cmd window, and can't find Adobe Caslon there either, although other OTF fonts are there.

It's a real mystery to me, but Suitcase 11 is working as it should, so it's not anything to worry about—much.