Practical Number of Fonts?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cooter
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Cooter

Many applications add their own fonts to the collection already provided by
Windows XP. Over time quite a collection builds up. What is a reasonable
number of fonts to keep on the system? I am running Win XP Home with 512 Mb
RAM.

Assuming I need to get rid of some fonts, how can I tell which fonts belong
to which applications, and will deleting the wrong fonts cause a particular
app to fail?

Thanks,
Cooter
 
I don't think it's anything to worry about. Fonts are loaded until
needed. You might be able to find a vendor listed in the font file
properties and this could be enough of a clue to let you know which app
wants them.

Most apps should substitute another more generic font if a particular
font is not found. However, there are certain fonts that Windows must
have, so I recommend you don't delete fonts.
 
Cooter said:
Many applications add their own fonts to the collection already provided by
Windows XP. Over time quite a collection builds up. What is a reasonable
number of fonts to keep on the system? I am running Win XP Home with 512 Mb
RAM.
Click to expand...

Depends. I have about 250 files in the FONTS folder. You may need more
or less depending on for what purposes you are using your computer. I
regularely check the TTF fonts in FONTS folder for about how the fonts
look and decide which ones I do not like and would never use. These
ones I delete from the FONTS folder. I leave the FON fonts alone to
avoid problems with Windows and applications because these are screen
fonts and may be necessary.
Assuming I need to get rid of some fonts, how can I tell which fonts belong
to which applications, and will deleting the wrong fonts cause a particular
app to fail?
Click to expand...

You could create a new folder and move the TTF files to that folder.
Leave them here for some time and check if all still works well. If
so, you can delete the folder.
 
Cooter said:
Many applications add their own fonts to the collection already provided by
Windows XP. Over time quite a collection builds up. What is a reasonable
number of fonts to keep on the system? I am running Win XP Home with 512 Mb
RAM.

Assuming I need to get rid of some fonts, how can I tell which fonts belong
to which applications, and will deleting the wrong fonts cause a particular
app to fail?

Thanks,
Cooter
Click to expand...
First off, Windows will not let you remove any fonts it uses. Most of
the rest can be removed. I removed all Bold, Italic and Bold Italic
fonts since I have no use for them. I am not a writer. Remove all fonts
to a folder, call it Begone, and after a few days you can safely erase
them. In 20 years of using computers I have NEVER had more than 30 fonts
in my computer. For one thing they take up space on your drive and your
computer has to check all of them during startup. I have seen idiots on
this forum bragging about having 2000 fonts in their computer. They
never answered a simple question I posed which was how do they know what
they have. Did they print them out paper? That would take a lot of
paper. You are on the right track, keep your computer clean and neat.
Remove unnecessary clutter and Fonts are clutter unless you are in the
printing business. :-)
 
Cooter said:
Many applications add their own fonts to the
collection already provided by Windows XP.
Over time quite a collection builds up. What is
a reasonable number of fonts to keep on the
system? I am running Win XP Home with
512 Mb RAM.

Assuming I need to get rid of some fonts, how
can I tell which fonts belong to which applications,
and will deleting the wrong fonts cause a particular
app to fail?
Click to expand...


This is getting to be quite a problem. I've seen several threads on this
subject just within the last few days. I've joined in on a couple of these.
I write in my spare time and rarely use more than a few fonts. Sadly, I have
to scroll seemingly endlessly through the fonts menu to even get to those
fonts. I've tried to figure out which ones to delete, but there doesn't seem
to be a clue anywhere. The advice I've seen on the internet often conflicts
(one says to delete a font another says to leave alone). This would be a
good project for a "how-to" web page (which fonts to delete and, more
importantly, which fonts belong to common programs).


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/
 
Many applications add their own fonts to the collection already provided by
Windows XP. Over time quite a collection builds up. What is a reasonable
number of fonts to keep on the system? I am running Win XP Home with 512 Mb
RAM.

Assuming I need to get rid of some fonts, how can I tell which fonts belong
to which applications, and will deleting the wrong fonts cause a particular
app to fail?

Thanks,
Cooter
Click to expand...

I am curious why you are worried about the number of fonts on your
system. I get the impression you think it might affect your system's
performance somehow. That is certainly was true for earlier OS's,
much to Corel Draw's chagrin, but XP dynamically allocates resources
for such things, and so for all practical purposes it doesn't care how
many fonts you have.

OTOH scrolling thru a bazillion fonts can be a chore, and you might
want to reduce the number of fonts for that reason. But some
applications require specific fonts, which they load on installation,
and refuse to run if they can't find them - some versions of Turbotax
and Quickbooks come to mind. And XP itself might give a warning if it
can't find fonts specified in the registry somewhere. And although
most applications will simply substitute if they can't find the one
specified, your documents' formatting might not line-up as a result.
And your desktop might end up looking strange as well.

So, all the above suggests that if you insist on cleaning up your font
list, that you do so cautiously. My understanding is that XP only
registers the fonts it finds in the %systemroot%\fonts folder, so if
you move fonts from there to a new, different folder, XP won't
include it in a font list, but you can easily put it back later on if
you find that you really need it after all.

Also, don't remove .fon files - they are usually fixed-size display
fonts. And XP won't let you delete or move any fonts currently in
use.

FWIW
 
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